XP3 Students Collide Session 2: Blindsided Bottom Line: When we collide with God s truth, wherever it is found, we are changed. Have you ever met someone who was such a great example of Christ, but that person wasn t a Christian? It sort of messes with your head, doesn t it? After all, Christians don t have a monopoly on caring for people. Not all things that are God s truth exist exclusively with Christians or in the walls of the church. And if we realize that we can collide with truth in places other than the expected, God can use those collisions to show us new things about Himself and even change us. CREATING THE ENVIRONMENT We believe that the set, stage, music and everything in your room communicates a message without you saying a word. That s why we put together a list of production ideas to help you set the stage for the session and the series. From the music you play when students come in to the room to the worship set your band plays, we want to make sure that your room conveys Collide in a multi-sensory way. There is a downloadable checklist available in your series downloads that will give you all the elements for this session (and the entire series). BACKGROUND PLAYLIST FOR THE COLLIDE SERIES: A Beautiful Collision by David Crowder Band (from A Collision (or 3+4=7)) Lucky One by Vertical Horizon (from Burning The Days) Hello Seattle by Owl City (from Ocean Eyes) Closer to Love by Mat Kearney (from City of Black & White) Before We Come Undone by Kris Allen (from Kris Allen) Waiting for the End by Linkin Park (from A Thousand Suns) My Own Little World by Matthew West (from The Story of Your Life) The Sound of Sunshine by Michael Frenti & Spearhead (from The Sound of Sunshine) Halfway Gone by Lifehouse (from Smoke & Mirrors) Crashing Down by Mat Kearney (from Nothing Left to Lose) How In The World by Family Force 5 (from Dance or Die) WORSHIP PLAYLIST FOR COLLIDE SESSION 2: We Unite by Elevation Worship (from God With Us) Send Me Out by Fee (from Hope Rising) Until The Whole World Hears by Casting Crowns (from Until the Whole World Hears) Rain It Down by Carlos Whittaker (from Ragamuffin Soul) THE SET: If possible, go to a local junkyard or auto body shop and ask to borrow some bumpers, dented doors, smashed headlights, etc. Place the items on both sides of the stage and if you are able, position the car as if it s coming out from a wall behind you. And if you don t have access to the smashed car pieces but you have some amazing artists around, then you may want to consider creating those pieces out of foam. For a backdrop, use a white piece of foam board or a white sheet and draw an outline of a person in the middle of the sheet, to appear as if someone ran into the wall. SERIES ART: Art for PowerPoint backgrounds and for series promotional ads is available as a free download with every series. Visit the XP3 website, log on to your account and download the images to use in your presentation, newsletters and website. VIDEO: There are four videos available for the Collide series three video communicator videos and one bumper video. The three video communicator videos can be used in each session of this three-week series in place of a live communicator. The bumper video was created to be used as an intro for all three sessions of the Collide series. Collide Session 2: Blindsided
TEACHING SCRIPT The teaching script is divided into five sections. INTRODUCTION: The introduction is intended to connect you, the communicator, to the audience, usually through a personal story or observation. We ve included our stories, but you may want to substitute your own story in this section. TENSION: The tension moves the message from the me mentality of the introduction to a we mentality. For example, a transition statement might be, At some point in our lives, we have all been jealous of someone over something. TRUTH: Once the tension builds, the next logical step is to uncover the truth of what the Bible says about the topic. APPLICATION: At this point, the message moves to a you mentality in order to teach the application. The you is the student. Take God s truth and unpack how it relates to each student so that he or she can apply it to everyday life. LANDING: Here it is important to land the message on what each student needs to know and do with what they ve heard. Just as the message began with a personal story or observation, the message also ends with a me mentality. For example, one possible landing statement might be, I have a greater sense of purpose knowing that God created me in His image. Leave the students with a clear sense of what all of you should do with what you ve heard. Unless otherwise noted, the landing will always set up the small group dialog and give students an opportunity to process and internalize what they ve heard.
Collide Session 2: Blindsided Bottom Line: When we collide with God s truth, wherever it is found, we are changed. TEACHING OUTLINE INTRODUCTION He really is one of the most Christlike people I know. Except for one thing. He s not a Christian. TENSION All of us have met Christians who have done something that didn t seem like something Christians should do. All of us have met someone who didn t believe in Jesus, yet they acted more like Jesus than a lot of Christians we know. TRUTH They had created an altar that had this inscribed on it: To an unknown God. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.... For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, We are his offspring (Acts 17:24-25, 28 NIV). This truth spoken by someone who was not a follower of Jesus was used in a message to tell people about Jesus. APPLICATION God may not approve of other aspects of their lives, but then again, there are areas of our lives God probably doesn t like all that much either. Don t be afraid to collide with people who are different than you. We have to start to change the way we think or label other people who at first appear different from us. Paul used a poet who lived in a city famous for the number of gods and goddesses it worshiped and idolized to help preach the Word of God. Who have we seen as being in a different circle, a different world, a place where our lives don t and won t collide with theirs? And what would happen if that changed? What if you began to collide with people who were different but who might have something more to share with you and challenge you with? LANDING We were made to collide with those who are like us and those who are different from us, with those who believe what we believe and those who don t.
