WHAT IS GRIEFSHARE?

GriefShare is a friendly, caring group of people who will walk alongside you through one of life’s most difficult experiences. You don’t have to go through the grieving process alone.
GriefShare seminars and support groups are led by people who understand what you are going through and want to help. You’ll gain access to valuable GriefShare resources to help you recover from your loss and look forward to rebuilding your life.

Gaylia Jones will be leading a 13-week support group beginning in mid January.  Please call the church office, 459-2826, to enroll.

 
HOW GRIEFSHARE WORKS?

It may be hard for you to feel optimistic about the future right now. If you’ve lost a spouse, child, family member or friend, you’ve probably found there are not many people who understand the deep hurt you feel.
This can be a confusing time when you feel isolated and have many questions about things you’ve never faced before.
GriefShare groups meet weekly to help you face these challenges and move toward rebuilding your life. Each GriefShare session has three distinct elements:

VIDEO SEMINAR WITH EXPERTS

Each week your GriefShare group will watch a video seminar featuring top experts on grief and recovery subjects. These videos are produced in an interesting-to-watch television magazine format featuring expert interviews, real-life case studies, dramatic reenactments and on-location video.

SUPPORT GROUP DISCUSSION WITH FOCUS

After viewing the video, you and the other group members will spend time as a support group, discussing what was presented in that week’s video seminar and what is going on in your lives.

WORKBOOK-BASED PERSONAL STUDY AND REFLECTION

During the week you will have the opportunity to use your workbook for further personal study of the grieving process and to help sort out your emotions through journaling. Your group will spend time discussing questions and comments from the workbook study.

Disciple History

In March 1986 a group of eighteen gathered in Flower Mound, TX, committed to a dream of developing a Bible study for training Christian Disciples. Together they shaped the dream into a vision of what became DISCIPLE: BECOMING DISCIPLES THROUGH BIBLE STUDY.

In July of 1989, three years after the Flower Mound gathering that gave birth to DISCIPLE, word had come across the church that lives were being changed and churches renewed. A group gathered once again and took on the challenge of providing another life-changing study. The result was DISCIPLE: INTO THE WORD INTO THE WORLD with the challenge of going deeper into the Word and out into the world.

Another three years later in December of 1992 another gathering took place and the new study took shape. Experience confirmed direction and congregations were ready to confront and be confronted by the hard words of the prophets. The result - DISCIPLE: REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE, the third study in what would become a four-phase program.

Finally, in 2001, the fourth and final study of the original DISCIPLE program was published. From Creation to the New Jerusalem – that was the promise and the vision. DISCIPLE: UNDER THE TREE OF LIFE was published and groups would study The Writings and Revelation. The journey was long and in-depth and would take congregations through the Bible twice.

 
BECOMING DISCIPLES THROUGH BIBLE STUDY provides an overview of the entire Bible. The next three studies deal with specific books in more detail. DISCIPLE BIBLE STUDIES have been influential in transforming the lives of 1.5 million people. These studies also have led to the development of CHRISTIAN BELIEVER and JESUS IN THE GOSPELS.

BECOMING DISCIPLES THROUGH BIBLE STUDY is the foundation of the DISCIPLE Bible Study program.

DISCIPLE assumes that the bible is the key to renewal in the church. It recognizes the human-divine nature of the Bible: The actual texts of Scripture were written by human beings like ourselves in their cultural settings, under the divine inspiration of God.

DISCIPLE affirms that the canon was formed as it is in order for God to speak to us.

BECOMING DISCIPLES THROUGH BIBLE STUDY gives equal time to both the Old and New Testament, emphasizing the wholeness of the Bible as the revelation of God. DISCIPLE aims at transformation, not just information, and calls on persons to submit themselves to examination by Scripture, to put themselves under the power of God’s Word, and to be changed by God’s Word. DISCIPLE invites persons to bring their experiences and struggles to the Scripture. All persons know something is amiss with their existence and yearn for the Word from God.

BECOMING DISCIPLES THROUGH BIBLE STUDY uses biblical language and images and draws upon the work of scholars to aid understanding of the Bible. This study requires reading large portions of Scripture each week and is based on careful study and preparation. During the course of thirty-four weeks, groups will move through the biblical stories of Creation to the New Jerusalem. The titles of the sessions along with theme words; theme verses; and major persons, events, and topics will set the sequence of the biblical story in the minds of the participants. The principal Scripture for each session follows the chronological movement of the biblical story.

INTO THE WORD INTO THE WORLD encourages persons to open themselves to hearing what God has to say to them through the Bible and to be guided into service in the world by Scripture and their study of it.
This thirty-two-week study selects specific portions of Scripture and delves deeper into them. Depth study of Scripture will be the work both of individual members and of the group in its weekly meeting. Equal attention is given to both the Old and New Testament with concentration on four books: Genesis, Exodus, Luke, and Acts (eight lessons on each book). Appropriate connections are made to other parts of Scripture both through reading and study assignments and through commentary in the study manual. Participants will read familiar passages, see them in fresh ways, and anticipate that God will speak through them.


REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE is prepared for those who have completed BECOMING DISCIPLES THROUGH BIBLE STUDY. Resident in the title is the driving idea in this study--the connection between memory and identity as the people of God. The word You in the title is meant to be heard both in its singular form (the individual) and in its plural form (the community). We are a community of memory. Participants in this thirty-two-week study will read the major and minor Old Testament prophets, with the exception of Daniel, and will read the thirteen letters traditionally attributed to Paul. To establish the historical context in which the prophets spoke for God, daily reading assignments also draw on the books of Deuteronomy through Chronicles. Study of the prophets will follow their historical sequence rather than their biblical sequence. The dating of Paul’s letters influences the sequence of their study.

