Back again

Well, so much for weekly posting. The last month has been busy, as for everyone, but I have a week left before work starts again.

I got to catch up with a friend this evening who went to church with me as I grew up. For much of our childhood, we were the only two active people our age, and it was great to talk to her again after several years' lapse.

I talked with her about my passion to develop small groups in our church, about how it creates an environment for you to talk out your faith with a group of people you trust, like a practice run, before you go talk out your faith in the real world.

Her response: "I could see that. You're probably more challenged in the small group setting and forced to be more vulnerable. It doesn't seem like you could hide too much in that setting."

We both grew up in a church that tended to focus more on faith in terms of rule-following than faith in terms of having a relationship with Christ. We both mentioned that there seemed to be something missing, that nothing we were taught was wrong, but it was incomplete.

She and her husband are seeking to find more in the Christian walk than what they've experienced lived out by the believers around them.

I am realizing that small groups can tend to challenge people to take their faith more personally and more seriously. When you meet with people and talk about how Christ impacts your life, week to week, you can't hide anymore. You will be encouraged, even pushed, to honor Christ more and more every day of your life. It becomes less about "looking right" for a few hours on Sunday and more about "being holy" day by day.

My wife and I meet with the small groups staff liaison tomorrow to discuss how to begin to seek out new leaders. We also need to discuss how to begin promotion of small groups so they are not a threat to a strong Sunday School culture.

I really need God's wisdom in this arena. Those who have experienced small group life, for the most part, really like it and want to continue to participate in it, either in addition to Sunday School or as an alternative. But for those who have not yet experienced it, how can I get them to see the importance of investing love in others more personally than can happen in an hour on Sunday mornings? I know many, many people that really do "get it" through Sunday School experiences. They have those connections, that support that they need. But I also know and see many, many people who do not have those connections, and they really don't know how to ask for more. Small groups can be that "more" if allowed.



Next topic:  How to name our small group ministry???


I have tentatively settled on Connection Groups, but in print (and spoken word time) that's almost too long.  So what about C-Groups, with the "C" referring to several ideas?

• Christ--A relationship with Christ directs all we do in C-Groups.
  
• Connection--A connection with other believers provides the support we need to grow in Christ.
  
• Community--A community provides accountability to live as a Christ-follower day in, day out.
  
• Care--C-Groups provide care in individuals' times of need, in a way that provides strength and dignity.
  
• Courage--C-Groups give us the courage to move forward in our walk with Christ.
  
• Conversation--C-Groups provide the needed conversations for us to own our faith.
  

I could see a logo being developed out of those words surrounding "C-Groups."


Any feedback would be appreciated.


Lynn


P.S.  I hope the weekly posting will recommence as of this week.

Thought update--3 Commandments and a Job Description

The sermon this morning touched on missions involvement and giving, pointing to the Matthew 28 and Acts 1 verses, and it got me to thinking.  I read on Chip Ingram's website a week ago that Barna was commissioned to do a survey of spiritual growth among pastors and lay people.  One point of interest is that pastors often do not put out a measuring stick of what spiritual maturity should look like, especially because they do not want believers to just become better "rule-followers."  I totally agree...but still how to show lay members to focus of their growth.

This may be way too simple, but here's a thought:

If Christ gave us those three commands and a job description, why aren't those the measuring stick of spiritual maturity, both for individuals and for the church corporate?

1.  How much am I truly loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength?
2.  How much am I truly loving neighbors, those whom God has placed around me to influence, as I love myself?
3.  How much am I leading others to be students of Jesus (regardless of my vocation)?
4.  How much am I telling the story of how Jesus has impacted my life to those around me?

You cannot have 3 and 4 without 1 and 2 first.  3 and 4 can become "rule-following," but if you love God and others first, 3 and 4 become a natural overflow of your life instead of rules to check off.

I need to let this marinate a bit further to find real, practical application, but I do think there is something to these 4 items as a goal for spiritual maturity.

New Start tomorrow

Tomorrow is a new beginning for my wife and I.

We began our first group in July of 2006.  Since then, we stayed with that group through September of 2008, participated in another group from October of 2007 through December of 2008, and we started another group this past March that finished last week.

