Additional resources from the Make and Deepen DISCIPLES Team
We are so excited to have you join us with the Covenant Community Bible Experience. Below you will find resources curated by the Make and Deepen Disciples team. Select one of the options below to see how you can engage that group with CBE.
Children and Family Resources
Biblica has created some wonderful resources to allow families to take part in CBE. We have also put together some more resources to help supplement your time with your children and family.
How to read the bible with children
Tips for engaging the Children 2-10 in the Bible, includes age appropriate Bible suggestions, developmental considerations and creative ideas on how to explore the Bible with children. Download the resource here >
 |
Parent Tip: For younger children, consider selecting a picture bible and read through the New Testament portion together as a complementary alternative to the CBE reading plan. |
How to Engage in Conversations about God
“God Conversations”, provides insight on where each of us is in our daily walk with Christ, helping us see where we are flourishing, and where we are struggling. Such authentic conversations will enable us to support and encourage children in their journey with Christ as you explore God’s Word together. Download the resource here >
MY GROW Adventure story with god
Life with God is an adventure! This small booklet enables children to write and share their story with God by providing space for children to reflect and write or draw the tangible ways they journey with God. This resource is appropriate for children ages 5-12 Download the resource here >
Children’s Ministry Curriculum
The scope of Community Bible Experience reading each week makes it challenging to focus in on one idea. However, the lessons that have been selected from “Adventure with God” curriculum for each week contain a portion of the weekly Bible reading, and focus on a major theme so there is consistency within the reading plan. Churches are also encouraged to use the five CBE discussion questions as part of each session for the middle and older age group. Click on an age group below to download the curriculum.
|
Church Tip: Create spaces for children to share stories about their Community Bible Experience. This can be in worship, in children’s ministry, or club ministries. They can even use their My GROW Adventure with God story booklets (see above) as a guide for sharing. |
10 creative ways of praying with children
There are many ways of praying, and this resource will have children begging to pray. “Tips for Encouraging Children to Pray” includes ten great ideas for expanding the prayer life of children and families.
Download the resource here >
|
Parent Tip: As you spend time with children in conversations with God and encourage children to write their own story with God, it will enable them to naturally share their faith story with others. |
Small group questions for the family
Each day, before you listen to the audio together – be sure to listen carefully to the narrators introduction. They often give some helpful context and ideas to think about while listening. Below you can download a pdf of specific questions that the narrator asks, written out for you. It’s often helpful to ask this question to your children BEFORE listening to the audio! It acts as a pre-reading activity so that as they’re listening, they’re listening for the answer to your question! After listening, see if you can answer the question together.
Youth Resources
Calling All Youth Workers! The CBE initiative is a great opportunity for your church, and youth group, to come together and be transformed by the living and breathing Word of God. Whether you have teenage only community groups, or intergenerational groups, we want to support you with the following resources. We believe the material is great as a stand-alone reading opportunity, but consider some of the following options as you prepare to engage in the Community Bible Experience with your youth this season.
Alternative Questions
Biblical has put together 5 simple questions to help prompt discussion in your community groups. We have put together a set of 5 questions that are specifically geared towards teenage community groups:
1. Put in your own words the central idea of this section
2. What makes sense, what doesn’t make sense?
3. What is one thing you can relate to from this reading?
4. If this passage was to examine your own life, what would it point out
in you?
5. How can you share this idea with someone you care about?
Spotify Playlist
We’ve put together a Spotify playlist inspired by artists that played at CHIC 2015. Feel free to use this any way you would like. A few ideas: 1. Listen to it while you are doing your daily readings. 2. Have it playing in the background during your community group. 3. Use it for epic rounds of musical chairs.
Women’s Resources
Simplicity. It’s underrated. It’s time we did something about that! So women, we are calling you to keep it simple this year. Gather a group, decide to read together, pick a time to be meet, and get started. You can read on your own or just get together and listen to each other read. No matter what you do, God’s word is going to be working in you and on you. So, Read Real, Read Big, Read Together.
Reach out with the Bible
Remember how God promises that his word will go out with authority and will not come back empty? The word has powerful evangelistic potential that you can tap. Who might you invite to read the Bible with you? You might be surprised at how effective it is in drawing people closer to Christ.
Who Can Do This?
