Lenten Small Groups: Encountering God
Interested in growing in discipleship in community with others?
Join a short-term small group discussion of our Lenten sermon series on Encountering God. In-person and online groups will explore Old and New Testament texts that show us how to realize God’s presence more fully in our lives. Please register for a group by February 8.
A Note from Dr. Ray Hylton, Sr -
In this season of NPC's life, many in our congregation are expressing a longing to encounter God more deeply—to hear his voice amid the noise, to see his presence in Scripture and in the world, and to experience a renewed sense of intimacy with Christ.
This Lenten series grows directly out of that longing. It responds to what we are hearing in Small Groups, Women's Ministry conversations, pastoral visits, and the informal moments where people ask, "How do I make space for God? How do I listen? How do I experience His love in a deeper way?" Lent offers the church a sacred opportunity to answer those questions through intentional reflection, Scripture, worship, and spiritual practice.
The series also meets the moment we are in culturally. Many in the DMV are living with chronic exhaustion, anxious busyness, economic instability, and a sense that life's pace makes it hard to breathe—much less pray, listen, or be present to God. This series invites our congregation into a countercultural posture of slowing down, listening, and allowing God to seek us, rather than trying to manufacture spiritual growth. Each week focuses on a different way God meets his people—through Scripture, silence, the natural world, wounds, surrender, and resurrection—and each theme gives practical steps for ordinary disciples to cultivate attentiveness to God's presence.
Most importantly, the series strengthens NPC's discipleship because it grounds spiritual formation not in technique but in relationship. We are not chasing a mystical experience; we are responding to a God who first calls out, "Where are you?" and who, in Jesus Christ, continues to pursue us with compassion, truth, and love. Our prayer is that this Lenten journey will shape us into a people who are not only informed about God, but formed by daily encounters with the living Christ—who listen for his whisper, walk in his ways, and follow him from the garden of surrender to the joy of resurrection.