God has led us to lead a singles group (ages 19-36), sit under the leadership of a friend in a younger married couples group (early 20s through 30s) and then lead an intergenerational group, (late 20s through late 60s).

Tomorrow, we begin a new venture.  Four married couples are coming together to form a new group.  Two couples are coming from another group that also began in March but had a rocky start with leadership.  One couple was in this last group with us.  So, we are forming one new group out of two former groups.

As we begin, I have to say I am somewhat nervous.  I know that my heart is in the right place, desiring to serve these couples.  I want them to learn to love God and each other more, and I want to see their lives transformed as Christ works in their lives.  I want to see God's Word prevail in our discussions and reactions.  To be honest, I haven't had been a great leader.  I have learned a lot in the experiences that God has provided, and I have had to learn humility, often the hard way.  I have very strong convictions about what small groups should look like, but I can't like my convictions run over these friends.

I was blessed a couple nights ago.  One guy from the other former group is a part of my accountability group.  We were talking about the group coming together, and he specifically mentioned the idea of each group member using their gifts.  I was (internally) ecstatic.  In our first group, my wife and I were worn down and even burned out because we did everything.  We led the discussion, did all the social planning, did all the communication, etc.  We realized that we could never function in a group like that again.  To hear him say that he realized that was important without me even talking about it, needless to say it was music to my ears.

I pray that God gives me the words to speak tomorrow as we meet for the first time.  We are meeting for lunch just to get to know what each person wants and needs, and what we really are capable of providing as a group.  It is in His hands for His glory.

On a church level, I was contacted today with a name for a couple that want to get involved in small groups.  I realize, however, that I don't really have a group to refer them to.  We just aren't far enough along in our structure.  I pray that God gives me clarity in how to respond to those who are interested while I am waiting for God to provide in His timing.

3 Commands and a job description

Jesus has given us 3 commands to direct the Christian life and a job description those commands fall under.

Commands:

Matthew 26:36-40  "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " ' (1)Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: '(2)Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

This is restated in Mark 12:28-34 and Luke 10:25-37 (which is the Good Samaritan story).  In Romans 13:9 and Galatians 6:14, Paul reaffirms Christ's teaching that loving one's neighbor is the summation of the law.


Matthew 28:18-20  Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore (3) go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." 

Job description:

Acts:1:8b "...you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."


OK, so where am I going with this?  I have been convicted recently that in order to love my neighbor, I actually might need to know who they are!  I do understand that Christ talked about being available to seeing those in need as we go on our way in the Good Samaritan story, but I also believe that He has us situated in specific neighborhoods and specific jobs to be "witnesses" to specific people.  If God is sovereign, and Scripture reaffirms that over and over, He does position us in the best place for our hearts to connect with those around us.


As I write this, I am ashamed to say I can only name one of the neighbors on my street.  I recently read Randy Frazee's book The Connecting Church and was challenged by the idea of intentionally connecting with those whom God has placed around me.


As I reflect on these three commands and a job description, I have to ask how that affects leading and designing our small group ministry.


1)  'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'

If I am to love God, that means I need to spend time getting to know Him.  I cannot love anyone I don't know.  I am to allow Him access to all the joys, frustrations, happiness, and pain that my heart holds.  He will choose to work on them in His timing, but I cannot hold my emotions back from Him.  I am to seek after Him as sovereign in my life and allow Him to direct my acts of service, recognizing my humility before Him and my constant need for a Savior to redeem my corrupt human soul.  God willingly has redeemed me through Jesus' death and resurrection.  I just have live each day in acceptance of that gift.  I also have to give God my intellect for His purposes.  No godly idea is my own creation; it is a part of God renewing my mind to be shaped every day more and more like Him.  In response to this transformation (Romans 12:1-2), I need to choose to follow His leading.

All of this is to say that any system that is developed for the small group ministry has to be centered on a reflection of who God is in His Word.  A system must reflect emotions centered on God and reflecting His character (treating people with kindness, with no favoritism); it must reflect a leading of people's souls to become more God-centered and less self-centered; and it must reflect an intellect that attempts to see things through God's perspective rather than man's limited scope (understanding Scripture in context; training small group leaders to focus on the renewing of minds rather than the accumulation of knowledge).


2)   'Love your neighbor as yourself.'


