Notes and Overview
This small group series is based on Mark Batterson’s book “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day.” The book is available at Amazon. At the time of this writing, Mark is making the book available a bit cheaper directly from him if you buy by the case (20 books). Contact Amanda at for the discounted books.
Mark is the pastor of National Community Church in Washington D.C. The church website is http://theaterchurch.com/. He also has a blog at http://www.evotional.com.
Mark also made the decision to make everything they did for this series open source. That means you can download all their graphics, movie clips, sermons, etc. for free at http://chasethelion.com/. In a similar fashion, we are making the resources that we did freely available too. Some of our graphics will look very similar to Mark’s – that’s because we used what he offered.
There is an official small group series being worked on. It is scheduled to be out late 2007 or early 2008. We did our series before it was even announced there would be a small group series available.
If you use these lessons and notes you will want to change some things in them. Hence we provide them in Word format. If you do not have Word, please contact us and we will talk about how we might provide the lessons in a format that you can use. There are dates you will want to change in the lessons. In a few cases there are names and email address that we have blanked out that you might want to fill in with your own names (lesson 2 and 3). Most of these refer to the coordinator of our family movie night where we showed the movie “Facing the Giants.” That movie deals with the same themes as the book and it was well received by our congregation. You can learn more about the movie and buy a site-license for public showing at your church at http://facingthegiants.com/.
Each person in a small group receives the book “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day” and a folder with the lessons, prayer lists, and other sheets. These are all free for the individual. During the last Sabbath service of the series we ask for a free will offering if people want to help us pay for the series. We inform them of our cost for the books and resources so they know how much to donate – if they want to.
Each small group is provided with an iWorship DVD from Integrity Music (http://www.integritymusic.com/music/nrp/iworship-home.html). This allows the small groups to have a time to sing and worship with the aid of some beautiful visuals and words on the screen. This can be used in any home with a DVD player.
We hope you find these small group studies useful.