Semon Questions 2025-09-14

Sermon Questions – September 14, 2025
Series: Apprenticeship to Jesus
Text: Matthew 16:21-28
Title: Becoming like Jesus

1. Opening: Share a story from your childhood about an incident, experience, or relationship that had a significant formative effect on you, positively or negatively.

2. What words would you use to describe Jesus? Which stories from Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John help you best to consider who Jesus was?

3. In this passage from Matthew, Jesus and Peter’s conversation reveals two opposing models of being a disciple or “apprentice” of Jesus. Talk about the differences. How do you see these models among Christians in our contemporary world? In your own heart and life?

4. John Mark Comer defines becoming like Jesus as “the process – of being formed – into people of love – in Christ” (Practicing the Way, p.73). How is this four-part definition helpful? What does it reveal to you about your own journey with Jesus?

5. To become like Jesus requires specific practices, which can be “anything that creates time and space for us to access the presence and power of the Spirit and, in doing so, be transformed from the inside out” (Comer, p.177). Which various faith / spiritual practices have shaped you in the past, either positively or negatively? Which practice(s) will you commit to using for the next few months? Check out one of these websites for more information: https://www.crcna.org/FaithPracticesProject or https://www.practicingtheway.org/resources. Share your decision with your small group or at least one person, in order to benefit from their encouragement and accountability in the coming weeks.

6. This fall we are promoting several small-group communities at Faith to draw you into the process of becoming like Jesus: GEMS, Boys Club, Youth Group; LIFE Groups; Faithwalking; Dunamis; and Coffee Break (more info in our Friday newsletter). Which of these will you choose?