Kathy's Small Group Discussion Topics

This blog is a place that archives topics and stories used in Yokefellow Prison Ministry sessions in a county jail in rural Pennsylvania. You are welcome to use these ideas in your small group sessions. They would be applicable to use in Christian small groups of most any kind.

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Location: williamsport, Pennsylvania, United States

Sunday, April 30, 2006

What God does with tombs.....

We had a smaller group tonight... in county jails it is common to have periods of more and then less people. This can be due to sentencing schedules and state prison transfer schedules and such.

I try not to think too much about the numbers of people that show up to a Yokefellow session. It's not numbers that's important here, it's more about spending time with the inmates, showing them someone cares. By volunteers coming to prison shows them that God cares, too.

Tonight a couple of guys had some questions near the beginning of the session. One wanted to know how he could apologize to everyone he had stolen from. Another wanted to know if all sin was the same evil, or if sin had different levels of badness.

Questions don't necessarily need answers. I know that our tendency is often to answer any question asked, but in Yokefellow the important thing is discussion. A valid response to a question is to say to the group, "What do you think about this?"

Also note that these questions may have different answers for different denominations. We had good discussions with these questions.

We offered prayer, asking God to join us for the session. We sang some songs. We read a Psalm.

I asked the guys what we talked about in our previous session 3 weeks ago. They didn't remember.

Our bible reading tonight was Matthew 23:27 - about whitewashed tombs with rotting corpses inside. We talked about how much of life was a whitewash. Pretending that things were fine when they were not fine at all.

I asked the guys what they think God does with tombs. I suggested that God empties tombs - read.