New Chapters: Hope in Co-Authoring Life Stories with God
Week 1: Vocation
2024 Lenten Journey
21 February 2024
Dear Faith Friend,
This Lenten season, as you know from COS emails, our series is entitled “New Chapters: Hope in Coauthoring Our Life Stories with God.” God’s Word tells us that “for everything there is a season,” which means that new chapters inevitably come as both challenge and opportunity. Like new verses carry a song, grand stories are written with new chapters. Through them all, God is faithful.
There are several new chapters we’re facing specifically at COS in addition to life in general. And it’s important that we talk about them, growing in perspective through the insights of others and being together.
You can call together your own New Chapter “chapter” or join one of these:
- Pastor Fritz: Wednesdays at 7 PM via Zoom. (Meeting ID: 892 0262 2093. Passcode: newchapter. Note: Not meeting February 21st)
- Nancy Shepack: Wednesdays at 5 PM in Conference Room.
- Pastor Miriam: Wednesdays at 3 PM in Conference Room.
- Ellen Pfundt: Thursday evenings.
- Dean Hudson: Fridays at 6 AM via Zoom with men.
- Ingrid Hudson: “New Chapters Chat” with moms, Wednesdays.
- Barbara Anderson: Wednesdays at 7 PM in Room 210. ([email protected])
- Pastor Miriam: Wednesdays at 7 PM in Conference Room.
- Open Door Sunday Discussion Group, Sundays at 11 AM in Room 214.
- One that YOU might start! Call Barbara Anderson for updated list of groups and help with starting a group on your own.
Secondly, enjoy a faith testimony from Kendra Milburn about New Chapters in Vocation, which will also be featured in tonight’s 25-minute Holden Song Prayer Lenten service in the Sanctuary at 6:30 PM.
Thirdly, if you’d like to review Sunday’s sermon, upon which some of these questions are based, watch here:
Discussion Guide #1
New Chapters: In Vocation
Pastor Fritz Wiese
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3.11
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2.10
- THANKS EVERYONE for making time to be part of what God is doing in our “New Chapters” Lenten Series.
- Thank you, leader, for pulling this New Chapters “chapter” together.
Opening prayer:
Thanks God for gathering us together for these fun and holy 30 minutes. We’re grateful that you promise to guide us in all chapters of our life stories. Send your Holy Spirit upon us in these moments, leading us to new life-giving perspectives and convictions about our stories with you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Discuss:
1. Intros: This Lent, we’ll focus on five key new chapters Christians will face in life. Today we focus on the first, vocational chapters. Let’s go around and share our names and one of the earliest jobs we held as a youth or young adult.
2. Let’s warm-up with a question about our overall Lenten theme: Is it true that without new chapters a story cannot unfold? What would life be like if no new chapters were allowed? Give examples of how new chapters can be both exciting and scary.
3. In her sermon, Pastor Miriam spoke of one of the central new chapters COS faces together, her retirement April 15. What’s one aspect of Pastor Miriam’s ministry you’ve appreciated? What’s one blessing you wish for her new vocational chapter in retirement?
4. How do you think Jesus felt when he shifted from his job as carpenter to the beginning of his ministry?
5. In her video testimony, Kendra Milburn shares how she’s in-between vocational chapters and quotes Jeremiah 29.11 “For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” What does this verse mean to you?
6. Vocation stems from the Latin, “vocare,” or “to call.” (Sort of like vocal or evoke.) Share if and how you sense God “calling” you to the work you do.
7. One of the most quoted teachings on our vocations is from Fredrick Buechner: “one’s vocation should be the intersection of one’s greatest passion and the world’s greatest need.” What does that mean? How does this dynamic connect with why we experience new chapters in our vocational/job lives?
8. This is the first session for your group. Some of you are just meeting each other for the first time perhaps. These are fairly deep questions to discuss. You’re doing a great job! Take a moment to tell someone in your group, “Good job!”
9. What does Buechner’s quote above imply for the “bad days” we experience in our jobs? For the “good days”?
10. Why is it healthy that all humans, but especially COS folks in the midst of transition, to reflect upon and talk about new chapters?
If you have time . . .
11. There’s an old saying: “No one wants change except babies in wet diapers.” In terms of new chapters, is that true?
12. What’s one thing about new chapters in vocation that hasn’t been mentioned yet in your group?
Closing Prayer:
Dear Lord, thanks again for these holy moments with friends in Christ this session. Thanks for my call to work within your plan. Thanks for my call to be a character in these chapters of your marvelous story. Thanks that I can trust, like Kendra and Pastor Miriam, that even if we can’t see the future, or the details of our new chapters ahead, we are full of hope and peace, because we know you love us and are authoring even more of our stories, in grace, than we are ourselves. Be with us this week. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Thanks everyone!
See you next week!
Next week’s topic: New Chapters in Life
