GIANT STEPS IN SMALL GROUPS

“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”  (Hebrews 10:23-25 RSV)

When people are in small groups where someone knows them -- where they can ask the threatening, embarrassing, naïve questions, and share where they are -- then they can take giant steps in their faith. That just doesn't happen in a church service of 200 or 500 people.

-- Howard Hendricks

#4668

ESTRANGEMENT AND RECONCILIATION

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst of it we hung our harps.”  (Psalm 137:1-2)

Methodist missionary and evangelist E. Stanley Jones once wrote of a time early in his Christian experience. “For months after my conversion,” he wrote, “I was running under cloudless skies. And then suddenly I tripped, almost fell, pulled back this side of sin, but was shaken and humiliated that I could come that close to sin. I thought I was emancipated and found I wasn’t.”

Then he goes on to tell of the effort of special friends in his small group who played an intercessory role: “I went to the class meeting -- I’m grateful that I didn’t stay away -- went, but my (spiritual) music had gone. I had hung my harp on a weeping willow tree. As the others spoke of their joys and victories of the week, I sat there with the tears rolling down my cheeks. I was heartbroken. After the others had spoken, John Zink, the class leader, said, ‘Now, Stanley, tell us what is the matter.’ I told them I couldn’t, but would they please pray for me? Like one man they fell to their knees, and they lifted me back to the bosom of God by faith and love. When we got up from our knees, I was reconciled. The universe opened its arms and took me in again. The estrangement was gone. I took my heart from the willow tree and began to sing again…”

-- E. Stanley Jones in “A Song of Ascents”


#4153

FACE-TO-FACE

The New Testament places great emphasis on the importance of personal relations among believers. We are told to love one another, to encourage one another, to comfort one another, to share our burdens with one another, to instruct one another, and to pray for one another. All of this obviously means more than merely having superficial acquaintances.

Knowing other people on this level requires real work and commitment on our part. And it involves a setting where we can be “real” with each other. For us to develop these real, vibrant, biblical relationships, we need to be face-to-face. Think about the various settings you are in at church. Are you just looking at the back of the head in front of you? Or are you in a small group or class where you have the opportunity to be real, to be face-to-face with other believers?

Something very BIG is happening in small groups. Don’t miss out on an opportunity to grow in your relationships with God and with one another.

-- Rev. David T. Wilkinson

#3942

MEETING TOGETHER IN SMALL GROUPS

"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 -- and all the more as you see the Day approaching."  (Hebrews 10:24-25 NIV)


The genius of the Methodist movement, which enabled it to conquer the raw lives of workingmen in industrial England, and the raw lives of men and women on the American frontier, was the "class meeting" -- ten members and their leader, meeting regularly for mutual encouragement, rebuke, nurture, and prayer.


-- John L. Casteel

JOHN WESLEY'S IMPACT

I invested much of my youthful energies in seeking to be an effective preacher, so I was tempted to compute my success in terms of how many people might be attracted to my preaching. But in the reading of [church] history, for example, I learned that something more than preaching would validate the effectiveness of my ministry.

[In the 1700's] George Whitefield could easily have claimed a much larger number of responses to his preaching than could John Wesley. But soon after both men were dead, it was clear that Wesley's work would impact future generations far more than Whitefield's. The reason? Wesley organized his followers into classes (a form of small groups); Whitefield never did. I came to understand that preaching without the reinforcement of deep community isn't really worth all that much.

-- Gordon MacDonald


#3550