Watch Right Now Media: The Church

CH _ _ _CH Activity

Under the heading ‘Describes your church’, list 3–5 terms that describe your church from the list below. Then under the heading ‘Describes the way you think your church out to be’ list 3–5 terms that describe the way you think the church ought to be from the list below.

___ Accepting 
___ Active 
___ Bible-Teaching 
___ Creative 
___ Diverse 
___ Emotional 
___ Entertaining 
___ Evangelistic 
___ Exciting 
___ Focused on Forgiveness 
___ Focused on God’s Greatness 
___ Inspiring 
___ Intelligent 
___ Judgmental
___ Loud 
___ Loving 
___ Musical 
___ Organized 
___ Peaceful 
___ People-Helping 
___ Political 
___ Relevant 
___ Tech-Savvy 
___ Traditional 
___ Trendy 
___ Youthful 
___ Zzzzzzzz

Discuss

• What did you put? How would you describe the church as it is now?
• Why do you say that? What is specifically that way about the church? Do you have an example?
• Why do you think things are that way?What kind of church do you want to have?
• Why do you want that?
• What would we need to do to make that happen?

I still struggle with temptations, but I go to my family in Christ, the Church, to help me and they are always there to support me and kind of put me right back on track.

– Drew

It was kind of a big pride issue for me to realize that I needed help from others. And not just from Jesus Christ but from those people from that church that I found. . . . If they only knew how I felt and how I looked at myself because I was so covered in sin and I was so covered in mistakes that I didn’t feel genuine.

– Angelo

I noticed people at church were really different from the people that I was hanging out with. And what was different about them was they were really caring, and they didn’t do the things that I was doing, and they really devoted their life to God.

– Brenda

Discuss

Look at Drew’s comment. How can a church help you with temptation? How can they help you get back on track?

Angelo talks about pride. Is it hard to admit to people in church that you struggle with sin? What can we do about that?

Brenda compares church people to the people she was “hanging out with.” What differences does she mention? Do you think that’s usually true? Are church people more caring than others, more devoted to God?

Bible Exploration:

• Read Romans 12:3-17. What kind of attitude should we have in the church (v.3)?
• What picture is Paul giving us here (v. 4-8)? Do you know people in this church with those specific abilities?
• Do you know people in this room with those specific abilities?
• If you have one of these gifts, what should you do with it?
• Why do you think Paul would have to say such obvious things?
• Do you think it’s difficult, at your age, to recognize your gifts and use them in the church? If so, what can we do about that?
• Read verses 9-13. What does this mean? What does it look like when we do it? Let’s come up with specific examples.
• Read verses 14-18. Isn’t this out of place? Do people get persecuted in the church? How should we read verse 14 and verse 17? Is it talking about mistreatment in the church, or about something else?
• Moving on, according to verse 15, we should always be happy, and if anyone is struggling with sadness, we should cheer them up, because Christianity is all about joy, right?
• In verse 16, we see the word harmony. What’s that? How can we live that way?

Activity

In the CH_ _CH activity above, I want you to go through that list one more time. This time, it’s not your current observation, or what you think the church should be, but what we’ve learned from Romans 12 about the church. See if you can find 3-5 of these terms that fit with our study and write these under the heading ‘Romans 12 Church’. Maybe they’re what you marked already, that’s okay.

Discuss

• What did you mark down? Why? How does that fit with what we just studied?
• Who is the church? You are. Plus, a bunch of other people who are very different from you, but you are definitely included in that mix. And we learned something amazing today-that God has given you certain abilities, and he wants you to use them in the church. He commands you to use them in the church.
• Do you teach or help or lead or encourage?  Do you organize, share your faith, speak out for truth, console people, show hospitality? Then find a way to do that!

Answer the following question in the quiz.

• Write 3 points that stood out to about this doctrine.
• In your own words, summarise what the doctrine of the Church is.