In the fall of 2003, our church participated in the "40 Days
of Purpose" campaign, as produced by Rick Warren of Saddleback
Community Church. Our church relies primarily on small
group sessions, meeting during the week, to provide the
membership with Biblical instruction. This may seem unusual to
you, but there is a simple explanation. The original
builders of the church thought that a weekly attendance of, say,
seven hundred was a great target to shoot for. They
accordingly build the church building to that size. The
attendance is now (October 2003) over 2200. A nice problem
to have, right? The slight drawback is that, with perfect
distribution of the believers between classes, we might be able
to squeeze in 700 - if every seat were occupied. As a
practical matter of fact, attendance at the Adult Bible
Fellowships runs around 500 or so. That's not good for the
equipping of the church. So we do it in small groups.
That left the ABF leaders in a bind. We didn't want to
recycle the videos; indeed, in our small class group we
have at least seven small groups doing the lessons from the 40
Days. So, the teachers were obliged to come up with
lessons that complemented the 40 Days, but didn't duplicate
them. This is our attempt at it.