Sumatra with the Seven Churches

SUMATRA WITH THE SEVEN CHURCHES Coffee Cup Bible Series  Eight-week study Sumatra with the Seven Churches is the first eight-week study in the Coffee Cup series. It explores the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation--a section of the Bible that contains letters to seven churches in Asia (ancient Turkey). Our focus in this study is on Christ's messages to those seven churches and how His words are relevant to all believers today.  Sumatra with the Seven Churches takes readers back in time to ancient “Asia,” now known as Turkey, where we consider Jesus’ messages to some of the world’s earliest churches. Readers encounter Jesus as Alpha and Omega, the one who “is” and who was and who is coming. In Ephesus we remember our first love; in Laodicea we learn what makes Jesus want to spew. In each city we consider background information that helps us understand the message crafted for them. In the process we find timeless truths that apply to our own lives in the here-and-now. While most of the Book of Revelation is apocalyptic, the first few chapters contain letters or messages to seven churches. It is these chapters we consider in Sumatra with the Seven Churches. So grab a cup of your favorite brew and gather some friends or study alone. (The book is designed for both group and individual study.) This and all the Coffee Cup Bible Study series books contain Monday-through-Friday Bible study with devotional thoughts for light reading on the weekends. Leader’s guide available for free on this web site. Note from Sandra Glahn: For this study I teamed with a former student, Crickett Keeth. I love her Bible studies, and wanted to introduce her to a broader audience. I think you'll love what she adds, too.   "I picked up a copy of Sumatra with the Seven Churches and am absolutely loving it! I love the research and expertise--meat, not milk!  Rachel Lee Carter www.ModelingChrist.com author, Bible teacher, speaker, professional model

Leaders' Guide: 

Qualifications: Begin with prayer, asking the Lord to guide you. Do you sense God leading you to facilitate a group? To lead a Bible study you do not need a seminary degree or skill at public speaking. You don’t even need to have the gift of teaching. You need only a desire to see people grow through God’s Word and a genuine concern for their spiritual growth. Often the person best suited to the facilitator’s role is not someone who likes to impart knowledge (teach). Rather, it’s someone who enjoys drawing out others and hearing them talk.

Getting Started: Pray about whom you should invite to join you. Then begin inviting participants, and set a deadline for commitments. Ask yourself the best way to announce the opportunity for group study—Church bulletin? Web site? Blog? Text? Email? Flier? Poster? Phone call?
If you envision a church-sponsored study with a number of small groups, aim to give participants at least several months’ notice so you can schedule a room and so participants can add the event to their calendars. Work with the appropriate church staff member(s) to work out details relating to time and place.
If you plan to gather a small group of friends, decide as a group the best time and place to meet. Ideally small groups should be limited to eight or ten members.
Take book orders, collect payment, and distribute books in advance or have each individual take care of obtaining her own. The former is recommended, however, as bulk discounts are often available, and people are more likely to follow through in attending if they have a study in hand.
Before your first Bible discussion time, hold a kick-off brunch or get your group together in a church building, at a coffee shop, or in a home. Pray for each person who will attend, asking that God’s presence would be present and that each would have a desire to learn the Word. Open with prayer.
Provide opportunities for members to get acquainted if they don’t already know each other. Do this by allowing each to give an introduction or by offering some icebreaker questions that include each participant giving name and some background information. Ask a benign question with the potential for humor such as “What is your favorite household appliance” (Water heater? Blender? Coffee maker?). This will help people open up to each other. One artist-led group asked this question and provided Play-Doh so each participant had to make an image of her appliance, and others had to guess what it was.
You will need to determine before this meeting whether to distribute studies in advance or to hand them out at this event. You also need to decide if members should read only the background information the first week or if they are to read the background along with completing the first week of study. If the former, plan for how you will fill the time at your first meeting, as you will have little to discuss. Perhaps you can do a service project together, such as writing to a child whom a group member sponsors. Or share your own faith-story, so your group can get to know you. Or show the video recommended in week one. Or read Revelation 1–3 aloud as a group. If someone in your group prefers not to read aloud, have the group read in unison during her turn.
Something else you’ll need to determine—do you want to complete each chapter in one week, or do you want to spread your study out over a sixteen-week period? If the latter, determine where to divide the book’s layout in half for each week.
Obtain permission to distribute contact information among the members to encourage discussion and fellowship throughout the week. Include phone, email, and street address information.

