In this five-session small group Bible study, The Me I Want to Be, John Ortberg reveals how you can become the unique, fully alive person God intended you to be.

There is a me each of one of us wants to be someone who s more kind and generous, patient, and loving. But there is a gap between the me I am and the me I want to be. Oftentimes we find it easy to trust God to bridge the gap between and us and him, but we struggle to really live by grace and trust God to close the gap between the me I am and the me I want to be. Becoming God s best version of you is both God s desire and the greatest task of your life. And here s the good news he s already working on it. Your life is God s project, not yours.

The Me I Want to Be small group Bible study is a powerful look at becoming the unique, fully alive, flourishing person God intended. Pastor and author John Ortberg teaches through fives sessions how you can move toward becoming God s best version of you in four specific areas: your mind, your time, your relationships, and your experiences.

Spiritual growth can seem difficult or intimidating, but John Ortberg s humor and innovative thinking in The Me I Want to Be will leave you challenged, inspired, and hopeful about true spiritual growth happening in you and your small group.

This Participant Guide is designed for use with The Me I Want to Be DVD (sold separately) and includes discussion questions for individuals and groups. When used together they provide you with a practical tool than can transform your faith.

Sessions include:

1. Discovering the Spirit
2. Renewing My Mind
3. Redeeming My Time
4. Deeping My Relationships
5. Transforming My Experience

Wes Anderson's comic Indian road-movie, set on a train, follows three brothers on a road-to-nowhere as they try to bond with one another after the death of their father. Trying to rekindle their sibling affections, Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody), and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) Whitman travel across India to meet up with their mother (Anjelica Huston), who has forsaken western life to become a nun in the Himalayas. Along the way, the hapless brothers fall victim to a range of mishaps, involving, among other things, pepper spray and an unhealthy fondness for pharmaceuticals, as their well-intentioned trip spirals out of control.

Maybe you ve gone to church and just not felt like you were connecting to the service like everyone else. Perhaps you have been trying to get closer to God but simply hit block after block and feel more frustrated than faith-filled each time you sit down to pray or worship. Or maybe you feel like you are doing okay spiritually, but feel you re missing something you can t quite define. And on top of everything else, you re simply trying to figure out who you really are inside and what you re supposed to be doing with your life.

The good news is you re not alone, and you don t have to feel discouraged. Though in the pages of The Me I Want to Be Teen Edition, bestselling author John Ortberg focuses on what makes you who you are, looking at how you spend your time, your unique experiences, your relationships, and your overall world to help you see where you are now, as well as providing exercises and quizzes that help uncover God s plan for you and the positive directions you can now go. Find out what it can look like when you discover what the best version of you looks like, as well as the life God has always desired you to have."

In this five-session small group Bible study, The Me I Want to Be Teen Edition, John Ortberg reveals how there s a real you (the one God intended) hiding under the one you pretend to be.
There is a God (it isn t you).
Your life is a project (it isn t yours).
The real you is waiting (it isn t hard).

God s best version of you is waiting. But first, John Ortberg has two very important questions:

Are you REALLY LIVING? (Full of joy and peace, in harmony with God, others and self; curious, willing to learn and experience opportunities to grow toward the best version of yourself)

or

Are you DECAYING? (Lacking mental and emotional energy, feeling uneasy and not very content, too self-focused)

In his usual style, Ortberg has some intriguing answers to those questions in this study and will help you gauge your spiritual health and deal with real issues you face as a teen in today s world.

Underneath the me you pretend to be (the one that acts cool while fearing you re not) and the me you fail to be (the one that doesn t always feel very excited about life) you will discover something remarkable

This Participant Guide is designed for use together with The Me I Want to Be Teen Edition DVD (sold separately) and includes discussion questions for individuals and groups. This is an excellent study for teen small groups and youth groups.

Sessions include:
1. Discovering the Spirit
2. Renewing My Mind
3. Redeeming My Time
4. Deeping My Relationships
5. Transforming My Experience"

Many people run scared from the middle school youth room. But (thankfully!) there are people out there who are actually drawn to those young teens. Although often times they're not equipped to deal with the unique challenges that middle school ministry presents, or they're just not sure what to do when a room full of young teens (who are 'part child, but not quite adult') are running around the youth room. Finally, there's a comprehensive guide to middle school ministry, from two veterans of this unchartered territory. Mark Oestreicher and Scott Rubin help youth workers understand the importance of middle school ministry, the development process for young teens and their implications for ministry, and how to best minister to these sometimes misunderstood students. They share their experiences (as middle school pastors and parents of middle schoolers), giving youth workershe encouragement, hope, and training they need to succeed in middle school ministry.

In My Changes, you ll discover the reasons behind a lot of your changes, and get tips on how to survive all of them. You ll find valuable insights on changes happening in your body, your brain and thoughts, your identity, your emotions, your gender, and more. After reading the books in the Middle School Survival Series, you ll be ready to take on the rest of middle school with the confidence and knowledge you need to survive (and thrive) as a young teen."