9 Ways Small Groups Go South

Have you ever been part of a really bad small group*?

I know I have.

Some small groups are terrible because nobody talks. Others are terrible because no matter what the topic is some dude brings the whole discussion back to his hobby horse. Others make you want to hit yourself in the face with a 2 x4 simply because the second that you actually start looking like a legit life group super-spiritual-Sammy quotes a few Bible verses and shuts down any discussion.

One of the things that I am working on in our church at present is helping our life groups grow and become more focused. In doing this I’ve created a Life Group Leader Training**. One topic that we discussed was where Life Groups go south. Many of these are connected and only symptoms of other things. In this instance I shot with a shotgun instead of a rifle so the leaders could grab hold of something tangible. And I thought it might be good to share with you.

How Life Groups Go South

1. By not seeing the necessity of community. If Life Groups are nothing more than a program they’ll go south pretty quickly. When they are viewed as vital to our life together then we’ll take them far more seriously.
2. By not having ownership (leader, group). This is connected to the first one. If Life Groups are just the preachers idea it won’t go anywhere. Ownership of a Life Group (by both leader and group) is like the fuel that motivates many of the other things in this list. When you have ownership of something you’ll do the necessary work of changing what needs to change, like lovingly telling Hobby Horse Hank that he ought to talk about something else once in awhile.
3. By being centered on something other than the gospel. Some groups can be centered on very good things—but soon enough they’ll go south. The only One powerful enough to bind together sinners into meaningful community is the Spirit. And the Spirit is about exalting Christ. When we start exalting something else as primary we lose our glue.
4. By showing a lack of hospitality. Groups ought to be growing or else they will become stagnant and die. You can’t grow if you have really poor hospitality.
5. By having a culture with a lack of gospel love. If Life Groups are really going to be life giving then there had better be an atmosphere of genuine repentance, confession, and love. How else will sinners come to find life? 
6. By not outward focused. If we are not careful our Life Groups can become cliques. One way to prevent this is to be intentionally outward focused. We always challenge our groups to think of unbelievers they could invite to join us.
7. By only meeting when obligated. This is more of a symptom, but it is important. When Life Groups really love one another they’ll want to get together more than just when the group meets. It’s wise to schedule opportunities for this to happen.
8. By not reproducing leaders. Leaders should always look for other leaders within their group. We are constantly challenging our Life Groups to grow and multiply into other Life Groups. This can only happen when leaders are being trained.
9. By setting the expectations far too low. When we refuse to challenge our Life Groups we sign our names to their death sentence. We should search the Scriptures and paint a picture of community for our Life Groups that is as big and earth-shattering as what God paints. That’s where we aim as we celebrate baby-steps along that journey. Aiming at only what we think our people want is ripping off God’s people. If He intends to place them in a robust community how dare we attempt to create something different?

---

*Or life group, or community group, or cell group, or whatever you’ve decided to call your gathering of really cool and awesome people that get together to talk about Jesus and eat Doritos.

**In preparing for this I found myself repeatedly helped by Brad House’s excellent book Community. It’s possible that some of his wording or lists have slipped into this article. So, if you found something helpful credit him. If it’s dumb, it probably came from me.

6 Reasons We Don’t Rejoice With Those Who Rejoice or Mourn With Those Who Mourn

Last night I preached on Romans 12:15-16.  It’s a tremendous passage that if applied to our lives is a great barometer of our pride.  Seldom do we rejoice with those that rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.  In preparation for the sermon I found help from a sermon that John Piper preached on the same text.  Here he lists six reasons why we might not be rejoice with those who rejoice or weep with those who weep.  I thought you might benefit from them too:

1. We are too wrapped up in ourselves to rejoice or weep with others. We are so self-oriented that what is happening in the hearts of others has no effect on us.
2. We feel above the emotional life of the ordinary person. Children laugh. Women cry. I’m a man. Or it doesn’t have to be male arrogance. It may be merely high-brow arrogance. To laugh with them or to cry with them would put me down on their level and I have a certain refined, aristocratic, high-culture status to preserve.
3. We are hypercritical and our main reaction when we see emotion is to analyze it and point out its distortions or excesses or bad tendencies or shallow roots. So our hypercritical analytical heart keeps us emotionally at a distance and prevents our hearts from empathy with others.
4. We are resentful or envious they have joy and we don’t. We feel gypped, passed over, given a raw deal. So envy makes it impossible for us to rejoice in their joy.
5. We are simply the kind of personality that doesn’t have a discernable emotional life. We don’t rejoice or weep over anything. And so we don’t weep or rejoice with others. It may be owing to parents. Or to a traumatic experience. Or to some physical condition.
6. We may be depressed and temporarily numb in our own emotions.