Your First Discussion Meeting: When the group meets for the first discussion, be sure all participants meet each other, if they haven’t already. Distribute contact information, and be sure everyone has a study handy.
You will spend most of your time in discussion. If your group members hardly know each other or seem reluctant to talk, use an icebreaker question to get them started. Try to come up with something that relates to the topic without requiring a spiritual answer. You may have people in your group who are completely uncomfortable talking about spiritual things, and the icebreaker is a way to help them participate in a way that’s less threatening. In fact for these reasons you might want to include an icebreaker at the beginning of each discussion to get lighthearted conversation going. See the list of suggestions below for each week’s possible questions.

Your Weekly Meeting: Begin each session with prayer, and do your best to start on time, depending on the formality of the group. Set a clear ending time, and respect participants’ schedules.
After prayer, ask the icebreaker question, if you plan to use one. Then move to discussion. Allow about 45 minutes for this time. Select the questions you’ll ask by going back through the lesson for the week and choosing about seven open-ended questions. You can simply circle in your guide the questions you want to ask. Be sure at least one of your choices covers what you feel is the most important point from the text for that week.
Be careful not to dominate as the leader. Your job is not to instruct but to draw out. If you have members who rarely say anything, periodically direct an easy question specifically to that person.
When you finish the final question, ask members if there was a question or issue they wanted to cover that you missed. Then ask them to share prayer requests, items for thanksgiving, or announcements. Be sure each prayer request is actually covered in prayer, and encourage the group to refrain from answering such requests with advice or related stories (like, “I know someone else with that kind of cancer and she used an herbal supplement”).
When you’re finished, be sure each person knows the next assignment as well as the meeting time and place for your next study.
Between meetings, pray for participants. It will mean a lot if you can follow up with a phone call, particularly when people have shared urgent requests. If you can make one visit to each member’s home during the study, you will likely find a huge dividend in the time invested. “Just showing up” goes a long way toward building community and aiding spiritual growth.

Icebreakers:
Week 1 – The first week is an overview. You’ll discuss how Revelation 2–3 consists of seven messages to seven churches. So you could discuss the best or worst e-mails, letters, or notes you’ve ever received. You could also ask if anyone has been to Turkey, and if so, what images stood out.

Week 2 – Jesus’ first message is to the church at Ephesus, the church that lost their first love. A fun discussion might arise from the question, “Is anybody willing to start by telling us about her first crush?” If you have Internet access, show the Youtube clip of the scene in Top Gun where the guys sing, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.”

Week 3 – The church in Smyrna was suffering. One of the subjects covered is our tendency to fear people more than God. So you could ask, “What are some things that make you crazy afraid?” Spiders? Snakes? The dark? Enclosed spaces? Horror flicks? Snowboarding? My niece freaks out when she sees a gecko. My cat is terrified of the vacuum cleaner; she skulks off to hide under the bed whenever it goes on.

Week 4 – The church at Smyrna was the compromising church. This week you’ll talk about Jesus’ promise that He’ll give a new name to those who overcome. So ask, “What have been some of your nicknames and what did they mean?” My dad called me “Moppius,” and to this day, none of us has a clue why.

Week 5 – Thyatira was the tolerant church—too tolerant. So talk about the pro’s and con’s of being politically correct (PC). Or what PC-police experiences group members have had that they considered ridiculous.
One of the names for Jesus in the Scriptures for this week is “Morning Star,” which is another name for the planet we know as Venus. Consider asking your group about their experiences with stargazing. Have they been to a planetarium, and if so, did they enjoy it? Do any of them own a telescope?
Remember that these icebreaker questions are simply to get discussion started by opening with an easy question for which everyone should be able to give an answer without feeling intimidated. Feel free to craft questions that better fit your own group.