As I mentioned above, I have to know my neighbor in order to love my neighbor.  This means small groups must work to build relationships, and that may mean teaching relationship-building to those in the church.  It is very easy to work in the church, being very program-driven, and lose the exact people you want to reach as you keep your eyes only on achieving the goal.  We must remember, as the Samaritan was, to be ready to change our plans to meet the needs God may place in front of us.  We need to worry less about getting dirty (see Pharisaic "unclean") and more about showing love those in need.  The priest and the Levite were more concerned with looking right and not being inconvenienced than helping someone that they obviously could have helped.  I don't know that I can point fingers though.  Are there times needs stare me right in the face and I just ignore them because I don't want to "get dirty" or be inconvenienced?

I'm not exactly sure what this relationship-building training should look like yet, but I think it should address some "elephants in the room," where we do avoid the inconveniences of those in distress.  I think there are some other things to address too.  Sometimes, we just have never learned how to connect with people who aren't like us.  This may be because we're single and they're married, or we don't/can't have kids and they do have kids, or we have young kids and they have older or grown children, or we grew up in the church and subconsciously just "know" how church people are supposed to act and they never were exposed to "churchy" behavior upbringing.  The list goes on.  Many times, we are so driven by a need to find others like us that we miss out on connecting to people that are right in front of us, needing a loving shoulder to cry on or a friend to rejoice with.

3)  "...go and make disciples of all nations..."

As we love God wholly, reserving no part of ourselves from His transforming hand, and as we learn to love on neighbors, we are to go teach others how to do the same.  Much of this is "more caught than taught," as our Interim Pastor often states.  We need to model to those around us what it means to follow Jesus Christ.  We need to show others what it means to live a life of humility and service and suffering, so that Christ receives glory instead of us.  John the Baptist tells us in John 3:30 "He [Christ] must become greater; I must become less." 


Make disciples is a very active idea.  It is something that must be done intentionally, with a purpose of using the influence Christ allows in your life to lead those around you to seek Christ more.  Literally, it means to make students of Christ.  If we love others, we will want others to experience Christ in the way that we have, as well.  We will want them to experience incredible grace and forgiveness, so we will lead them toward the Savior who can show that grace and forgiveness to them.

In terms of developing small groups, our group leaders need to catch this vision:  we want our small group members to influence their neighbors to become students of Christ.   This can come through gentle words in times of sorrow, giving a helping hand, etc.  As we show and talk about Christ, others will want to experience the same thing.


So I'm left with the job description.


"...you will be my witnesses..."

A witness tells what they have seen, heard, and experienced.  It is not our job to convince others; Christ is the advocate, the lawyer.  We just have to let them know how Christ has intervened in our lives for our good and His glory, and let the Holy Spirit change the heart.

My desire for small groups is that members build confidence about talking of their faith when they meet together; I believe God will use this and carry it into the overflow of the members' conversations as they go through their lives.

This was long, but it is what is on my heart, and actually the main idea of the website URL name.  Love must be invested, not always seeing the return, for Jesus' name to be shared in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.

Lynn 

 

Three conversations

Our church is in transition now.  Our senior pastor of 15 years has been called to a church 12 hours to our south, so our Minister of Discipleship has taken on the role of Interim Pastor.  I have been talking with our Discipleship pastor for two years about developing a small group ministry, and as I said in the last post, he has given me reins to lead as God leads me.  I have put on paper the beginnings of a small group handbook, based on our discussions and the readings that he's had me do, along with things that God has convicted me about along the way.

My first conversation yesterday was with our Minister of Discipleship, come Interim pastor, about this document.  The ideas that God has drawn me to fit perfectly into his plans for continuing to lead our church into a more evangelistic mindset.  The pastor wants us to have four Go Fish Sundays a year, with an emphasis on reaching out.  This dovetails perfectly with a conviction I have for having front yard barbecues reaching out to people within walking distance of our small group homes.  I believe God is definitely working in our hearts, simultaneously, to reach out to love on others and to teach our church more and more to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

My next conversation was with our Equipping Director.  She has a passion for seeing people match their God-designed gifts and passions with service in the church.  She also has on her heart to develop a new to the church class, a new Christians class, and to continue offering a Discovery class (for gift, talent, passion discovery and connection to ministries needing those things).  This fits perfectly with a "Finding Your Place" class that I feel should be developed to draw people who are not already connected together.  Until we know who the unconnected people are, we don't know who needs invited into small groups.

