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Teach Your Congregation to Forgive: Five Week Lenten program

Posted: September 26, 2016 by Rob Voyle

If you are tired of living in a world that:
• Is saturated by resentment
• Places a huge value on revenge
• Confuses revenge and punishment with justice
• Doesn't know how to find the freedom of forgiveness

Then learn to teach the people you care about how to forgive and live in love with one another.

"Jesus told us we need to forgive but he never taught us how." - Steve Andreas

In this program designed for Lent you will receive the resources to:
• Teach people what forgiveness really is and what it is not
• Teach people how to forgive
• Resolve the internal resistance to forgiving,
which often occurs naturally when they learn
what forgiveness really is what it is not.

Program Outline:

Week 1: Living in Unconditional Love: Not All Gods are Created Equal

Sermon: Not All Gods are Created Equal

Living in the Presence of the God of Love
The Only One Worthy of Your, Time, and Love

Forum Conversation and Practical Exercises

Crazy God's Make People Crazy
Cleaning The Temple of Crazy God's
Metaphors of Unconditional Love

Week 2: Discovering the Golden Thread of Life Within Your Life

Sermon: The Golden Thread of Life

Discovering the eternal life-giving qualities in the temporal things we love
Doing what you love to do as a follower of Jesus

Forum Conversation and Practical Exercises

The golden thread of life
Resolving "I know it in my head but I need to know it in my heart."
Wanting: the root cause of misery and how to gloriously fail at it.

Week 3: The Three Faces of Compassion: Tenderness, Fierceness, and Mischievousness

Sermon: Compassion as the temporal manifestation of Eternal Loving Kindness in the world

Compassion as the agent of transformation
Compassion is more than one thing
Loving your enemies as an act of compassion

Forum Conversation and Practical Exercises

Discovering how Jesus was tender, fierce, and mischievous
Discovering our own way of being tender, fierce, and mischievous
Discerning when to be tender, fierce, and mischievous as an agent of transformation

Week 4: Forgiving Others

Sermon: Discovering the Freedom of Forgiveness

What do you have to do to be resentful
Clarifying what forgiveness is and what it is not
The stupidity of forgiving and forgetting
Surrendering others into the realm of God's love

Forum Conversation and Practical Exercises

Satisfying objections to forgiving
Practical, sustainable, forgiveness: converting demands into preferences

Week 5: Forgiving Self

Sermon: If God forgives you why shouldn't you?

Guilt as an act of arrogance
Shame as a toxic affliction of the soul
Living in the light of Love rather than the darkness of condemnation

Forum Conversation and Practical Exercises

Creating a robust, realistic, reliable, self-image
Rebuilding our self-image after we have failed

For more details please see: Teach Your Congregation How to Forgive.

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About the Author

Rob Voyle

Rob Voyle

The Rev. Dr. Rob Voyle is a leader in the development and use of appreciative inquiry in church and coaching settings.

Rob's Approach to Training

  • Helpful: Training must provide practical, sustainable solutions for today's challenges.
  • Humorous: Creativity and humor go together as people enjoy new insights.
  • Healing: I create opportunities for people to experience transformational insights that lead to new ways of living, working, and being in the world.

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