In Term 2 we’re doing a teaching series that tracks through Pete Scazzero’s great book Emotional Healthy Spirituality. We’re calling it Tooling Up to Love.
The EHS course is about:
• Addressing directly the reality that emotional maturity and spiritual maturity are inseparable, that it is not possible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.
• Equipping people in a personal, firsthand relationship with Jesus by incorporating stillness, silence, and Scripture as daily life rhythms*. *Scazzero, Peter; Scazzero, Geri. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Workbook, Updated Edition (p. 7).
We ummed and ahhed about doing the EHS course in Table Groups with videos, workbooks etc. But the time commitment was huge. We love the stuff though. So we’ve given it some thought and decided that we’ll walk through the guts of the content but deliver it a little differently. We’ll use a combination of Sunday gatherings and Table Groups to focus together on these themes over an eight week period.
The why
At Viva, we’re about growing as disciples of Jesus and making disciples. But what is a disciple? Someone who loves God and loves others. Whilst we’ll often talk about our relationship with God and growing that, we’ll often not get practical enough.
Scazzero’s experience as a pastor taught him that, while he spoke of God’s love and sought to inspire others to experience it and give it away, he rarely took the time to equip people with the tools to actually love God and people well.
Our hopes for this focus is that we learn new tools and rhythms: To grow our relationship with God. To know ourselves better. To grow to love others like Jesus.
The weekly rhythm
The weekly rhythm we’re inviting you into is as follows.
You’ll note that the Sunday talk sets the focus for the week. Table Groups are a place to take the conversation deeper and reflect together on what we’re learning. Through it all is the rhythm of daily office and reflection. The Daily Office is a tool that help us “intentionally stop to be with God more than once a day so that practicing the presence of God becomes real in our lives.”
We’ll have the devotional Day by Day by Pete Scazzero available for purchase on the first Sunday of the series, 9 May.