Keys To Freedom [Curriculum]

I have a history of celebrating some of the great things my church has been doing when it comes to Christianity and mental health. The first year they did anything was in 2019 when we started to educate the congregation on mental health and break the stigma from a Christian perspective. We have trained the staff in suicide prevention, created custom devotionals that embraced mental illness, assisted in a women’s conference that featured mental health education and support, and so much more. Five years later, we are starting something new.

At the beginning of this year, we shared about Mercy Multiplied, a Christian organization that has a heart for serving families in residential and outpatient services across the world. They do a lot of amazing stuff, but our church has decided to take their discipleship study curriculum called Keys to Freedom to our whole church.

What Is Keys To Freedom?

Great question!

This is an 8-week, 5-day-a-week discipleship study for everyone. Whether you are hurting, desperate, helping others who are struggling, feeling like you have it all together, the pastor, the pastor’s wife, or someone who has never said yes to Jesus, this is a great resource for you. The idea is that we are all looking for ways to live free and the only way to do it is in Jesus.

This can be done in groups or individually. It covers tough topics like:

• Hearing From God
• Committing and Connecting to Christ
• Renewing Your Mind
• Healing Life’s Hurts
• Choosing to Forgive
• Breaking Generational Patterns
• Using Your Authority in Christ
• Maintaining Lifelong Freedom

Here’s a quick video from Mercy Multiplied that describes it:

How We Took It Further

The conversations of this curriculum dig deep into understandings of hurt, faith, core beliefs, capturing our thoughts, prayer, and your relationship with Jesus. We wanted to take this to the whole church, starting at the top with eight weeks of sermons on the topics of Keys to Freedom each week was an investment on the topic of that week’s key.

From there, we shifted our small groups from what we previously did which were individualized to each group (Living Grace group, GriefShare group, Ephesians group, etc) to over 100 different groups, over 1,500 people, all together going through this discipleship study together, in their individual groups. That means that 1,500 people hear a sermon on the topic each week, go through their 5-day devotional study, and then attend a small group to discuss the material. The content is deep, the conversations powerful, and the Holy Spirit is moving.

Below is actually week 4 of our sermon series titled Healing Life’s Hurts that just happened, though you can go back and catch the previous weeks and join us in this journey:

We Are Interested In This, What Do We Do?

We would love for you to check out this great resource for yourself. If you want to get your copy for a devotional, you can purchase one on their website here. If your church is interested in doing a small group on the topic or even mimicking what we did, you can actually request your own free copy here. Let us know what you think of the curriculum in the comments below.