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. Take a few moments and list some of your motives in your daily work (in or out of the home)? Where are the areas you have authority or oversee people (subordinates, baby-sitters, repairmen, etc.)?

2. Take a look back at Ephesians 5:20-21. What is Paul encouraging the Ephesians to do? How does this apply to his instructions to both the servant and the master? How does this apply to us today in our work?

3. The husband and wife, the parent and child, the master and servant, were all relationships in Paul’s time that had clearly defined superiors and subordinates. Imagine you were a slave or master in the first century. How would you react to hearing this (vs. 8-9)? How can we apply this to our own lives to grow in Christ-likeness?

4. What directions does Paul give to masters specifically? What responsibilities do leaders have?

PRAYER PROMPT:
Pray for the work the Lord has given to each of us. Pray for the people above us and the people we are over as well. Pray to become more like Christ through our work.

Title: Bondservants of Christ
Scripture: Ephesians 6:5-9
Speaker: Tom Nelson, TomN@cckc.church

> Two transforming kingdom truths about power:

- The Powerless Are Highly Elevated
- The Powerful Have High Accountability

“The son of God was the new Adam. He was both the actual presence and the harbinger of a new kingdom. Everything about his life, his teaching, and his death was a demonstration of a different kind of power–not just in relation to the spiritual realm and not just to the ruling political authorities, but in the ordinary social dynamics of everyday life. It operated in complete obedience to God the Father, it repudiated symbolic trappings of elitism, it manifested compassion concretely out of calling and vocation and it served the good of all and not just the good of the community of faith. In short, in contrast to the kingdoms of this world, his kingdom manifests the power to bless, unburden, serve, heal, mend, restore and liberate.”
- James Davison Hunter, To Change The World

> How are we addressing slavery in our modern world?

> How are we stewarding our earthly power?