Spoons In Your Fridge

“Nikki!  What in the world are you doing?  You can’t do that!”  I gently said to my dear wife. 

She had just committed an unpardonable sin in my home of origin.  She…are you ready for my unveiling of her dastardly crime…she…left a…spoon…in our leftovers…and…oh the humanity!…put said bowl and spoon…in the refrigerator!!!

Apparently, she is hell bent on killing our entire family.  At least that is the way that I was raised to think.  Nikki in tears of laughter—or maybe pain, I never can tell—informed me that this little spoon rule was nothing more than an old wives tale.  I think she also began taunting me by sticking the spoon in the fridge and then her mouth. 

As I began thinking about this I realized that it is a little ludicrous.  But, after some research, I discovered that my mother is not totally insane.  At least not on this point.  Or at least she wouldn’t have been insane about 50 years ago.  It is maybe possible somewhat likely that a copper or aluminum spoon could actually cause some problems with your food if left in leftovers in your fridge and consumed later.  Problem is we no longer use aluminum spoons and the ones that we have in our home could be left in the fridge for weeks and never do any damage. 

So, I lived for a good 25 years of my life with a death fear of spoons placed in a refrigerator.  This was life changing information for me. 

Sin, Familiarity, and Light

What is the point of this story?  As Charles Bridges has said

Indeed it is the fearful property of sin to hide its own character and tendency.  The blindness increases in proportion to our familiarity with it.  (Commentary on Proverbs 14:12, page 177)

I never realized that my fear of spoons and refrigerators was woefully misinformed until I was placed outside my family of origin and entered the world of another.  Because of my familiarity with this spoon rule my blindness was never exposed.  It’s the same way with sin.

As Bridges states sin doesn’t like to show itself for what it is.  Sin likes to hide in the dark and make you think it isn’t there.  Or at least it makes itself not seem so bad as it exposes it’s half truth but masks its deadly poison.  The more familiar we are with these particular sins the less likely we are to see them for what they really are. 

Because of this tendency of sin three things are absolutely necessary for living the Christian life.  The darkness of sin is only exposed by:

1. The light of the Word
2. The light of the Spirit
3. The light of the redeemed community

We need the church, the Scriptures, and the work of the Spirit to overcome the blindness to our sin.  May we be like David who said, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” 

And then may we be bold enough to place ourselves under the light of the Word, the Spirit and the redeemed community. 

The Lil’ Brudder Syndrome

This is how many of us try to live the Christian life:

Gossip or Concern

When is it gossip and when is it legitimately sharing a concern?

Wayne Mack provides a helpful outline in his book, Your Family, God's Way, that I will tweak into question form:

1. Have biblical attempts been made; but failed to resolve the difficulties?
2. Is your motivation for sharing a sincere desire to get help?
3. Are you sharing with those that actually can (and will) furnish godly counseling and solutions?
4. Will the information be helpful to others in a preventative, protective, or restorative way?

A Blessing Often Trampled

“…what is an inexpressible blessing from God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trampled under foot by those who receive the gift every day.”   -Bonhoeffer

What “inexpressible blessing” is Bonhoeffer referring to?  The blessing of being able to gather together with other believers.  I must confess—I often am guilty of trampling this blessing “under foot”.  Bonhoeffer continues:

“It is easily forgotten that the community of Christians is a gift of grace from the kingdom of God, a gift that can be taken from us any day—that the time still separating us from the most profound loneliness may be brief indeed.  Therefore, let those who until now have had the privilege of living a Christian life together with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of their hearts.  Let them thank God on their knees and realize: it is grace, nothing but grace, that we are still permitted to live in the community of Christians today.”  p29-30 Works of Bonhoeffer, Vol. 5 Life Together .

It is sad that many—myself included—can be so jaded and disenfranchised with the gathered church that we forsake this grace.  If you could but are not authentically living in a community of believers let this be a rebuke to your complacency.  Also as we reflect on this selection from Bonhoeffer let us pray for those brothers and sisters in lands where no evangelical community is to be found, or their worship must be done in secret.