People are beginning to seek a new path for our faith. For many years now, our faith has been traveling on a road that you know well. It looks like going to worship on a Sunday morning to hear a sermon from “professional theologian” who will educate us or inspire us or at least entertain us for an hour (but no more). It looks like a congregation that struggles to be a true “community” in the midst of competing demands on our time and attention. It looks like a woman in her late thirties in the last congregation I served (a small family-based church in rural Texas), who even though she had gone to this same church her whole life—baptized, confirmed, married—and her family had deep roots in this particular congregation and community, lamented to me that “these people think they know me, but they don’t know the real me.”

How can it be that we can worship side by side with the same people for years and never really get to know one another? Never really have any deep or meaningful conversation about our faith? If this doesn’t happen in a small church amongst people you’ve known your whole life, how can it ever happen in larger congregations where people come and go all the time?

This form of the faith is becoming defunct. This is not, however, cause for despair so long as we believe in a God of resurrection and new life. 

In Seeking Aliveness, this four-session video curriculum bundle from The Work of the People, we will journey with renowned author and emergent Christian leader Brian McLaren as we seek out this new path for our faith. Drawing on the themes from his book We Make the Road by Walking: a yearlong quest for spiritual formation, reorientation and activation, he will offer up much food for thought for small groups both inside and outside the walls of the church, encouraging us to walk boldly into new forms and possibilities that are before us.

The curriculum includes 6 films with discussion guide.

SESSION TITLES AND FILMS

1. ALIVENESS IN FAITH //  “Seeking Aliveness: Faith” video & "We Make the Road by Walking: ONE" video 
2. ALIVENESS IN JESUS //  “Seeking Aliveness: Jesus” video
3. ALIVENESS IN SPIRIT //  “Seeking Aliveness: Spirit” video
4. ALIVENESS IN WORD //  “Seeking Aliveness: Word” video & "We Make the Road by Walking: TWO" video