Romans

June 1 through September 14, 2008

June 1, 2008 begins a 16-week walk through Romans. What I invite you to here is a congregation-wide study of Romans in small groups, punctuated by Sunday sermons and reinforced by daily devotional reading and memory verses.          

For Calendar, Memory Verses, Devotional Reading, and Background Sheets for the series contact Bishop Rinehart at bishop@gulfcoastsynod.org.                                                         

Sunday   Memory Verse     Theme

Jun 1       1:16-17              Gospel: Righteousness by Faith

Jun 8       4:3b                   Abram: Faith is trusting God’s Promises

Jun 15      5:6                    Adam: Christ Died for the Ungodly

Jun 22      6:4                    Dead to Sin: Alive to God

Jun 29      6:23                   Free from Sin: Enslaved to God

Jul 6         7:15                  Enslaved to God with My Body:                      

                                                 Enslaved to God with My Mind

Jul 13       8:6                    Spirit: Life

Jul 20       8:14                   Spirit: Led

Jul 27       8:26                   Spirit: Helped

Aug 3      9:4-5                  The Jewish People: 8 things from Israel

Aug 10     10:12                 The Jewish People:

                                       No distinction between Jew and Greek

Aug 17     11:29                 The Jewish People: God’s promises irrevocable

Aug 24     12:1-2                Not Conformed: Transformed

Aug 31     12:21                 Evil: Overcome with Good

Sep 7       13:8                  The New Law: Love

Sep 14      14:7-8               Life and Death: In the Lord

Preparation

Assemble a team to oversee the series: recruit small group leaders, train them, publicize the series. Find a graphic to be an icon of these series. Perhaps an icon of Paul, or a photo of Rome. Publicize the event well in advance. Print the schedule in every bulletin and newsletter. This gets everyone on board. Put it up on your web page. You may consider printing the memory verses on the back of the insert, in the version of the Bible you use in worship, so that everyone learns the same version and can say the verses together.

 Small Group Bible Studies

The most important thing is that people are gathering around Scripture. You can use any study of Romans. I would suggest using the Serendipity Bible. This Bible has discussion questions in the margins that make it easy for anyone to lead a group study. Recruit two leaders for each group: one to host the study in their home and another to lead. It’s very hard to lead and host well at the same time. Have leaders read the study information provided below for background material on the text. Ask each group to do a social of some sort once a month, and a servant project once a month. Have your planning team dig up servant project opportunities to help out. By the way, I think it important that the pastor not lead these studies, unless the congregation is very small. Better off for the pastor to lead a study for the study leaders, weekly or even monthly. That way they feel prepared.

 Memory Verses

There is powerful alignment when the whole congregation studies and memorizes the same things. These memory verses are just suggestions. You may wish to pick verses that are more relevant to your context. Memorize the same version of each verse as a congregation, the version you’re using in your congregation’s Sunday worship. This way the congregation will be able to say the verse together. Use the verse from the previous week and the verse for the coming week in the sermon, having the congregation say them together.

 Completion

When you’re done, throw a party. Let people share stories about their group: what happened, what they learned, what they did, how they feel about it. Ask them if they’d like to continue to meet as a small group in the fall. Let me know how this worked for you, and if you’d like to see more of this kind of thing. Bishop@gulfcoastsynod.org.