For the month of Feburary and March we will be taking a closer look at the connect groups and combining the Feburary and March into a new Lent Resource Booklet in a PDF format. the booklet will cover our February theme ‘The Parable of Social Distancing’ and our March theme ‘Man of Sorrows, People of Hope’. Lent, the traditional time of reflection in the church calendar before Easter, begins on Ash Wednesday 17 February, and this booklet will have material to help us prepare for Lent and then travel together through the season culminating in Holy Saturday the day before Easter.

Download the Lent 2021 Booklet

The resource is designed to be flexible with a mix of mindful prompts, questions and meditations that could be used in a variety of contexts, such as on your own while journalling, or as a household studying and reflecting together, or with a friend you message back and forth with, or in an online group (such as a Connect Group). Feel free to tailor and adapt the material to suit your needs. In this resource you will find meditations, Lent Legacy prompts that invite you to engage in daily mindful actions, and discussion questions to dig deeper into the Bible and our relationships with God.

The material is available to download or print as a booklet, or you can view the normal connect group questions and accompanying videos online in chapters. 

 

The Parable of Social Distancing                                  Man of Sorrow, People of Hope

 

What are the Connect Groups? 

‘Connect Groups’ is the name we give to small informal gatherings who decide to meet together to explore the Bible alongside our monthly themes. These groups are independent and folk can simply set up their own Connect Group themselves, meeting together with friends and family on their own basis. In this time of Lockdowns when people can’t get together physically this material can still be used to meet together online.

Each month we produce a range of questions to adapt our themes for group discussion. The material is offered as a starting point and there is no need to go through all the questions.You can pick and choose, tailoring it to suit the needs and interests of your group. Each ‘Part’ could form the basis of a weekly roughly 90 minute meeting but you could break it up differently. Let us know if you would like to find out more about Connect Groups and different ways of linking into the Sanctuary First community.

We all come to the Bible with our own questions, insights and barriers. The guiding principle we have in writing these is to ask questions we don’t already know the answer to! Our hope is to facilitate open-ended discussions. Often the most valuable parts of group chats are the bits that go off on bizarre tangents. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Jesus knows a thing or two about bizarre tangents…

Need some advice on starting your own Connect Group? Get in touch.