Collide Session 2: Blindsided Teaching Script Bottom Line: When we collide with God s truth, wherever it is found, we are changed. INTRODUCTION A. All of us have people we like to be around. Have you ever really thought about what makes those people the ones you want to spend time with? I like being around people who make me laugh, who challenge the way I think, who provide good conversation. Of course, those are just a few things. I also enjoy being around people who never tell me what they think I should do. Instead, they just live the way they should, and the example they set inspires me to do the same. It changes what I think I should do. B. My friend Justin is like that. He is the kindest person I know. He doesn t just give money to people who need it; he researches the most needy countries in the world and goes there, finding ways to actually be there to help. It s hard to talk to him about his experiences and not feel compelled to live the same way. I m not about to follow up his stories of travelling to Haiti for earthquake relief with my stories of a good sale at Bloomingdale s or a car I m really interested in buying. It isn t that he makes me feel bad about how I live it s more that I see how selfless he is in the way he lives, and that challenges me. C. When I become a father one day, I want to be the kind of father Justin is. He treats his kids with mercy, and he calms them when they panic, like he s Jesus speaking into a storm. Even as a boss, Justin treats his employees well. He throws lavish birthday parties for them, surprises them with trips to fun places and they all speak really highly of him behind his back which is kind of rare for a boss. Not once has Justin ever made me feel bad for not being like him, for not living as selflessly as I know I should or could live. He s never once told me what he thinks I should do when I haven t asked. He really is one of the most Christlike people I know. Except for one thing. He s not a Christian. TENSION A. I don t know about you, but for me, it s weird to meet someone who is not a Christian and is a really good person someone who may do a better job resembling Christ than I do. I am not sure why this is so strange for me, except for the fact that I grew up in a pretty religious setting with lots of churches in our town, so it was strange when people didn t go to church. In fact, if they didn t attend a church regularly, I started to get a little suspicious of them. I started to wonder what their deal was, and ultimately I started to think they were bad people. B. In some cases, even if they went to a different church than the one I went to, they were suspect. I didn t hate them or anything; I just thought they were ignorant, maybe even a little less than. In other words, I thought we were better we being Christians, and even more specifically, those Christians who went to my church. I thought if they really loved God like us and were in the know like us, they d come to our church. Even though my church probably made up 1/10,000 th of our city s population, everyone else was odd to me not us. So I started to believe that we really were better. That people who didn t think like we thought were below us somehow. But the odd thing is, I don t recall the people in my church living with exceptional morals or standards. We certainly didn t behave or act better even though we definitely tried. Wives in our church were left by their husbands for younger women; men yelled at men they didn t like and held grudges long after it was necessary; deacons smoked in the parking lot. We weren t that different from the people around us who didn t believe what we believed. We just came to this building once a week. Even though so little separated us from them, we talked about them like they were totally bizarre. C. Maybe you have had the experience I ve had with my friend Justin with some of your friends. Maybe at school, work or even at home, you ve met someone who was so kind, so selfless, so humble, so loving, so generous or so accepting that you thought they just had to be a Christian. And then you found out they weren t. And maybe this was kind of confusing for you, because you always thought that if you weren t a Christian, you weren t a great person even if you never really vocalized it that way. You truly thought
you had to be a believer to really be right about anything. So if you meet someone who doesn t go to church but is so much like what you think a Christian should be, this can be really confusing. D. All of us in some place or another, at some time or another, will come in contact with people like this, and this messes with our preconceived notions. We will go to school, have jobs, play sports and do any number of other things where we interact with people who don t come to church with us or who don t share our beliefs, and yet they are really good people not just because they come across that way, but because they really are. And this reality can be hard for us to handle. In fact, sometimes people end up leaving their Christian faith because they see people who aren t Christians living just as rightly and just as lovingly, and they start to wonder if Jesus is really necessary. E. There may be some of you here today whose parents are divorced and they raised you in church, yet your friend who isn t a Christian comes from a more loving home where their parents are still together. Perhaps you have a boss who is from another religion and seems to care about treating you well, better than a lot of the Christian friends you have. And something just doesn t line up. All of us have met Christians who have done something that didn t seem like something Christians should do. And all of us have also met someone who didn t believe in Jesus, yet they acted more like Jesus than a lot of Christians we know. For some, this becomes the proof they need to leave a faith system or a church they never liked or understood anyway. Honestly, it seems to make a lot of sense. How can someone who isn t a Christian behave like a better Christian than someone who actually is a Christian? How can I