In Christ Jesus | A Study on Ephesians

We have a few resources for you to use with your small groups for the sermon series In Christ Jesus: A Study on Ephesians. The letter to the Ephesians is a wide vision of life in Christ. Before Paul gives the church instructions on what to do, he first reshapes how they understand who they are in Christ Jesus. Our new identity in light of what Jesus accomplished becomes the lens through which everything else is interpreted, our relationships, our unity, our maturity, and our resistance to evil. As NT Wright puts it, the church becomes the “small working model of new creation”.

We’ll be in this series for 12-weeks. Four weeks each will be spent on one of our five practices for growing in Jesus—worship, belong, serve, give, and learn. The first four weeks focus on worship, the second four on belong, and the final four on serve. Choose what small group resources you think would work best for your group!

Ephesians Study

1. Book Study of NT Wright’s book The Vision of Ephesians. If you’re a group who loves to read together, this would be a good option. This booked helped shaped the form of the current sermon series.

2. You could also use a classic inductive bible study method to explore each week’s scripture. InterVarsity has short helpful videos on how to get started with inductive studies as a group. Below are the scriptures for each Sunday of the series.

   Note: As you prepare to discuss Ephesians as a group, BibleProject’s resources might be valuable to you.

Worship Study

1. The first offering for specifically studying the Worship practice comes from Vineyard USA. Vineyard USA has put together a 4-week small group study on worship that covers questions of who, why, and how we worship along with exploring our values of worship in the Vineyard movement.

2. Another 4-week study for your group adjacent to worship is Practicing the Way’s Prayer Practice. This study has materials and videos ready to go. There is the option to use the video or to use the teaching notes for the video and guide your time together yourself.

Community Study

Weeks 5-8 of the Ephesians series will focus on Belonging—another of Vineyard Columbus’ 5 practices. For these four weeks, we are encouraging the Community practice by Practicing the Way.

This 4-week exploration of community together includes weekly practices that create space for God to move in our lives and shape us through our relationships with others.

There are video teachings for each week, but if you prefer to guide the discussion yourselves, each week has a set of teaching notes from the video that you can adapt for your own use.

Everyday Evangelism

Another option for a study is Vineyard USA’s recently released Everyday Evangelism. With summer coming—which often means cookouts, family reunions, getting together for hiking trips, and the rest—it can be valuable to take some time as a small group to explore how we can pray for those around us who don’t know Jesus and learn how we can share our own stories with them.

This 6-week study, similar to the Community practice above, has videos for each week. If your group prefers more interaction and less screen-time, you could pre-watch the videos on your own and make some notes. Even if you don’t take that approach, the accompanying weekly guides have questions and scripture to explore along with a ministry time to engage in together.

Weekly Ephesians Scriptures from Sundays

• Weeks 1-4 | Worship

  • Eph 1:1-14

  • Eph 1:15-23

  • Eph 2:1-10

  • Eph 2:11-22

• Weeks 5-8 | Belong

  • Eph 3:1-13

  • Eph 3:14-21

  • Eph 4:1-6

  • Eph 4:11-16

• Weeks 9-12 | Serve

  • Eph 4:17-24

  • Eph 4:25-5:20

  • Eph 5:21-6:9

  • Eph 6:10-20