Using Sarah's Books for Group Study:

Youth groups, Sunday school classes, home-school clubs and various small groups all over the country have been using Sarah's books for studying the connections between fiction, fantasy and faith. Here's a brief primer to get you started. Feel free to add your own funky details, including clips from the movies!

• For Walking with Frodo and Walking Through the Wardrobe you may wish to do a 10-week discussion, in which the group tackles "Read This First" during the first week, followed by one pair of devotions per meeting (i.e., Darkness and Light, or Walking with Edmund). There are nine pairs of devotions altogether. Walking with Bilbo has 22 chapters, so you could do it in more like 8-12 weeks. Dating Mr. Darcy can be broken into 5-6 weeks: one for each main section of the book, plus the Introduction.
• Keep your group small (6-8 people). If it is a large group, split into two or more groups for discussion.
• Once you know how many people are coming, track down enough copies of the books for each participant or have them pick up a copy on their own. Click ►here to get a group discount on individual signed copies from Sarah.
• When you meet – and where, and how often, and how long – is up to you.
• Make sure everyone is familiar with either the books or the movies before joining the group. Not everyone must be a LOTR, Narnia, or Jane Austen freak, however. And not everyone must be a Christian. But make sure they know (at least by the end of the first meeting) that reading the Bible and discussing spiritual things will be a major focus.
• Ideally, the participants will read the devotions on their own and scribble out responses to the "Going Further" questions during the week prior to the meeting in which those devotions are discussed. In school terms it’s called homework. (Ew. Definitely call it something else.)
• Either plan on providing Bibles for participants to use during the meetings, or encourage them to each bring their own. All quotations in Walking With Frodo are from the New International Version (NIV), published by Zondervan, while scripture quotations in the other books are from the New Living Translation (NLT), published by Tyndale.

Average time: 90 minutes

Young adults need two basic things in life: food and a comfy place to hang out with their friends (sort of like Hobbits, come to think of it). Provide both, and things are off to a good start. Assume that 1/3 of the group will arrive early, 1/3 will arrive on time, and 1/3 will arrive late. Use food as a diversion for the early birds, or maybe even show clips from the movies and special features (which might encourage the late-comers to be on time in the future). Ten minutes after the official start time, dive into the bulk of the meeting, as follows:

If it suits the nature of the group – open with a brief prayer. If you feel so inspired, you could also read a quote or two from really great writers like J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis or Jane Austen.

Start with an activity that makes everyone feel welcome and accepted. This could be as simple as having each person briefly share their favorite scene or character from the story (without caustic commentary from the listening rabble).

• Either read out loud or summarize the first devotion being discussed.
• Have one person (or several) read some or all the accompanying passages of Scripture out loud to the group. It would help to have everyone look up the passages in their own Bibles in order to follow along. Then talk about what you’ve read. Start by asking, "So what?"
• Discuss their responses to the "Going Further" questions. Again, hopefully they’ve taken the time to answer these on their own. Some questions will be easier to answer publicly than others, so be sensitive to comfort-levels and group dynamics.
• Repeat this process for the second devotional of the pair.
• By now the group has hopefully become so inspired and expressive that you’re running out of time. Tactfully bring the discussion to a close.

• Before people leave, clarify what is to be read for next time and, if appropriate, close with prayer.