One-to-one

On Monday night I started meeting up with someone one-to-one, after discussing it with them since last year. They’ve been at church, and done the Simply Christianity course, but didn’t actually own a bible till a couple of weeks ago when I helped them choose one. I had in mind to do Romans, especially since they’d have done Luke in Simply Christianity, but after some discussion, including the idea that they thought the church sermons were a nice philosophy lecture, I decided to do another gospel. So we started John.

I have been mostly reading the Old Testament myself lately, and it’s been a few years since I’ve done one-to-one with someone, and I hadn’t prepared at all for John, so it all felt a bit bungling at that point. In the past I’ve read resources on one-to-one discipleship and done training courses etc, but hadn’t revisited the material lately and hadn’t done much preparation for this evening at all because we were just going to have dinner over the first get together and we hadn’t decided what to do yet, so I discovered that just opening and reading, while of course that’s good, felt a bit inept on my part – especially when I’d ask if there were any questions and she’d say “yeah, what is he talking about?” (the beginning of chapter three really is a bit mystifying at first read, and we were in chapter three because she just wanted to keep reading). So, now I feel the need to get myself much more organised and prepared for next time, and have a few questions in mind so we don’t just read on through chapter after chapter (not that there is anything wrong with that either, but there’s so much to discuss along the way!).

So, I’m potentially looking for something for beginners on the book of John. She’s also after something good to read on forgiveness. Any ideas?