1. Share the good news of God’s love with someone this week more in deed than in word.  Be prepared to share with the group how this form of evangelism impacts you and your faith life.
2. Write a letter of encouragement to someone who might not yet follow Jesus’ teachings, or take them to lunch—without an agenda!
3. Spend 10 minutes each day this week reflecting on your own image of God.  Is the image Rob Bell presents one that resonates with you?  Do you believe “Love Wins”?
4. Journal about someone who has given you “Bullhorn Guy” messages and someone who has given you “Love Wins” messages of God.  Which one impacted you more?  What was the difference?

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.  John 13:35
 
“Teacher, what is the most important commandment in the Law?”
Jesus answered:  “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.’  This is the first
and most important commandment.  The second most important commandment is like this one. 
And it is, ‘Love others as much as you love yourself.’  All the Law of Moses and the Books of the Prophets
are based on these two commandments.”  Matthew 22:36-40 

1. How do you feel about people like bullhorn guy?
2. Are people like bullhorn guy hurting the general perception of Christianity?  What things other than bullhorn guy negatively impact the perception of the Christian faith?
3. Bell says:  “I mean, that’s why so many of us are so fascinated with Jesus, because he never stops insisting that God really, really loves us exactly as we are.  I mean, isn’t that what draws you to him?”  What draws you to the message of Jesus?
4. “When Jesus is asked, ‘What’s the most important thing?’ Jesus’ response is to love, love God with everything that you have and then love those around you in the same kind of way.  Jesus doesn’t separate loving God and loving others.  For Jesus, everything hangs on these two.  And so the defining mark of a Christian is love.”  What’s the most important thing in your life?  How does that line up with what Jesus said?
5. What does it mean to love someone with an agenda?  Is trying to convert someone to your religious beliefs an agenda?
6. Does God love people with different beliefs than you?  As much as he loves you?  How do you feel about people with different beliefs than you?
7. Do you think it’s possible to scare people into loving God?
8. What are some general negative perceptions of Christians out there?  Are the negative perceptions of Christianity caused by what we believe or how we’re living?  Are you doing anything to change the negative perceptions?

1. Spend time each morning this week meditating on the fact that God believes in you.  What significance does that have on the way you will begin your day?  Spend time each evening reflecting on how you behaved differently that day because of this belief focus.
2. What is one way that you can become more like your rabbi, i.e., showing compassion, hanging out with the marginalized, being present to those less fortunate than you.  Each day this week, commit to being aware of opportunities to behave like your rabbi.  Record how you did in your journal at the end of the day.
3. Read a story of Jesus out loud from one of the gospels each day and listen for what Jesus has to teach you.  For example, in the gospel of Luke, Chapter 3, verses 21-22, read the story of Jesus’ baptism….or in Matthew 15:21-28, read about Jesus sending a demon out of a girl…or in Mark 2:1-12, read about Jesus healing a paralyzed man.  Record in your journal what you notice.

During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. 
When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified.  “It’s a ghost,” they said and cried out
in fear.  But Jesus immediately said to them:  “Take courage!  It is I.  Don’t be afraid.” 
“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”  “Come,” he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.
But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”
Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him.
“You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”    
-Matthew 14:25-31 

1. Bell says, “I want to be the kind of person who does the right thing.  And I don’t just mean the big things where right and wrong are obvious and easy, but I mean the small things.  The subtle, unnoticed things.”  Why are the “small and unnoticed” things such a big deal?
2. Do you consider yourself a disciple of Jesus Christ?  Have you ever thought about Jesus as your rabbi?
3. Have you ever thought about your faith as being an interpretation?  Is it okay to have different interpretations of the Scriptures?
4. What message was Jesus sending us by not choosing the best of the best?
5. Have you ever thought you were one of the “not-good-enoughs”?
6. How big of a role do your insecurities play in your life?  Do they ever affect your faith?
7. Do you believe that God believes in you?
8. What does it mean to be like Jesus?  Can you do it?

1. Write out a confession in your journal.  Confess the things you have done or left undone.  Be honest.  End it by sincerely asking for God’s forgiveness.  God knows your faults and failings—you will not be telling God anything God does not already know.  The exercise is for your benefit, not God’s!
2. Set aside an hour this week to consider your views on forgiveness.  How much of your understanding of forgiveness is based in Scripture and how much comes from our cultural influences?  Use the concordance in your bible and look up passages that speak of forgiveness.  Allow God to teach you something about forgiveness that you don’t already know.
3. What do you need to do to forgive someone?  Allow the Holy Spirit to guide your actions.  Spend 10 minutes each day in prayer asking for the ability to forgive a past hurt.  Might you make a phone call...write a letter...or invite a face-to-face conversation this week? 

Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do.
 “I’ll do the judging,” says God.  “I’ll take care of it.”  Romans 12:19
 
The Lord sees everything, whether good or bad.  Proverbs 15:3
 
Do not judge, and you will not be judged.  Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. 
Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Luke 6:37

1. Bell says, “Everyone I know has wounds.  And some are small, kind of petty, you know.  You just need to get over it.  But for a lot of people they’re big and serious and deep wounds.”  What kind of wounds do you have?
2. How have your wounds shaped who you are today? 
3. Have you ever really gotten revenge?  If so, how did it make you feel afterwards?  If we take revenge when we get hurt, do you think it’s like saying to God, “I think I can handle this better than you”?
4. If God’s right there when people get hurt, why do you think he doesn’t step in to stop it from happening?  Do you trust that God is ultimately going to take care of everything?
5. Why is God’s forgiveness of us so crucial to our forgiveness of others?
6. Can we forgive somebody without being able to be around them?  Do you have people like that in your life?
7. Bell says that true forgiveness is being able to wish the other well.  How might that understanding impact your ability to forgive someone who has wronged you?
8. Do you believe forgiveness is really more about the one forgiving than the one being forgiven?  Does that view on forgiveness make it easier to forgive?
9. Forgiving is an action, it’s something you do!  Are there people you need to forgive?  If you never get the chance to make amends, what kinds of regrets will you have?

1. Allow God to speak to you through the Scriptures this week.  Read Luke 11:11-13 (above) and meditate on what it says about the character of God.  Can you believe that God wants to give you only good gifts?  Make a list in your journal—better yet, draw pictures—of the good gifts God has given you.  Write a prayer of thanks for those good gifts.
2. Spend time noticing your prayer life this week.  How are your prayers shaped by your feelings about God?  Are your prayers faith and hope-filled because you know God as a loving parent?  Are they pleading prayers to a God who seems distant?  Maybe you don’t pray at all because God seems to be uninterested in your life.  Journal about your insights.
3. Do a “treasure” check in your life.  Are there things that you prize too much?  Jesus warned us not to place our hope in things that will decay and perish.  If you cannot freely give a treasure away, maybe it possesses you more than you possess it.  Give it away and experience the freedom that comes when you relinquish a treasure.
4. Think of a time you felt God said, “No!”  How did you feel?  Can you share your own story of an orange kickball?

Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father who created all the lights in the heavens. 
He is always the same and never makes dark shadows by changing.   James 1:17
 
I know what I’m doing.  I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.  When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen.  When you come looking for me, you’ll find me.  Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.  Jeremiah 29:11-14
 
Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?  Or if he asks for an egg,
will give him a scorpion?  If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!  Luke 11:11-13 

1. We always want something, don’t we?  Something that would make us happy, right?  What is it for you?
2. Do you feel like you often don’t get the things you really want?  Do you feel like God’s denying you these things or maybe like he’s not even listening to you?
3. Have you ever been mad at God for not giving you what you’d asked for?  Is it okay to question God?
4. Have you ever felt like God did come through for you?  If so, how?
5. If you got everything you asked for in life, do you think you’d be happy?
6. Do you see your life as part of a bigger picture, a larger story?
7. Have you ever felt unsure about an important decision in your life and trusted God to lead you in the right direction?  How did that turn out?
8. Do you believe God is good?  Always?

1. Choose a day this week to go apart to be with God in silence.  Go to Prairiewoods or another place of retreat and pray, journal, walk, and seek to hear God’s voice.
2. Bring the presence of God to the sick, the suffering, or the lonely.  Visit with someone who is struggling and practice intentionally leaving space in the conversation to be silent…listening for the voice of God together.
3. Create a sacred space in your home—convert an unused room into a prayer room; move a comfortable chair into your bedroom and designate it as your prayer chair; or claim a chair in your family living space by placing your Bible, a devotional, journal and some pens or pencils next to it.  Then spend 15 minutes each day this week in silence in your newly-created holy space.
4. Spend this week fasting from those things you voluntarily subject yourself to:  the car radio, TV, over-activity, unnecessary telephone conversations.  Do not allow anything but God to fill that space you’ve created.  Journal or talk with a spiritual friend about anything you notice in the silence.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.  Matthew 11:28
 
Search your hearts and be silent.  Psalm 4:4
 
But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.  Luke 5:16

1. Bell was reading about a guy named Bernie Krause who records nature sounds for film and television.  He was saying that, in 1968, in order to get one hour of natural sound, like no airplanes, no cars, that it would take him about 15 hours of recording time, and he was saying that today, to get that same one hour of undisturbed sound, it takes him 2000 hours of recording time.  What does the Bernie Krause story have to say about how our world has changed?  What kind of noise do you have in your life?
2. Why is silence so hard to deal with? 
3. Do you ever surround yourself with noise intentionally?  If so, why do you think you do this?
4. Do you wish God’s voice would be louder in your life?  Does all the noise in our lives make it hard to hear God?
5. When was the last time you spent some time in silence?
6. Do you sometimes avoid silence because you’re afraid of what God might actually have to say to you?
7. Are you ever alone or do you always need somebody around you?
8. Does your schedule, your time, your life look like that of a person who wants to hear God’s voice?
9. What are some things in your daily life you could change to eliminate some of the noise?