AUTHOR: Sandra L. Richter
TYPE: Book Study

DESCRIPTION: Does your knowledge of the Old Testament feel like a grab bag of people, books, events and ideas? How many times have you resolved to really understand the OT? To finally make sense of it?

Perhaps you are suffering from what Sandra Richter calls the "dysfunctional closet syndrome." If so, she has a solution. Like a home-organizing expert, she comes in and helps you straighten up your cluttered closet. Gives you hangers for facts. A timeline to put them on. And handy containers for the clutter on the floor. Plus she fills out your wardrobe of knowledge with exciting new facts and new perspectives.

The whole thing is put in usable order--a history of God's redeeming grace. A story that runs from the Eden of the Garden to the garden of the New Jerusalem. Whether you are a frustrated do-it-yourselfer or a beginning student enrolled in a course, this book will organize your understanding of the Old Testament and renew your enthusiasm for studying the Bible as a whole.

JACOB’S NOTES: This is a great book, but it requires participants to read on their own throughout the week. If you want to run this, you need buy-in! I would also recommend starting each session with a summary of the assigned reading for the week, so people who missed or didn’t finish can get filled in before the discussion begins.

AUTHOR: Andy Bannister
TYPE: Book Study

DESCRIPTION: In the last decade, atheism has leapt from obscurity to the front pages: producing best-selling books, making movies, and plastering adverts on the side of buses. There's an energy and a confidence to contemporary atheism: many people now assume that a godless scepticism is the default position, indeed the only position for anybody wishing to appear educated, contemporary, and urbane. Atheism is hip, religion is boring.

Yet when one pokes at popular atheism, many of the arguments used to prop it up quickly unravel. The Atheist Who Didn't Exist is designed to expose some of the loose threads on the cardigan of atheism, tug a little, and see what happens. Blending humour with serious thought, Andy Bannister helps the reader question everything, assume nothing and, above all, recognise lazy scepticism and bad arguments. Be an atheist by all means: but do be a thought-through one.

JACOB’S NOTES: There is no study guide, so as the leader, you would need to pre-read and come up with discussion questions. Each chapter of this book addresses particular Atheistic claims. If you want to condense this study, you can read through the chapter titles and pick the ones you think you’re group would appreciate most and leave the others for them to read on their own if they want.

I’ve never actually used this in a Life Group setting, but included it here because it’s the most approachable, readable and comical (which is a HUGE plus) apologetic book I’ve read. to date.