THE RUNDOWN
Weekly Information for CBC YOUTH Leadership
First of week of September 2019
In this edition of The Rundown, DG leaders & College Sponsors will get their initial assignments in preparation for their first DG, a short summary of this past Sunday's sermon, and some things to prep. your calendar.
Preparing for your First DG (9/8)
1. Go to the google doc (CBC YOUTH 2019-2020 Master) and find your DG Members and Room Assignments. Also be sure to check the 2019-2020 google drive folder for a bio of your students from their info sheet and camp eval. Some of you have been switched and so try it out this month and if there are real issues, let me know.
2. DG leaders & College sponsors, please contact each other this week and pray over your students and their families. This will be the most important thing you do in terms of preparation.
3. For your first DG, you're really trying to do a few things: Get to know each other as well as them getting to know you. Setting expectations and guidelines for the year. Exchanging info if you haven't done this already. Also, if you haven't determined a curriculum, you could decide it this week with your group.
4. Keep a few things in mind: DG is meant to be more of a small group and community building. I know the transition is hard from classical sunday school...but think of small group as a camp group. Yes there is bible study at times but the goal of DG is for you to disciple them in ALL of life (including bible study).
Question of the Week: What circumstances made Oleg decide that he wanted to be a pastor?
Romans 14:13-23 Debrief
Explanations:
- 14: Christians are no longer under the old covenant, hence Paul no longer accepts the view that some foods are unclean (cf. Lev 11, Deut 14). Still, if anyone things certain foods are unclean, then they are unclean for that person.
- 15-17: The strong should not cause sorrow to the weak by what they eat but rather should refrain for the sake of the weak. They must beware lest they destroy the faith of a brother or sister. If the strong do not act in love, the goodness of the gospel may be wrongly identified as evil, for their lack of love for the weak contradicts Christ's love. God's kingdom centers on the gifts of righteousness, peace, and joy granted by the Holy Spirit, so that bodily appetites becomes secondary.
- 20-21: Paul urges the strong not to destroy God's work in the weak by eating food that will scandalize the weak. He assure the strong that all food is clean, but even the strong who have no convictions against eating such food fall into sin when others stumble and fall away from Christ upon observing how the strong behave.
- 23: No one should eat unclean food if he has doubts about the rightness of the activity. Indeed, anything believers do apart from faith is sin, for faith glorifies God by trusting him (20), and lack of faith dishonors him.
Context for our Youth:
- The passage mainly focuses on the believers that are a bit more mature than their younger Christian brothers and sisters. These may be the youth who are a bit older or who have studied a bit more. The challenge here is to always consider the weaker/younger/less mature brother and sister. This is helping the Christian to not abuse their freedom afforded to them in Christ by: 1) flaunting their freedom for selfish gain or self promotion 2) coercing younger Christians to do something that they aren't comfortable doing 3) Passing judgment on other Christians who don't know what you know or do what you do.
- This can come in the form of any Christian that just "does whatever they want to do" and saying "Jesus died for all my sins so I can sin all I want." Can come in the ways we dress and show off what we own. This can definitely pertain to those OVER the age of 21 flaunting their ability to drink and/or highlight what they drink/how much they drink in front of others. This can also be someone who has progressed in their Christian knowledge and looks down on others for not being where they are at.
In all of this, Paul reminds the Christian, in our community of faith our first and foremost attitude towards others is love. Love of their souls and love because we were once young and immature and older brothers/sisters loved us. Love because in our sins, Christ died and loved us in order to save us. So we in turn love enough to refrain from certain liberties (not because we can't, but because we can.)