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 2

ENVIRONMENTAL TOXIN: The unreflective pursuit of the immortality symbols

SPIRITUAL PRACTICE: Listening for the voice of self and becoming reflective enough to recognize it. This is a another form of prayer.

KEY QUOTE: In Chapter 3 (Scuffle with the Self), Goetz writes, “The war within – the battle with the self – is really prayer itself. It’s the long struggle to see Goodness and Beauty in a bogus world” (p. 48).

KEY DISCUSSION POINTS:

* An immortality symbol is anything in your life that you pursue for the glory it bestows on you. It might be the success of your 7-year-old daughter in Park District soccer or your high school senior’s grades and football scholarship. It might be the big house or oversized SUV or low body fat.

* The only antidote to the self is the cross; that is, the suffering that comes into our lives.

* You’ve arrived at a higher spiritual plane when you have no anxiety when hanging with those who have more than you and when serving the the poorest of the poor. You’re detached from the attraction of riches and repulsion/fear of poverty.


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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