CONVERSATION STARTERS
Conversation Starters help us dig deeper, connecting Sunday’s sermons with our Monday lives. These prompts have been designed to help Community Groups grow in their relationship with God, with one another, and with their neighbors. Please know that these questions are meant to be a resource to you. You do not have to follow them verbatim or get through them all. We trust you to know your group and to ask the questions based on your group needs.

1) Has this parable confused you when you’ve read it before? Were the various seeds and what they represent explained in a way that helped to make more sense this time? How was this explanation different?

2) Read Luke 8:15. A reference was made to ‘grit’ in the life of faith in our sermon. Share about an experience in your faith journey that has developed grit in your faith.

3) What do you need to add or cut back in your life to help you finish well, rather than fail to start, fail to deepen or fail to focus? (Reminder: it’s never too late to start!)

Title: The Sower
Scripture: Luke 8:1-15
Speaker: Bill Gorman, BillG@ChristCommunityKC.org

>> Beginning well is NOT the same as finishing well

“A parable is an extended metaphor and as such it is not a delivery system for an idea but a house in which the reader/listener is invited to take up residence.” - Kenneth Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels

>> Three ways to fail to finish:
- Fail to start
- Fail to deepen
- Fail to focus

“Jesus is challenging this notion by insisting that only those who bear fruit, fruit which other parables will define as hearing and obeying his words, can qualify for that label. Farmers couldn’t care less how many seeds yield shoots and leaves;’ what matters for them is a harvest.” - Craig Blomberg, Interpreting the Parables

“This parable does not address the question of eternal security; it raises the question of inadequate and unproductive hearing.” - Klyne Snodgrass