Tips for
Small Group Study

1. Use Death by Suburb as an 8-week study on the spiritual disciplines.

2. Each week study one of the 8 chapters that explain the suburban toxins and the spiritual practices that counter them.

3. Download the free discussion guide for a list of questions to guide the discussion for each chapter.

4. Download Dave's Favorite Writers for additional resources on Christian spirituality.

5. Sign up with your email address to receive regular blog updates by the author.

6. Add your suburban story of The Thicker Life to the blog.
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Practice 1

ENVIRONMENTAL TOXIN: The illusion that I can control my life

SPIRITUAL PRACTICE: Solitude – listening and waiting for God

KEY QUOTE: In Chapter 2 (Inside Space), Goetz writes, “Making time for space for God is the most basic element of spirituality. You can’t stop your busyness, really. You begin to open your life to God in small amounts” (p. 26).

KEY DISCUSSION POINTS:

* Finding time for quiet to develop our God-consciousness is not simply an amenity of a lucky few who can afford a second home in the country.

* This practice is counter to popular notions of solitude. It’s more a discipline of struggle than it is a discipline of serenity.

* Nothing much happens when you begin this practice. But over time, it expands your capacity to see God’s hand at work in your life and in the world.


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DeathBySuburb.net
Copyright © 2005 David L. Goetz
Advance Praise for
Death by Suburb

"Death by Suburb ... addresses and overcomes the split in our religion, our lifestyles, and even our consciousness."
—Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M., author of Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

"With a compassion born of his own experiences of suburban unreality and dysfunction, Goetz effectively evokes a thicker sense of our social and religious worlds."
—Leigh Schmidt, Princeton University, author of Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality

"Goetz sees the parched lives, the truncated spirits beneath the suburban bliss, and the grace too. In his gracious eyes suburbia begins to look like an outbreak of the Kingdom of God."
—William H. Willimon, author of Sinning Like a Christian