want to be like Justin, yet Justin has no belief in God at all? I believe that collision, like my collision with Justin, doesn t have to be the end of our faith. It doesn t have to be an obstacle to it either. I believe God can use people who have no faith in Jesus to help our faith in Jesus actually grow. TRUTH A. This may sound totally crazy to you. Or to some of you, this may be refreshing this may be just what you need to hear to put words to something you feel but haven t always been sure what to do with. And the good news is that we aren t the first people to wrestle with this issue. Scripture doesn t talk about it directly, but we can learn from various references in Scripture how others managed to deal with this. B. We are going to look at one story in particular from the book of Acts today. Acts is basically the story of the early church. It picks up where the Gospels leave off after Jesus has been crucified and raised from the dead and answers the question, Then what happened? Acts is where we are first introduced to the apostle Paul a young man at the start of the book and a seasoned missionary by the end. And the passage we are going to take a look at today takes place during a missionary journey Paul made to the city of Athens. Athens, the modern-day capital of Greece, was a very religious city in Paul s day. It had temples and altars set up to dozens of gods and goddesses. The people were so devout they actually had an altar set up to a god they hadn t named. In other words, they wanted to make sure their bases were covered, so they created an altar that had this inscribed on it: To an unknown god. So the Athenians were definitely what you would call religious but more religious about gods, not God. Though they wanted to please their gods, they had the object of their affection misplaced. They had good intentions but were still missing the truth. So what did Paul do when he arrived in Athens? Did he scoff at their ignorance; did he condemn their misguided spiritual inclinations? Did he write off everything they had to say because they were missing Jesus? No. Do you know what he did? C. Look at Acts 17, starting in verse 24: The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.... For in
him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, We are his offspring (Acts 17:24-25,28 NIV). Did you catch that? Here is Paul in a city filled with idol worshipers, and he quotes one of their poets. And that quote makes it into Scripture. This quote by a pagan, an unbeliever, is used by the apostle Paul when preaching to the people in Athens. In other words, this poet spoke truth, maybe even unintentionally, and this truth spoken by someone who was not a follower of Jesus was used in a message to tell people about Jesus. D. In other words, truth is truth. Love is love. Kindness is kindness. Beauty is beauty. These things don t have to be done, spoken or created with the word Christian in front of them for them to be right or helpful or approved by God. God lives in truth truth spoken by a pastor and truth spoken by an unbelieving friend. We don t have to be afraid to bump up against people who are different from us if what they say and what they do are things God approves of. APPLICATION A. Now, before we go any further, let s be clear. That doesn t mean that when God saw all of the Athenians, He approved of their worship of false gods. But it did mean that in what one poet had to say, there was truth. And that truth was good. In the same way, we will have friends, coworkers, peers and maybe even family members who wouldn t ever set foot in a church, who have never cracked open a Bible, who don t know a single line of a hymn or worship song, but who are more generous and less judgmental than anyone you know. And you know what? God smiles on that. He may not approve of other aspects of their lives, but then again, there are areas of our lives God probably doesn t like all that much either. And while these people may not have gotten to a place yet where they acknowledge Jesus as their Lord, where they trust in Christ and see Him as dispensing a grace they sorely need, that doesn t mean that the good they do and the good they say is void of meaning and significance. God is in their generosity, in their kindness, in their humility. God commends it. God supports it. God desires it. No matter where they are on their spectrum of faith. B. In other words, don t be afraid to collide with people who are different from you. Don t insulate and shield yourself from those who may believe slightly differently from you, or even completely differently from you. Because it could be that they have things to offer this world that we as Christians may miss if we aren t careful. It could be that they could strengthen our faith without ever realizing they are doing it. It could be that their unknowing obedience to a God they don t even believe in is challenging us in a way we never would have been challenged if we didn t allow our worlds to collide with theirs. C. The lines between belief and unbelief are not always very clear, and we need to be careful that we don t box people in, categorize them as bad, wrong, ignorant or misguided. Things might look a lot different in our world and in our churches if we didn t disregard someone, but realized that maybe, just maybe, we might learn something about God through them. D. No, they may not have it all right, but neither do we. No, they may not have the most important thing right a relationship with Christ but that doesn t mean they have everything wrong. Because it just might be that there is something in someone s past we can learn from. There is something in someone s experience we can be challenged by. There is something in someone s understanding that points to God whether they know it or not. A person s attitude, behavior and speech can be honoring to God even if they are unaware, even if they don t intend them to be. E. So what does this mean? For one thing, it means we may have to start to change the way we think or label other people who at first appear different from us. And this is important because if we only see someone as like us or different from us we could be missing out on important aspects of who they are. See, when we only see someone in light of where they stand spiritually, we run the risk of taking on a posture of superiority of seeing ourselves as better than anyone who believes differently. And that just isn t true. The truth is that a believer, a follower of Jesus, does experience a new degree of God s
