AUTHOR: Bible Project
TYPE: Video Based

DESCRIPTION: A 4 week series through Advent, looking at Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.

JACOB’S NOTES: I’ve never personally done this series… but most Bible Project stuff is really good. Just make sure you find practical application from each video/discussion.

AUTHOR: Practicing the Way
TYPE: Booklet

DESCRIPTION: This material includes 4 Advent meditations to guide you through the advent season.

JACOB’S NOTES: Not too much to note here… click below and check it out for yourself! Personally, I find the languag a little tricky to follow, but still wanted to put it here in case a group wanted to use it.

AUTHOR: Bible Project
TYPE: Video Based

DESCRIPTION: A 4-5 week session that is routed in God’s description of himself in Exodus 34, which happens to be the most quoted Old Testament verse by the Old Testament writers.

JACOB’S NOTES: Really good to discuss the nature of God. You will need to work to make sure your discussions aren’t just theoretical, but practical. Make sure you come up with ways to apply the information to how we should live today as disciples of Jesus. This study comes with discussion questions, but I often had to come up with new ones to make it more practical.

AUTHOR: Matt Chandler
TYPE: Video Based

DESCRIPTION: What does it mean to be blessed? And, more importantly, how do we become someone who is blessed? The kind of life God is calling us to may not look the way we imagined, but it will be better than we could have hoped.

In this eight-session series, pastor Matt Chandler takes us through the Beatitudes and shows us what it means to live in the kingdom of God. Through Jesus’s teaching, learn what the blessed life really looks like.

JACOB’S NOTES: You’ll need to make sure the conversation isn’t just about God, but how it should inform how we live! Not just about information, but transformation.

AUTHOR: Timothy Keller
TYPE: Video Based

DESCRIPTION: Join author and pastor Timothy Keller in this eight-week small group Bible study (guide sold separately), to explore how the gospel can change your heart, community, and how you live the Gospel out in everyday life.

In week one you and your group will study the city, your home now, the world. Week eight closes with the theme of the eternal city, your heavenly home, the world that is to come. In between you’ll learn how the gospel can change your heart, your community, and how you live in this world.

JACOB’S NOTES: Simple to run, generated really good, foundation conversations when I ran it.

AUTHOR: Mark Sayers & John Mark Comer
TYPE: Podcast

DESCRIPTION: A podcast about following Jesus in a post-Christian world.

JACOB’S NOTES: I was hesitant to put this one on because some of the conversations that take place can be a little tricky to follow. But I included it because it’s SO GOOD! These guys help put words to things that you’ve probably noticed going on (consciously or subconsciously), and explain why would world has gotten to where it is. I would recommend listening to the first episode to get a vibe as to what it’s like, and then decide if it would be good for your group.

A couple of other things…
- This is just a podcast, do you’d need to come up with your own points of dicussion.
- You’d probably need to have people listen to it throughout the week, unless you wanted to listen to it together at Life Group
- There is more than 1 season of this podcast, so I would recommend doing the first season together (season 1 is the first 5 episodes they released… episode 1 is called ‘What is a Post-Christian Culture’).

AUTHOR: Rich Villodas
TYPE: Video Based

DESCRIPTION: Following Jesus in our world can be a challenge. Our pace can be too frenetic to be in union with God, and we often don’t know how to quiet our hearts and minds to be present with him. But God calls us into a life of purpose in communion with him. Join pastor and author Rich Villodas in this five-session series as he teaches us five practices that will take us from simply “being Christians” to being deeply formed by Christ.: Following Jesus in our world can be a challenge. Our pace can be too frenetic to be in union with God, and we often don’t know how to quiet our hearts and minds to be present with him. But God calls us into a life of purpose in communion with him. Join pastor and author Rich Villodas in this five-session series as he teaches us five practices that will take us from simply “being Christians” to being deeply formed by Christ.

JACOB’S NOTES: Full disclosure, I’ve never actually done this one, but it looked good enough and on-theme for our vision of life groups that I added it.

AUTHOR: Joe Maral
TYPE: Video Based

DESCRIPTION: The ancient Feasts of Israel are God’s prophetic timetable throughout history. What Christ did at His First coming and what He will do at His Second Coming are clearly pictured within the nature of the Feasts. Join Joe through this journey of discovering all seven Feasts of the Lord from Passover right through to Tabernacles.

JACOB’S NOTES: A couple groups have done this study and ave highly recommended it to me. It helped them make sense of OT festivals that come up in the NT