September 20: Groups Guide
About This Guide
The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.
Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.
pdf download
Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.
Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.
more Resources
Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.
Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.
Love
Teaching Text: John 13: 1–5
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet,drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
Act 2: 42–47
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
In Brooklyn As It Is In Heaven
Vision Series 2 | Formation x Tables
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
Sermon Summary
“The human spirit is an inescapable, fundamental aspect of every human being; and it takes on whatever character it has from the experiences and the choices that we have lived through or made in our past… The most despicable as well as the most admirable of persons have had a spiritual formation.”
— Dallas Willard
We don’t opt in or out of formation. It happens to all of us — family, wounds, friendships, stories, daily habits. They shape the spirit whether we notice or not.
The real Gospel isn’t a transaction to believe your way into heaven — it’s an invitation into a lifelong, relational union with Jesus, formed at His table and in His body.
American Christianity often reduces the Gospel to: believe in Jesus, get forgiven, go to heaven when you die. True as far as it goes — but it lets people become “Christian” without ever becoming a follower of Christ.
That reduction causes real damage:
It’s barely in the New Testament — you have to strip verses out of context to build it.
It produces people who are passionate about being Christian while mostly ignoring Christ.
It confuses outsiders, who watch professed believers act nothing like Jesus.
It leaves believers bored and fruitless — same old life, no love, joy, peace, patience.
A friend’s line captures it: Paul said to live is Christ and to die is gain. We’ve reversed it — to live is gain, to die is Christ. We live for ourselves and just expect Jesus to cover us at the end.
Jesus never opens with a prayer to say. He opens Mark’s Gospel announcing the Kingdom is here — repent, believe, reorient your whole life. Then He teaches it, demonstrates it, lives it, and invites others into it. And when He calls His first followers, He doesn’t say “pray this and don’t forget my name.” He says:
Follow me.
That’s apprenticeship — being with Him, becoming like Him, doing what He did. And when He commissions the disciples at the end, He doesn’t send them to collect converts. He sends them to make apprentices — baptizing them into the life of the Trinity, teaching them to obey everything He commanded.
This is deeply relational grace. It’s a shared life, not just a forgiven one. We’re invited into union with the Triune God — the same life the Father, Son, and Spirit have shared from before time.
And this union gets formed at the table. Jesus’s last, most formative night with His friends is a meal — where He gets up and washes their feet, showing them exactly what God’s love does: it takes the low place. Then the Spirit falls, the church is born, and they live it out — devoted to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer, radical generosity, showing up at each other’s tables. They were being formed in community, not on their own.
You are being formed right now, whether you’re paying attention or not.
So — the invitations:
Be formed by the meal of Jesus.
Don’t go alone — commit to a group to grow with.
Practice hospitality — invite others to your table.
Practice the way of Jesus intentionally, or be pulled by the currents of culture.
Direct Quotes
To many in the West, a Christian is just someone who mentally ascribes to the bare bones of Christianity (a word never used in Scripture) and may or may not occasionally attend church.
— John Mark Comer
The word Christian is used only three times in the New Testament. To put that in perspective, the word disciple (or apprentice) is used 269 times, which comes as no surprise since the New Testament was written by apprentices of Jesus, for apprentices of Jesus.
— John Mark Comer
This is the gospel: God has drawn near to us in Jesus—us, we who are sinful, broken, wounded, mortal, dying, and incapable of self-saving… to draw us into His inner life, to heal us by immersing us within the fold of his Trinitarian love, and then to send us out into the world as agents of His love… This, then, is spiritual formation: the process of being formed into a person of self-giving love through deepening surrender to and union with the Trinity.
— John Mark Comer
Three Questions for Personal Application
Who or what has actually been forming your spirit lately? Not who you’d like to name, but the honest answer — the habits, screens, relationships, and stories shaping you day to day. .
Have you settled for believing in Jesus without following Him? Consider whether your faith has quietly become a belief you hold rather than a life you’re living with Him. Ask God to show you where “follow me” has gone unanswered.
Who’s at your table, and who is God inviting you to add? Think of one relationship where you could practice the kind of hospitality and foot washing love Jesus modeled. Ask Him for the courage to actually extend the invitation.