goodness and grace, but that doesn t give them the right to take a position of arrogance over someone else. F. Paul used a poet, a poet who lived in a city famous for the number of gods and goddesses it worshiped and idolized, to help preach the Word of God. Paul learned something about God due to the truth this poet spoke about a God he did not believe in, because Paul knew that there was truth in what this poet was saying. Even if there were areas of his life that got it wrong, there was something that he got right. And that one thing pointed to God in such a clear and important way that Paul shared it in his message. G. The questions we need to ask ourselves are, who have we labeled as different and not good enough in our lives? Who have we seen as being in a different circle, a different world, a place where our lives don t and won t collide with theirs? And what would happen if that changed? What if you began to collide with people who were different but who might have something more to share with you and challenge you? Do you think it is possible that God may use someone who may not even consider themselves a Christian to grow your faith? What kind of truth could their lives show you, even if they don t realize it? LANDING A. The sad thing is that oftentimes you and I unknowingly become isolated, detached and separated from people who don t look exactly like us. In other words, we exist in our own little worlds. But we were never meant to only be with people who resemble us. We were made to collide with those who are like us and those who are different from us, with those who believe what we believe and those who don t. B. God is still God over all of us. He lives in truth the truth we as His followers speak, and the truth communicated even by those who don t follow Him. But if we never collide with those who are different from us, we may be missing out on something God wants to show us and teach us. [TRANSITION INTO SMALL GROUPS]
XP3 Students COLLIDE SESSION 2: Blindsided High School Small Group Dialog Bottom Line: When we collide with God s truth, wherever it is found, we are changed. Scripture References: Acts 17:24-25, 28 Surprise. Today s session probably took a turn you weren t expecting. But we felt it was important to talk about. And honestly, it s one of those things that your students may have been wondering, but just weren t sure how to ask. That s why today s discussion should be quite interesting. The main thing we want to communicate is that while truth can be found outside the walls of the church, it doesn t mean that all things are true or that truth is subjective. God s truth is the absolute truth. But sometimes it shows up in places that we didn t expect, and when we collide with it, we learn things about God that go beyond the boxes we place Him in. Create meaningful conversation. Adjust questions as needed, and don t feel like you need to answer all of them. 1. Who are some of the people you admire most in your life? What are the qualities that you admire in them? 2. Do you think you tend to gravitate toward people who are like you, or different from you? How do you respond to people who are different from you? 3. Why do you think it is difficult to bump up against people who are different than us? 4. Why do you think it is tempting to believe you are better than someone who is different from you? 5. What are some of the characteristics that you think a follower of Jesus should have? Do you know people who display these characteristics who are not Christians? Do you know people who act like better Christians (even though they aren t one) than people you do know who are Christians? 6. Do you think it is possible for someone who is not a Christian to act like a better Christian than someone who is? Why does it bother us to see this? 7. What are some of the labels we are quick to put on people because they are different from us? 8. What are some things we can learn from people who are different from us? 9. Where can we go to start interacting with people who are not like us, in order to learn from them?
10. What can we do to make sure we don t isolate ourselves and start to live in a bubble with only people who are like us? 11. What is something that you ve learned at school or from a friend or in a movie or a book (or anywhere else) that strengthened your faith in Christ? (Maybe it s something they learned in science, history, lit class, etc.) 12. What are some legitimate concerns when it comes to people who are different from you? What should you do to make sure you stay grounded in God s truth? (compare what is being taught or said with what the Bible says, seek counsel from godly people, etc.) (CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)
XP3 Students COLLIDE SESSION 2: Blindsided (continued) High School Small Group Dialog Bottom Line: When we collide with God s truth, wherever it is found, we are changed. Scripture References: Acts 17:24-25, 28 NEXT STEP: At the end of this Small Group Dialog, take some time to explain the XP and the details of where you re going and when. If they need to bring money for coffee or a meal afterwards, make sure you let them know and remind them via FB, text or email. (See the XP document for more details.) Also, there are devotionals available that correspond to each of the three sessions of this series. Use these devotionals to continue the discussion from the small group dialogs. If your leader has posted the devotionals to your youth group s website, direct your students to the site this week. Or you can get the devotionals and email them directly to your students as a way of connecting with each student during the week.