I’m going to make a sweeping statement here. I think one of the biggest struggles of sharing faith with friends is knowing how to bring Jesus up. Once the conversation is flowing, the questions are being asked and the topics go beyond the surface, it seems to become more natural. But the struggle, for me anyway, is how do you bring Jesus into a conversation where He seems to be absent?
Imagine you’re getting ready for a night out. You’ve got a group over your house for pre-drinks and someone suggests ring of fire. How do you transition from that to faith conversations? It doesn’t seem easy. Yet it can be.
‘WHO KNEW A PACK OF CARDS COULD LEAD TO THIS MUCH ENCOUNTER?’
I recently met with Ellie, a student leader for Catholic students based in Sheffield. She’s asked herself the question, ‘how do we encourage sharing honestly within our student groups?’
Every 2 weeks, Ellie gathers her students together to worship and share what God’s been doing in their lives. They start their evening with 3 things; prayer, food and the Discipleship Deck.
It is the conversations that emerge as a result of the deck that set the tone for the evening, and the worship is based around what is shared.
Ellie shared that during exams, her students were left feeling exhausted. When someone picked out a question about rest, they were able to centre their worship around resting in God’s presence and left feeling energised and filled up.
‘We’ve even pulled out the pack of cards on the bus and it gets people talking - regardless of their faith.’
The Discipleship Deck is a fantastic tool to encourage those discipleship conversations, but what if someone isn’t used to Christian-ese? What if they’ve never been to church before, and they’ve never considered some of the questions raised? Where does the conversation go from there?
To the DMC Deck!
The DMC (deep-meaningful-conversations) deck is full of questions about life, faith, identity, purpose and living well. It skips the small talk and gets straight to the deep and meaningful. Written in a way that relates to everyone, churched or not, it exists to get the conversations flowing that can be hard to bring up.
Whether it’s a card game during pre-drinks, something to keep you busy on a long train journey or a procrastination task more fruitful than Netflix, the DMC deck is one for all of us.
You never know how many encounters it could lead do. Get one now!
