House Church Handbook: Instructions
Welcome to our House Church Handbooks
One of the resources we offer you as a House Church Leaders is our Garden Curriculum. This curriculum is meant to go through everything we hope disciples to Jesus would grow in at Garden Church. As a House Church you are able to go through these Handbooks as a way to empower you and those in your groups to grow as wholistic disciples. Here’s how it works:
1. Leaders Read First
Go through the handbook at your own pace before sharing it with your House Church. Allow your heart to be transformed by the content. Wrestle with the content. Reach out and get clarity on anything that doesn’t make sense. Your role is a facilitator and a guide, not an expert on these Handbooks.
2. Share the Handbooks
Once you have gone through the handbook, these are made to be shared with those in your House Churches. Send them a link to the Handbook pages, or send them the link to the online PDF. They are meant for everyone to have on their own.
3. Go Through the Handbooks
After dispersing the handbooks, allow the handbooks to be your companion guide in your House Church meetings. Everyone will have access to the content and the homework within them, all you have to do from here is go forward together. Each handbook should take a month or two to go through.
Those are the steps of how to use the Handbooks. Click below to understand the different sections found in each Handbook:
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Each handbook will focus on a theme to slowly go through. Allow that theme to be the throughline in conversations and in prayer for your time together.
Then those themes are broken up into different highlighted topics that each House Church gathering will take to discuss, meditate on, and embody.
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The READING section is divided between the main content of the week and the discussion questions.
The first section is where each topic is explained in depth. This is meant to be read by each individual before they arrive at a House Church gathering so that the majority of the time together can be left to unpack the content together.
The discussion questions are left primarily as helpful suggestions for discussion as a group. If the Spirit impresses the conversation to go in another direction, allow it!
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The gift of these handbooks is more than the content. When we take this information and turn it into a practical response, we grow in depth with God, each other, and ourselves. This is how transformation takes place.
Each week there will be a communal practice as a response to the meditation and discussion of the content of the week. Allow the Spirit to guide this time for hearts, minds, and bodies to be changed.
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While true discipleship is done in community, we should not neglect how God wants to invade our everyday ordinary life.
Each week will have homework. A challenge to implement over the next week. Allow this to be part of how your House Church checks in with one another, either through the week or at the next House Church gathering. Share stories, share successes, and especially share failures. This is how we will grow with God and take discipleship into our own hands.
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These handbooks will serve as springboards for many into deeper discipleship to Jesus.
Throughout each handbook, there are additional resources ranging from books, videos, podcasts, and classes. Encourage each person to pursue further study wherever the Spirit may be guiding.
For any questions regarding House Church Handbooks
please email: michael@garden.church