Several themes weave their way through the study: the call to remember, the call to repentance, the need for renewed vision (eyes to see, ears to hear), and the place of community. REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE concentrates on the Old Testament prophets and the letters of Paul. The prophets and Paul are continually calling hearers and readers back to their God and to a sense of who they are as a people “set apart.” The prophets and the community cannot be separated. The prophets spoke for God, out of the community, and to the community. Paul’s experience of the risen Lord, his relationship to the community he addressed, his Jewish traditions, and the Greco-Roman culture of his day merged in his writing of the letters. Paul used the language of his culture to carry the message that arose out of his roots in the Hebrew Scriptures and Judaism.

 
UNDER THE TREE OF LIFE is a thirty-two-week study prepared for graduates of BECOMING DISCIPLES THROUGH BIBLE STUDY. The word Under in the title is meant to convey invitation, welcome, sheltering, security, and rest--home at last.  The Hebrew version of what Christians call the Old Testament has three divisions: Torah (the first five books of the Bible), the Prophets, and the Writings. The Writings include all the books that are not part of the Torah or the Prophets.

UNDER THE TREE OF LIFE concentrates on the writings in the Old Testament – Ruth, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, and Daniel. New Testament Scriptures include the Gospel of John; 1, 2, and 3 John; James; Jude; and Revelation.

Emphasis on the Psalms as Israel’s hymnbook and prayer book leads naturally to an emphasis on worship in the study. Present though the entire study is the sense of living toward completion, toward the climax of the message and the promise, extravagantly pictured in the Revelation.


JESUS IN THE GOSPELS invites believers to look at Jesus in each of the four Gospels and ask the question, "Who is the Jesus that you see?" This study will deepen discipleship through better understanding of the biblical texts and their message.
Two questions frame this study: "Who is the Jesus you bring with you to this study?" and "Who is the Jesus you take with you from this study?" JESUS IN THE GOSPELS takes participants on a journey from one question to the other. While distinct in format and approach, this Bible study builds on the foundation and carries forward the philosophy and ideals that shaped DISCIPLE—high-commitment, long-term, disciplined study that fosters community and builds toward transformation.

 
JESUS IN THE GOSPELS is different from DISCIPLE Bible study in its approach to Scripture; it looks more closely at the Gospel texts, in the kind of daily preparation and study required of the participants, in lesson layout and design, and in the nature of the study and discussion that takes place in the weekly group meeting.

JESUS IN THE GOSPELS focuses on the portraits of Jesus found in the four Gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The word in used in the title signals that this study takes an approach different from the familiar "life and teaching of Jesus" approach of reading stories and accounts of what Jesus said and did in order to draw conclusions about their meaning and about who Jesus was. This study looks at the way each Gospel writer presents events and teachings and at the picture of Jesus that emerges in each of the Gospels.

Lessons 1-22 concentrate on Matthew, Mark, and Luke with some related passages from John. Lessons 23-30 concentrate on the Gospel of John with supporting passages from other parts of the New and Old Testament. In the course of the thirty weeks, participants will read the four Gospels and considerable amounts of Scripture from other parts of the Bible.

CHRISTIAN BELIEVER assumes that most people--though faithful followers of Jesus they intend to be--know little of the content of the central teachings of the Christian faith and its ties to Scripture. But they want to know. They want to know what is at stake in what the church teaches and how it makes a difference in their own lives, what it means to be Christian, and where we as Christians stand. CHRISTIAN BELIEVER aims at addressing the uncertainty about the substance of the Christian faith and the connection between believing and living.

The course assumes that participants are already followers of Jesus and that they come to study to understand the faith they already have. CHRISTIAN BELIEVER emphasizes the head as well as the heart. This study recognizes that Christians say the creeds without understanding everything, or even assenting to everything in them, because in saying them they identify with the people and the tradition shaped by the confessions. They recognize that “faith seeking understanding” is a part of Christian experience. CHRISTIAN BELIEVER allows space for questions, doubts, and dissent.

The goal of CHRISTIAN BELIEVER is to make available to people the substance of the Christian faith that the church has confessed as a way of connecting to God and living faithfully. This thirty-week study of the classical doctrines of the Christian faith aims at presenting, explaining, and interpreting Christian doctrine as the basic teaching of the church to the end that informed believing leads to committed discipleship.

Coming to faithful understanding of the teaching of Christianity through CHRISTIAN BELIEVER begins with disciplined daily reading of Scripture and of the writings of early and modern church leaders. The process of understanding continues in weekly group discussion about the relation of Scripture, beliefs, and daily living.

CHRISTIAN BELIEVER brings in history as it illumines themes and topics, but it is not a course in church history. Historical voices are heard in selections from the writings of early and later church leaders and in documents arising out of church councils that dealt with questions, conflicts, and controversies about what constituted Christian teaching. Participants in CHRISTIAN BELIEVER will gain a sense that Christians before us have wrestled with some of the same issues of belief that Christians wrestle with today.

CHRISTIAN BELIEVER emphasizes the relationship of worship, belief, and daily life. The beliefs of the Christian community, taught within the Christian community, equip the Christian community for living faithfully and for passing on the faith entrusted to it.