September 20: Vision Series 2 | Formation x Tables
September 13: Groups Guide
About This Guide
The online groups guide is designed as a teaching series companion to foster discussion, study, and prayer, especially in a group setting.
Join a weekly group for a meaningful way to connect to our community.
pdf download
Download this PDF to help you make a plan to follow Jesus in your everyday life, including diagnostic questions to help get you started.
Pickup a print version at our weekly in-person Sunday gatherings.
more Resources
Explore a curated online collection of recommended practices and resources to pursue presence, formation, and love in your life.
Questions about the series or looking for a way to get involved? Contact us.
Love
Teaching Text: Luke 23: 44–46
It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
Luke 24: 28-35
As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.
Acts 4: 29-31
Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
Themes
Consider these themes and ask your group what else they see in the passage:
In Brooklyn As It Is In Heaven
Vision Series 1 | Presence x Altars
Formation
Thoughts and notes you can use for discussion:
Sermon Summary
One of the first people we ever baptized was Emerson. He’d left TGC — back when we still met in the evenings — biking off to watch the series finale of Lost with friends. On the way, God overwhelmed him. He pulled his bike over, right there on the street, and surrendered his heart to Jesus.
The curtain has been torn. God’s presence is no longer sealed off in a room — it’s ours to seek, every day, in the ordinary places of our lives.
Trinity Grace turned 17 this week. Baptisms. Freedom from addiction. Marriages restored. Neighbors fed, rent paid, gardens grown out of abandoned lots. Mistakes too — ego, impatience, seasons of talking about prayer more than praying. Through all of it, God kept speaking. Break through will come in hospitality. Breathe. Pray. Prune. You are acquainted with grief, but anointed with joy.
Every September we pause to remember who God has called us to be. In 2009, our first Sunday, we prayed Moses’s prayer: if your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. In 2019 God clarified our vision — Presence, Formation, and Love. In 2024, turning 15, that became Altars, Tables, and Gardens. Places we seek God. Places we grow together. Places we sow love.
Three stories carry us there.
The curtain torn. When Jesus died, the temple curtain — the barrier that kept God’s holiness safely apart from an unholy people — tore in two. God’s presence was no longer confined to an inner room. It was loosed into the world.
The road to Emmaus. Two grieving disciples walk seven miles home, certain it’s over. Jesus walks with them before they recognize Him. Jesus might be with you before you even know it. Their hearts burned before their eyes opened.
The wait that became fire. The disciples don’t rush to the streets after seeing the risen Jesus — they wait. Then the presence that once filled a temple room fills a prayer meeting instead. Acts 2. Acts 4. A shaken room, a bold church, a Gospel that spreads because people got near to God first.
The presence of God didn’t just give the early church a nice feeling — it gave them courage in the way of love.
We can meet God anywhere now. But we still build altars — intentional places to seek Him: the bread and the cup, prayer with other believers, worship, the face of a neighbor in need.
Complacency is deadly to spiritual growth. If deep longing for God feels far off, start there. Ask for it.
Let’s receive the gift Christ has won for us. Let’s seek His presence — starting now.
Direct Quotes
God wills that we should push on into His presence and live our whole lives there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than a doctrine to be held, it is a life to be enjoyed… At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for his redeemed children to push into conscious awareness of His presence.
— A.W. Tozer
The Presence and the manifestation of the Presence are not the same. There can be one without the other. God is here when we are wholly unaware of it. He is manifest only when we are aware of His presence… If we cooperate with Him in loving obedience, God will manifest Himself to us, and that manifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian life and a life radiant with the light of His face.
— A.W. Tozer
Three Questions for Personal Application
How do you seek God’s presence? Think honestly about your week — where does seeking God actually show up? Not the ideal version, the real one. Is there a rhythm you could return to, or start?
How might God be reaching out to you right now? Before you rush past this, sit with it. A conversation, a burning heart, an unexplained nudge — where has God possibly already been walking beside you, unrecognized?
What distractions are keeping you from saying yes to God? Name them specifically, not generally. What would it look like to put one aside this week, on purpose, to make room?
“Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
— Luke 24:32
