Learning Activities

Small group discussion guide: Hopelessly out of date

Synopsis: Sustaining Simplicity appeals to something in people that seems historically long-lasting. This guide helps participants in a 90-minute small group session find satisfaction in the possible wisdom of their “old-fashionedness” when it comes to the style or fashion of their possessions, modes of thinking or life goals.

Outcomes 

• Participants recall the dangers in “always seeking newness” or “keeping one’s possessions up-to-date.”
• Participants value possessions, practices and purposes that are not in current fashion.

Materials

Quantity of popular magazines (recent issues)
Newsprint and markers
Bibles

Activities

1. Distribute to one half of the group copies of recent issues of popular magazines, one or two per participant. Distribute Bibles to the other half of the group. Ask one group to page through the resources they’ve received and the other group to read or skim Ecclesiastes straight through. Each group approaches its assignment with these questions in mind, “What’s new?” or “What’s improved?” (10 minutes)
2. While participants work, write on the newsprint these questions for sharing:

• What is truly “new”? What’s truly “improved?” How can you tell the difference?
• In which ways are you “hopelessly or hopefully out–of-date?” 
• How do you choose when and when not to keep up with cultural change?
• What are the costs and rewards for both behaviors? How do you know?
• What pushes you towards “new”? “Improved”? 

3. In pairs or in the whole group, share insights from their reading or skimming that answer any of the questions you have written on newsprint. (40 minutes)
4. Ask participants to talk about the ways in which they exhibit care in choosing what they purchase, what they wear, and the activities in which they engage or the ways of thinking they adopt.  (15 minutes) 
5. In the whole group, make a concept map—a newsprint diagram of the relationships of ideas to each other—of the notion, “Good Enough.” When the newsprint page is filled, talk about what you have diagrammed together, especially noting what encourages you to be satisfied with what’s “hopefully out of date.” (25 minutes)

Closing prayer