Women in your church
Women in your neighborhood
Women at your favorite coffee shop
Moms of young children
Empty-Nesters
People on Facebook
Women in Retirement Communities
table ideas
What if you could read the Bible with other women in a safe and comfortable environment? Around a table with friends who want the same kind of grounding in life that you yearn for? If you could gather and savor truth that goes deep and changes you inside? That’s what Community Bible Experience is about. Getting to know God’s word with friends. Six or eight women, eight weeks or 40 days, gathering at a table talking about what they read. Kind of like a book club. But with soul-stirring, life-changing truth. Questions provided, or you can make your own. The important thing is to do it. And to remember that God is there with you.
|
Check out our Pinterest page for more great ideas, including recipes to gather by. Or send us your faves. |
Listen X 2
Reading God’s word—it’s so important to listen. To listen for God’s voice talking just to you. To listen for God’s work in you and around you. Listen for the path to take. To listen for help or comfort or for something to finally fall into place and make sense. It’s why we engage with the Bible.
CBE is about listening for God’s voice, but we’d like to provide some great tunes to listen to while you are listening for God.
Try These!
When you gather, make sure it’s around something really tasty and fun to eat. Recipes to try HERE.
When you are done reading, make something that reflects what you read. It could be a sketch, a canvas, a sculpture, a song, or a journal entry, a quilt, or a collage. Or something else. Just let the word of God sink in and take you deeper. Then let it rise back up into something you created, unique to just you. Share these your creation with your group.
Try sitting in silence for 15 or 20 minutes after you are done reading. Be still, and let God speak to you.
Resources for Evangelism
Many churches have found CBE is a fantastic evangelism tool. This list of proven ways to use CBE for evangelism will help your congregations make the most of this opportunity to reach out to unchurched friends.
Invite, invite, invite…
Encourage people to invite their neighbors to a book club experience for 8 weeks. Reach out to your FRANC list. Who’s that? Make a list of friends, relatives, acquaintances, neighbors and coworkers who are far from God. A FRANC list helps you to think inside and outside your immediate box of people who might be interested in attending a book club on the New Testament. Begin by praying for those on your FRANC list to become curious, open, and available to an invitation to CBE. Ask someone from your FRANC list to join you for CBE. If they say no tell them you hope they’ll join you another time and go on to invite the next person on your FRANC list.
Language…loaded
Use fresh language that connects to culture for invitations. Drop Christian cliché’s and church-ey language when inviting and facilitating a study with unchurched people. Here’s an example of how you can talk about CBE in a way that connects to people outside the church:
CBE is more like a book club. It’s a space where we can have honest open conversation about the Bible, where we come and experience the Bible together and get swept up in the story. Join us for a fresh conversation about the Scriptures. |
Communicate
Post CBE invitations on public forum venues and social media… Post CBE invitations where the public gets their information on instagram, snapchat, facebook, work, living space and neighborhood forums.
equip…everyone!
Equip church attenders with invitations to use to invite family, friends and colleagues to a CBE book club. For instance:
We’re having a book club for 8 weeks where were going to read the New Testament to open up a new conversation about the Bible. We want to get swept up into the story in fresh ways and in community. It’s inclusive. It’s intergenerational and we’d love to have you join us. Start date: |
Encourage college ministry, young adults, highschool and middle school students to ask friends to do CBE with them.
Run bulletin inserts that remind people to invite friends who are far from God that might be ready to be in a book club on the New Testament.
Venues
Try offering at least one CBE group “out there” at an offsite venue to bridge to your community.
Coffee shops, cafes, public library & apartment community rooms, the YMCA or gym, the local pub, and work lunch rooms are great gathering places where book clubs commonly meet.
ask outreach friendly type questions
If you’re doing this with non Christians for the first time you might ask some of these more “unchurched friendly” questions:
1. What was surprising for you?
2. What did you read that resonated with you?
3. What was a challenge for you?
4. What would you like more information on?
5. Do you sense God is speaking to you through this passage and if so what is he saying?
6. What are Jesus’ expectations of his followers?
Resources – Alpha
CBE is a great follow-up or “Beta” for Alpha. Your church may consider starting CBE on the heals of Alpha funneling Alpha grads to CBE as the next step in their discipleship pathway. Reversely, CBE can serve as pre-Alpha experience or a conduit for fueling Alpha by launching Alpha a week or two after the conclusion of CBE as the next step for people in their spiritual journey.
Consider running CBE on the same night as Alpha. CBE folks can enjoy dinner together first with the Alpha people and then divide into peer or intergenerational Community Bible Experience groups.
