Ann Voskamp - The Broken Way Bible Study Guide: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life

Someone has brought you a bouquet: cornflowers and fragrant freesia. You put them in your favorite vase, a Chinese-patterned porcelain with a graceful swelling around its middle. You turn to take the bouquet to the dining room table, but at that moment one of your children tugs on the hem of your shirt. Startled, you lose your grip on the vase, and it falls. Crashing on the kitchen tile, the vase shatters. Porcelain and flowers litter the floor in a spreading puddle of water. The vase is broken into more than a dozen pieces, broken beyond redemption.

Perhaps thats how you feel: broken beyond redemption. Many of us do. Its a lie. Broken, yes, we are broken, and we wont be fully whole in this lifetime. But beyond redemption, beyond fruitfulness, beyond beauty, beyond an abundant life, no. No human person is so far gone that God cant work in and through us if we let Him.

In fact, brokenness is His chosen way of working through us. God deliberately chooses broken people to be His vessels, and He calls us to be broken and poured out for others. As we follow Him step by step along the road before us, bad brokenness is broken by good brokenness.

So lets sweep up the broken shards of our lives, mop up the water, and breathe a deep draught of the scent of those flowers weve been gifted with. And lets begin taking steps down the surprising road He has laid out for us, the road named the Broken Way.

This discussion guide is created to be used in a group of four to ten friends. If you have more than ten people, consider dividing into smaller groups of four to six for your discussion. You want an intimate enough group that even shy people are willing to share their thoughts and talkative people dont dominate. There are cues for the discussion leader at the beginning of each section, so you wont need special training to facilitate the conversation.

This guide contains six sessions to go with six video segments. You can meet weekly for six weeks or at a slower pace if you prefer.

Each session contains these six sections:

• This Session: An introduction to the topic you will be exploring in that session.
• Open Up: An icebreaker that will help you get to know others in your group while you start discussing the topic.
• Video Notes: Key thoughts from the video segment, along with space to write your own notes of what stands out to you in the video.
• Talk About It: Questions for your group to discuss. Youll interact with the Bible, the video, and your own stories.
• Closing Prayer: A time to share your prayer requests and pray for one another, with special focus on the topic youve been discussing.
• Between Sessions: Questions, activities, and journal prompts for you to complete on your own before the next session. Ideally youll spread these exercises over several sittings rather than trying to do all of them at one time.

For group meetings, each of you will need a copy of this study guide, a pen, a Bible, and an open heart. For the solo work between meetings, youll need:

• A copy of Anns book, The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life (Zondervan, 2016)
• A pen
• Extra paper or a journal, in case you need more room to express your thoughts

If your group is sharing the responsibility to lead discussions, assign the six sessions to their respective facilitators up front so that group members can prepare their thoughts and questions before the session they are responsible for leading. Follow the same assignment procedure should your group want to serve any snacks or beverages. Have people volunteer up front to bring refreshments for a given meeting so they know which meeting they are responsible for.

As discussion leader, your primary job is to keep discussions on track with an eye on the clock to be sure you get through the whole session in ninety minutes. You may also need to keep the conversation shared fairly by drawing out quieter members and helping more talkative members to remember that others insights are valued in your group.

You might find it helpful to preview the sessions video teaching segment and then scan the discussion questions that pertain to it, highlighting various questions that you want to be sure to cover during your groups meeting. Ask God in advance of your time together to guide your groups discussion, and then be sensitive to the direction He wishes to lead.

Urge group members to bring their study guide, pen, and a Bible to every gathering. Encourage them to consider buying a copy of