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 6

ENVIRONMENTAL TOXIN: A chronic dissatisfaction with the church I’m attending – a deep restlessness for a new worship experience that is bigger and better than the last.

SPIRITUAL PRACTICE: Staying put in a local church over a long period of time.

KEY QUOTE: In Chapter 7 (Lashed Down), Goetz writes, “Without a long-term attachment to a local church, there is little spiritual deepening. The madden frustration that prompts someone to leave one church for another may be precisely the experience that triggers spiritual progress, if one stays.”

KEY DISCUSSION POINTS:

* The relationships that develop as a result of attending a church are just as important as the worship experience at the church.

* Resolving conflict in a healthy way by sticking around is just as important for spiritual deepening as is a great Sunday morning worship experience.

* You should feel disillusioned with your church. That’s the starting point for great spiritual progress.


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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