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) What stood out to you from the sermon?

2) Read the parable together and notice the heart of the host. Why is there a sense of urgency? What is his desire? (v. 23)

3) The original invitees ALL made excuses for not attending. What types of excuses do people make today that prevent them from being present with Jesus and his people?

4) We each tend to feel that our excuses are somehow legitimate even if we see others’ as “lame.” Why is it so hard to imagine that being with Jesus and His people is better than our excuses?

5) Discuss the relevance of this quote by CS Lewis: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

6) The host, desiring to have a full house, invites everyone far and wide. There is an emphasis, however, on the outcast (both in this parable and in the one immediately preceding). How might our table look more like Jesus’ table? While currently we are constrained by social distancing due to COVID, how might we think creatively about reaching out and expanding our own fellowship to look more like that of Christ Jesus?

Title: The Great Banquet
Scripture: Luke 14:12-24
Speaker: Gabe Coyle, GabeC@ChristCommunityKC.org

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination encircles the world.” - Albert Einstein

>> 3 Reasons Our Tables Don’t Look Right:
1. We don’t want Jesus at the head.
2. We don’t love those whom Jesus invited.
3. We aren’t willing to serve at His table.

Christians reading this, anywhere in the world, must work out in their own churches and families what it would mean to celebrate God’s kingdom so that the people at the bottom of the pile, at the end of the line, would find it good news. It isn’t enough to say that we ourselves are the people dragged in from the country lanes, to our surprise, to enjoy God’s party. That may be true; but party guests are then expected to become party hosts in their turn.
- N.T. Wright