Week 6 – Sardis was the sleeping church. Obtain a copy of Keith Green’s song, “Asleep in the Light.” Play it and talk about it. Or have group members tell of a time when they tried to live up to a false reputation—maybe a math-whiz sister created teachers’ expectations. Or a class-clown brother was a tough act to follow. You could also ask them to share a time they let their guard down and regretted it—but make it clear you’re not asking them to confess a sin. It could be more along the lines of answering a call from a telemarketer and getting stuck on the phone for half an hour.

Week 7 – Philadelphia is the only church about which Jesus has no criticism. The citizens of Philadelphia endured numerous earthquakes. So ask your group if any of them have ever been in an earthquake. Or if they’ve ever been a part of an earthquake-relief team. Or if they know someone who has. Have them share about the experience.

Week 8 –Laodicea was the lukewarm church. The city of Laodicea had water issues, so ask group members if they have stories to share about overflowing sinks, broken water heaters, burst pipes, and floods. Transition to your book discussion by listening to Steve Camp’s song, “Living in Laodicea.”


More than Bible Study
Perhaps you would like to combine your time in Bible study with service. You can choose from the following ways to do so or come up with your own.

a) Have each person bring something every week to donate. One week, they can bring used eye glasses. The next it’s cell phones to recycle. Then used Bibles to go to an organization that distributes them to the needy or in countries where Bibles are not readily available. And finally, books to donate to the public library or your church library. Other possibilities are combining your time with a “baby shower” to benefit a Pregnancy Resource Center; collecting coats for the homeless; or assembling Christmas boxes for Samaritan’s Purse. Involve the group in deciding what they want to do.

b) Combine your study with your church’s missionary needs. One week have everyone bring supplies for someone’s ministry trip such as power bars, dried soup, and seeds. Often short-term teams need items to give to translators as gifts, as well as VBS prizes. My congregation’s sister-church in Mexico asked for school supplies one September; they also need Spanish Bibles. Many ministries need large-print Bibles. You could ask your congregation’s web master to set up an Amazon Associates’ account with a link through your church’s web pages, and direct all members to order through the link. Choose a mission to benefit from all proceeds. Another possibility is bringing office and bathroom supplies for your church. Or host a group garage sale and use the proceeds to grant scholarships for an activity such as the annual women’s retreat.

c) Target a people group to learn about and pray for as part of your time together.

d) “Adopt” a missionary of the week/month to correspond with, pray for, and learn about each time you meet.

e) Choose a group within your community to serve. If a nursing home, visit it together one week. Or volunteer to pick up trash in an area where your city has a need. Or take homemade cookies to your local fire fighters.

f) Work together as a group on a craft to donate, such as sewing blankets for a women’s shelter. Local homeless shelters often have ongoing demand for pillow cases—which are easy to make. Or learn to knit and donate scarves.

By linking time in God’s word with time serving others, you will help group members move from compartmentalizing to integrating their discipleship time and the stewardship of their resources.

Lists of and links to additional helps for your Bible discussion time are available at www.aspire2.com in the Coffee Cup Bible Study section of the site. If your group generates ideas they want to share with others, send them through the contact page on the aspire2 web site. We’d love to know what ideas worked for you.

Perhaps you have some artists in your group who need more right-brained interaction. Songs, jewelry, paintings, photos, collages, poetry, prayers, psalms—the options for creative interaction in response to the truths learned in Revelation 1–3 are endless. Remember that examples of others’ creations made in conjunction with Bible study are available in the galleries at www.soulpersuit.com.

Finally, if you are meeting at a coffee shop or restaurant, be sure to learn the name of the barista, the waiter, and/or the person cleaning your table. You may be the only people they meet all day who seem to care.

Check out all of the Coffee Cup Bible Studies: 

Espresso with Esther

Mocha on the Mount

Solomon Latte (Song of Songs)

Java with the Judges (includes Hannah) 

Premium Roast with Ruth 

Frappé with Philippians