living for eternity today

Tag: small group

Is it time for a facelift?

There are things in our lives that we do over and over without much thought. They become so routine that they end up losing meaning over time. This happens in just about every area of life and every industry. The benefit of larger industries is that they typically will staff people to keep them forward thinking, but not always.

One of my many jobs was in the car sales world. That is an industry that has needed a facelift for along time in how business was done. When I entered the sales floor area, the strategy was sell a car. The approach was by any means necessary – ok within some realm of reason. Through my years in that world, we underwent an intention facelift to how we did what we did. Our what and why did not change, but our how needed to change with the times because we quickly realized the methods no longer were effective nor efficient to accomplish our purpose.

Another area that contains practices that need a bit of a facelift are found in the church. Now I’m not getting into a war on worship or bible version or preaching style but something hopefully a lot less controversial. I’m talking about small groups. I have a love-hate relationship with these little monsters.

Small groups are wonderful additions to the life of a church to be certain! But there is always a danger that they become stagnant, slow the mission, and even cause division.

A typical small group

The most typical way a small group happens in most churches today is that a group of people who believe the same thing gather together to have a bible study. They’ll ask some opening questions about life. But essentially it’s time to dive into the bible. They’ll close with a prayer and head home. Most of the small group is generally lead by one person, who normally is the who plays the role of host. But when the group heads home, there isn’t much left to do until they gather again in a week or potentially two.

An alternative to the normal

I’ve been told that I do things a little different and to me that’s just fine. The how isn’t (nor has it ever been) set in stone to my knowledge. The what and the why are significantly more rigid but the how in my understanding should be more flexible.

I have taken the approach with small groups that they can’t be just a small version of what we do on Sunday morning. I mean one person talks. The group listens. We sing. Pray. Then everyone goes home to consider what this means. Then come back next week. It can’t be a wash, rinse, and repeat scenario!

I believe there’s a new direction small groups need to take in our shifting cultural landscape. The approach is to give these groups a purpose beyond themselves. I challenge small groups to have four key components: Community, Prayer, Biblical Equipping, Mission. Each of these four keys is critical to keep the group from being a Jesus social club. And if you’ve never been in a small group that has these four elements, I’m just going to say you’re missing out.

Community isn’t really all that earth shattering. We were created to be in community. God was first disappointed that Adam was alone so he created a community for him. We are designed to live in community with one another. The way we express community in our small group is to eat a meal together. Each meal is designed to let all participants bring something to share. The point isn’t the food really. It’s the community that is established over the meal. We let our defenses down when we eat together. We ask questions and catch up on life. It’s a wonderful way to love our neighbors as ourselves as well, because as we share life together we learn how we can serve one another.

Prayer isn’t really just the whole before a meal and for the sick people kind of prayer. It’s a shared experience of worship. We share the praying responsibility. Each person adding to the prayer as they see fit. Prayer is a form of worship. This is the focus of this time of prayer to focus our lives around the provision and providence of God.

Biblical Equipping is like Bible study on steroids. It’s not just a quick this is what the Bible says kind of thing. It’s looking at a section of the bible and inviting everyone to be part of the discussion. What did you hear? What stands out at you? Where else have you heard this same things in the Bible? If we applied this what would be different? There are a ton of questions we can ask of any Bible section to let the text equip us for works of service and ministry. Which if you’re keeping score here is the task of the church! There is always an application, rubber meets the road kind of approach in the Biblical equipping portion.

Mission is where we rarely get in our typical small groups, but it is absolutely essential! Serve somewhere together. It’s super easy. We’ve cleaned up a neighborhood, prayer walked, folded bulletins at church, set up for an event, provided food to police and fire, adopted a family at Christmas time. The sky is the limit here. The idea is simple. Do something with the faith you claim to have in your Biblical Equipping portion.

The key to all of this is just because it worked 40 years ago doesn’t mean it will work today. Churches talk about reaching new people, well what a better way than through an intentional time of equipping one another for works of service using the Bible!

Just like the car dealership didn’t change its focus when we changed our sale process, so also the church doesn’t change its focus when we shift our how to a new approach. Still selling cars just in a different way. Still growing in Christ together just using a different approach.

Is This Significant?

Pisces: misunderstood genius! | Neon signs, Neon words, Neon quotes

What a year 2020 has become! I don’t know if anyone could have predicted the dumpster fire that this year has turned out to be. It sure doesn’t seem like anything is as it should be right now. But is any of this significant?

Over the past few days I’ve been looking back on what all has occurred throughout this monumental and earth shifting year. One thing that seems to keep coming back over and over again in my mind is one of the restrictions that many of our cities and states have implemented. Heck even the CDC has said this.

If you remember back to April and May of this year perhaps you’ll recall that we were all told to limit our gatherings to no more than 10 people. I think the reasoning was to limit the potential for spread of Covid and to make it easier to track back who all you’ve been with recently. At least that’s what I have understood from it all, and I didn’t think twice about it.

But recently I’ve heard a few different references to the number 10 and how it applies to the church and it’s got me thinking…is this significant? Is there a misunderstood genius behind all of this?

Now I’m not going to go all numerology on you or anything like that but let’s look at the history of the number 10 and why it might be significant here. In the Bible and in ancient Jewish tradition, the people were to come together to establish a synagogue or gathering of worshippers in a localized place. Well, enter what might be the significant part…

You had to have a minimum of, yep you guessed it, 10 people to constitute a synagogue. So what in the world might this mean?

Some might say that this is some demonic force trying to prevent God’s people from gathering in a mass numbers. While this could be? I’m not really sure that I buy that one. I don’t buy it because we’re still able to meet, albeit virtually but we’re still able to gather in many informal settings and the word is still able to be preached. Could the Devil be up to something? Of course he is! When isn’t he? But I think there might be another, and potentially more transforming thing happening here.

The ten mandate is still the case for some people. Much of the country has excluded places of worship from this mandate, but it does still apply in various locations to this day. But the number limitation holds for gatherings of people for many other purposes too. Enter the conspiracy theory portion of this post – don’t worry this is a positive conspiracy theory if that’s such a thing?

What if God was in control all along? Yeah I know he is but stick with me here. What if God was taking this whole pandemic craziness thing and using it as a way to allow some of our churches to stay within the guidelines while still doing, being and even growing the church?

Think about it – you can’t come to the church either because it’s not allowed based on this rule or because you’re just not comfortable in groups that large. But are you able and willing to be in a smaller group with a more controlled atmosphere? Could you gather and form your own grouping of say 10 people?

Ten doesn’t seem like that many, but God even said that for the sake of 10 faithful he would have delivered all of Sodom and Gomorrah. Whoa there’s that number again!

Could God be up to something? Are you unable to get back in your in-person worship space due to restrictions or comfort level? Are you willing to be one of 10? I think this is massively significant and something we need to be taking full advantage of in this weird and wild ride we call 2020. Want to be a group of 10…hit me up and we’ll see how we can resource you.

Who would have thought that something as simple as the number 10 could actually help?

Ok friends those are today’s random ramblings.

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