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 is your default motivation for work? Have you ever thought of your work in terms of generosity, giving you the ability to share with others?

2. Have each person share a bit about what work, paid or unpaid, looks like for them. Take a few minutes to discuss the way in which each person’s work is an act of neighborly love.

3. Read Genesis 1:28 and 2:15. We were created for work, so why is our work often frustrating and unsatisfying? How can shifting the focus of our work from benefitting ourselves to the flourishing of others help with this?

4. What are some practical ways this group can encourage one another to continually see our vocations as opportunities for the Kingdom of God to break through into the here and now?

PRAYER PROMPT:
Praise God for the work that he has given each of us, for the opportunity to join him in his work of redemption of all things. Ask for the ability to see God moving in our world through your work.

Title: Honest Work
Scripture: Ephesians 4:28
Guest Speaker: Matt Rusten

1. Honest work requires repentance [from dishonest “work”]
- Embezzlement
- Not paying those who have done work for you
- * Charging more than what is owed
- Extortion (obtaining money through force or threats)

1. Identity theft
2. Tax fraud and avoidance
3. Stealing intellectual property
4. Shoplifting
5. Not paying for work others have done [small business owners have
been on the wrong side of this..]
6. Not working at work, and collecting a paycheck
7. Plagiarism

> Honest work includes all labor which produces something good

"The only Christian work is good work well done..work must be good
work before it can call itself Godʼs work...Let the Church remember
this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in (their)
profession or trade – not outside it.” - Dorothy Sayers, Why Work

> Honest work enables generosity

“It seems to me that in the future the family — the ideal family — will always try to care for one more.” - Dorothy Day, Loaves and Fishes