My third conversation was with our Minister of Worship.  In this interim time, he is taking over the staff liaison position for small groups.  He and I talked about a GroupConnect event (like Andy Stanley's GroupLink) that I thought was a total flop last January.  We had more leaders show up than people interested in small groups.  There were several reasons for it, including lack of early publicity, timing of the event itself, etc.  Our Minister of Worship challenged me to rethink success or failure, especially as he challenged me to realize that there were potential leaders at the event that are not currently leading.  No one followed up with them.  That is a challenge for me, in the next few weeks, to be honest about losing a possible connection, and to seek forgiveness in that.  At that time, I did not feel I had the authority to make the connection, but maybe I just did not yet understand my role.  It's in the past, and God has shown me incredible grace as He's grown me in this role.  I want to honor Him through authenticity with others, encouraging them to do the same with their small group members, current or future.

In the upcoming weeks, I need to begin to build relationships with those who are currently leading.  I need to see their hearts and how I can support them.  Also, I need to see how they can contribute to this structure that God is leading me to develop.  I know the structure is not set in stone, and I have to elicit their opinions so as to gain their trust and buy-in.

Currently, we have five groups in the church.  We have two groups that probably need to multiply, and quickly.  One has twelve members, ten of which have been together for over two years.  To my knowledge, they are very comfortable, so far, with staying just as they are.  The other has about 15 members and at least has begun the discussion of multiplying.  I pray for sincere hearts seeking to serve God and be open to bringing others into the beauty that is community.

His will be done.

Lynn

What in the world am I doing?

In July of 2006, a friend and I embarked on a journey that has completely changed our way of doing life.

We began meeting with 5 other people to get deeper into Bible study and to build better friendships.  We met almost every Sunday evening for two and a half years, digging into the Bible, praying for each other, playing games together, and more.  But our interaction did not stop there.  What began as a desire to draw closer moved to a way of living where we helped each other with moves, we supported each other with family deaths, we sent a friend off to do missions elsewhere, and the list goes on.  We celebrated birthdays together.  We watched movies together.  We ate meals together.  All in all, we did life together.  In the course of those two and a half years, God brought nearly thirty people through this group process with us.  We saw incredible spiritual growth.  It was truly awesome.

A year and a half later, that friend would become my beautiful bride and partner in ministry.

But there was another side to this story.  We, in effect, started a small group, but we did not really know what we were doing.  I pushed too hard on some people, and I ignored some things in my own life and in others that should have been addressed.  We had more authenticity than we ever thought possible, but, as I heard at a conference today, real people bring real messes when they get real authentic with each other.

Through experiencing small group life as a member of another group, and then a leader of third group, God has challenged me to be as authentic as I can with those around me while I ask them to do the same.  God has taken the Pharisee that I was three years ago and begun to impress the incredibly important need for grace, both in small groups and in the church as a whole.  I need to love on people where they are, just like Jesus did.

Recently, I've been asked to "take the reins" of developing the system and implementation of an intentional small group ministry in our church.  I have read all kinds of resources about this in the last few years, including authors such as Bill Donahue, Russ Robinson, Andy Stanley, and others.  I have seen group life in action.  But what I am drawn back to, each time I really think about what small groups truly mean to me, is in Mark 12:28-34. 

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"
"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'  The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  There is no commandment greater than these."
"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

Loving God, and loving others.  That is what I need to be about doing, and that's what I need to lead others to do, as well.  I want Jesus to be able to say to me that I'm not far from the kingdom of God, either.


I feel strongly convicted that we learn to grow in our faith when we can talk about it, and we need a safe place to do that.  Small groups can provide that safe place to try out being right, or even wrong, and lovingly encouraged through sharing our faith in a way that loves on those around us (our neighbors).

I'm hoping to share my thoughts about building group life, hopefully on a weekly basis, as God works His will and His way in and through my life.

Please walk along with me as I share this process and how God works in mighty ways in my life and the lives of those around me.

In Christ,

Lynn