Notes for Group Leaders
This guide works best when leaders participate as co-learners rather than experts. Nobody has this figured out. The goal of each session is honest reflection and mutual accountability, not behavior modification. Set the tone in session one by sharing your own screen time honestly and naming one area where you know your phone use isn't aligned with your values.
Encourage members to come to sessions two through four having attempted the previous session's take-home challenge, even if imperfectly. The debrief on what actually happened — including where it was hard — is often the richest part of the discussion. Shared struggle builds community in ways that shared success doesn't.
Consider starting each session with phones in a basket in the center of the table. Not as a rule, but as a symbolic act of what the group is trying to practice together.
The Four Sessions
What Is Our Phone Actually Doing to Us?
Icebreaker: Go around the group and share your average daily screen time this week — no commentary, just the number. Then: does it match how you feel about your phone use? Is it more or less than you expected?
Read: Matthew 6:19–24 together. Note especially verse 21: "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also," and verse 22: "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light."
Discussion: In what sense is your phone a "treasure" — something you consistently return to, think about, and organize your behavior around? What does the Matthew 6 framework suggest about the spiritual dimension of that? What is the "divided eye" for you — what are you giving your attention to that fragments your focus on God and the people you love?
Deeper: Have you noticed changes in your ability to focus, pray, or be present in the last several years? What do you attribute them to?
Take-Home Challenge: Check your Screen Time report (or Android equivalent) and note your top three most-used apps. Bring them next week. Also: try one evening this week with your phone charging in a different room from where you sleep. Come ready to share what you noticed.
The Gift We Keep Refusing: Sabbath Rest
Check-in: How did the take-home challenge go? What did you notice when your phone wasn't in the room? Was it harder or easier than you expected?
Read: Exodus 20:8–11 and Mark 2:27. Note Jesus's framing: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." This is a liberation statement, not a restriction. The Sabbath was given as a gift to people who didn't know how to stop.
Discussion: What would a genuine Sabbath — a true rest, a real stopping — look like in your life right now? What prevents you from taking it? Is "being connected" part of how you justify staying available on days that should be rest? What do you think you'd find if you gave yourself permission to fully stop, once a week?
Deeper: The Israelites had just left Egypt, where they were worked without rest. In what ways does the always-on digital world resemble that kind of bondage? Is that a fair comparison, or does it overstate the problem?
Take-Home Challenge: Try a phone-free Sunday — or a defined phone-free window of at least four hours. Plan in advance what you'll do instead. Come back ready to describe the experience honestly, including the uncomfortable parts.
The Better Thing: Presence, Prayer, and What We're Missing
Check-in: Share one thing that happened during your phone-free window. What was the hardest part? Was there a moment you were genuinely glad your phone wasn't in your hand?
Read: Luke 10:38–42. Then Psalm 46:10: "Be still, and know that I am God."
Discussion: Where is your phone's presence crowding out your Mary moments — times of genuine presence with God, your family, or your own inner life? What is the "better thing" that your phone use is consistently displacing? Has your prayer life changed since smartphones became central to your daily routine? If so, how?
Deeper: The contemplative tradition describes prayer as sustained attention directed toward God. What happens to that practice when the average person's attention span has been fragmented by constant interruption? Is this a new spiritual challenge, or a very old one in new clothes?
Take-Home Challenge: Spend 10 minutes every morning this week before you touch your phone — in prayer, Scripture, silence, or a combination. It doesn't have to be long or feel profound. Just prior to the phone, for seven days. Report back.
Moving Forward: Making a Community Commitment
Check-in: How did the morning practice go? What did you notice about your day on the days you did it versus the days you didn't?
Read: Hebrews 10:24–25: "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another." Then Ephesians 5:15–16.
Discussion: What has this series made you want to change? What has felt most conviction, and what has felt most compelling? What is the single most important change you want to make — and what would make it more likely to stick? Who in this group could help hold you accountable to it?
Community Commitment: Have each person state one specific, ongoing commitment — a daily phone-free morning, a weekly digital sabbath, a phone-free dinner table, a social media fast on Sundays. Pair with an accountability partner. Set a date to check in — in person, by text, or at your next small group gathering.
Closing Prayer: Pray together — for each other's formation, for the willingness to be helped, and for genuine community around the things that matter most. Then put the phones away and linger at the table a little longer than usual.
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