Dgroups will start on Wednesday, August 10 at 6:30pm.
Click on the group you'd like to join below to sign up.
Shepherding a Child's Heart
Shepherding a Child’s Heart is about how to speak to the heart of your child. The things your child does and says flows from the heart. Luke 6:45 puts it this way. “Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” (NIV)
Written for parents with children of any age, this insightful book provides perspectives and procedures for shepherding your child’s heart into the paths of life.
Cost - $18
How We Love
Milan & Kay Yerkovich have taken their own life experience, their research over the years, and their experience in the counseling office, and distilled it into the work that is rigorous, original, and understandable. If you want to strengthen and enrich your marriage, as well as grow personally, I strongly encourage you to read and digest this material. The effect on all your relationships will be powerful.
Cost - $25
Armor of God
All day, every day, an invisible war rages around you — unseen, unheard, yet felt throughout every aspect of your life. A devoted, devilish enemy seeks to wreak havoc on everything that matters to you: your heart, your mind, your marriage, your children, your relationships, your resilience, your dreams, your destiny.
But his battle plan depends on catching you unaware and unarmed. If you're tired of being pushed around and caught with your guard down, this study is for you.
Cost - $23
Strange New World
How did the world arrive at its current, disorienting state of identity politics, and how should the church respond? Historian Carl R. Trueman shows how influences ranging from traditional institutions to technology and pornography moved modern culture toward an era of “expressive individualism.” Investigating philosophies from the Romantics, Nietzsche, Marx, Wilde, Freud, and the New Left, he outlines the history of Western thought to the distinctly sexual direction of present-day identity politics and explains the modern implications of these ideas on religion, free speech, and personal identity.
Cost - $17
Compass - Building Your Finances God's Way
Get ready to have your life, your finances, and your relationship with the Lord taken to another level.
Through these six chapters, you’ll learn what the God of the universe has to say about money and possessions, how you can practically apply these words to your life, and how you can grow in leaps and bounds on your financial discipleship journey.
Cost - No Cost/Space Limited
Why D-Groups are Important
Years ago I was sitting in a week-long Christian Ethics class, taught by writer and theologian, Dr. Wayne Grudem. It was a dream come true, as I had read his Systematic Theology book and couldn’t wait to be a part of one of his classes. And then it happened. Somewhere in the middle of the week, someone asked a question, and he answered with three most dreaded words: “I don’t know.” You don’t know? You mean to tell me Wayne Grudem doesn’t know something? AND he can openly admit it? In public? My world was tipped off-balance and sent careening.
Hearing Dr. Grudem, a man who has likely forgotten more theology than I’ll ever know, say, “I don’t know” helped me see the importance of being teachable; and in order to be teachable, to be a learner, it has to start with humility. I Peter 5:6 says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you.” We must be willing to ‘humble ourselves’ and start by being open to learning and not acting like we already know what we don’t know. When you’re in that state, you’re not able to hear because, as a friend of mine says, “If he ain't listening, he ain't listening.”
Learning and understanding is a key part of Christian growth. Think back to that moment when you first came alive in Christ, when you first awakened to your need for Him and your hunger for knowledge and understanding about what it means to follow Him. For me that meant a flurry of topics I needed to grow in and understand, topics like the following:
Spiritual ‘disciplines’, like Bible study, prayer, fasting, evangelism, giving, etc. What are these disciplines, how do you grow in them? A friend recommended the book Disciplines of A Godly Man by R. Kent Hughes, and I ended up discussing it with two friends from school.
Evolution kept showing up, and I needed a Christian perspective and answers to some of the hard questions. Another friend recommended Darwin on Trial, and so I read it and discussed it with him and gained wisdom and perspective.
Apologetics: C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity was helpful for understanding the ‘reasonable’ side of Christianity. I ended up discussing that book with two different groups of young adults at Valley View.
All that to say there were topics that came up that needed special attention outside of the normal flow of Worship Services and Life Groups. D-groups are designed to present special topics outside of the normal routine of Bible study and worship to help you grow in a particular topic. Being a part of a group helps you hear perspectives, insights, questions, and struggles from others who are also interested in the issue.
We learn and grow, not so we can appear smart or full of information (I Corinthians 8:1 reminds us, “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”) but so that, as it says in I Peter, “He may exalt you.” We want to be exalted not so that we are exalted, but so that Christ is exalted. The more we learn and grow in our faith, the more equipped we will be to tell others about our faith and exalt Christ.
I left class that day thinking, “I need more time around this guy. I have to learn from him. I have to learn how to be teachable.” I’ve often tried to follow the phrase, “Get around people you want to be like,” so I came back the next day and asked what it would mean to move to Phoenix and take more of his classes, which we did the following year.
The good news is, you don’t have to move across country to grow in your faith. Come check out a D-group on Wednesday nights!
-Pastor John