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Today I want to encourage you to find a place to belong with a group of other Christ-followers!

We’ve been looking at what whole life discipleship is all about.

I’ve been looking around at people whose Christian lives really thrive and asking if there are common features or core values

• and that is the focus around which we frame the whole vision of our church here!

• it’s the direction of travel on the front of the bus

My dear friend, I want you to be a thriving disciple, a spirit-filled Christ-follower, a human being filled with the love, joy, peace and resilience of God almighty! – That’s true discipleship

To illustrate it, and to give us a visual cue to remember I’m using a spectrum.

What happens when the light of Christ impacts a human being?

• It’s rather like what happens when a beam of white light enters a prism.

• it spills out into a whole spectrum of different colours

 

For example, there is the colour of grace

In other words, to be a disciple you need to be sure there was a point in time and space when you began your relationship with God is a committed way.

• You may not be able to pin down the exact moment, that doesn’t matter, but you need to know that it has happened.
• because at that moment God did something very wonderful in you – he adopted you into his family!

There is the colour of growth

Things that I do more or less regularly that help me to keep my relationship with God alive and fresh – in the same way as my relationship with Rosi and my son

For example –

Feeding on God’s word. This is the habit of satisfying my spiritual hunger from the Bible.

• When we open our minds to the truths of the Scriptures it’s not long before we discover how astoundingly relevant and applicable the principles of this book are.

Praying in the Spirit – so much more than just going through a prayer list or reading prayers out of a book – it’s the experience of letting God’s Spirit communicate with my spirit in prayer – and so often the most remarkable things happen in and around me because I pray

Resonating worship – not merely going through the motions but I allow my heart to resonate with God’s as I sing, as I ponder, as I pray and as I listen to his word here on a Sunday

Today – the biblical value of fellowship – for which I need a small group

When I look at thriving believers, nine times out of ten there is a small group of other Christians they meet with, pray with and find encouragement from each others walk with God.

You can’t be part of the church here for long before hearing about some small group or other

If you’re new to the church, joining a small group is an ideal way of getting in contact with other people in manageable proportions!

Here are some Bible principles about small groups

It is impossible to separate following Christ from being in community

In the Bible there is no such thing as an isolated Christian >>>

all sorts of illustrations are used of Christians – and they all have this idea of community embedded in them

• a family of God >>>
• an army >>>
• a team of builders >>>

and many of them are illustrations where groups of people work or serve together in such a way that the sum is greater than its parts.

• A family falls apart if its members pull in different directions
• An army loses the battle if the soldiers don’t each fight the same enemy
• A building will never be completed if the builders don’t co-ordinate their construction skills

life change happens best in small groups or teams

Whose lives were most profoundly affected by Paul?

• the people he spent the most time and effort with! The small group of men who worked with him, travelled with him and got into scrapes with him
• in other words, the people who were in closest proximity to him

How about Jesus?

• the 12 disciples – because they were consistently in close proximity to Jesus Christ
• … and of these there was an inner circle of Peter James and John
• in other words, the people who were in closest proximity to him felt the greatest impact from him

There’s a fascinating comment from Jesus’ disciples in Luke 11.

Luke 11:1ff One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples (we don’t know which one) said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

It seems that John the baptist had been educating his followers about how to pray and Jesus’ disciples wanted the same training of their own. It reads as if they felt they were missing out!

SO Jesus took his small group of disciples on one side and trained them in praying

2 He said to them, “When you pray, say:

“‘Father,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.

and what we now call the Lord’s prayer was the result.

a small group helps me grow as a Christian

We know that we don’t just drift into God’s family

• you become a Christian
• a step that you take, something that we do

But that’s not the end of the story

• discovering Christ is a transforming experience that many of us have discovered
• It’s no wonder that Jesus once described it as like ‘being born again’ it’s great – but you’re still a baby!
• process of growth is needed

And in just the same way that a child discovers his earthly Father, so a child of God needs to discover his heavenly father within the orbit of a family. It’s all to do with your relationship with God

So the purpose of our small group is connect people together in relational groups (Acts 5:42) – so we can connect with God!

as simple and as profound as that!

In the early church they were constantly growing by meeting together. This is Luk’s almost throw-away line:

Acts 5:42 Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.

… and it’s very revealing. They met in big gatherings like this – and they also me ‘from house to house’

so the home was a key focus of God’s activity.

We can see this working out throughout the early church

• what did they do? They ate together, prayed together, searched the scriptures together (for them the OT) learned together
• fundamentally, their small group gave them a place where it was OK to be a Christian in the midst of a hostile and violent world

I would go as far as to say that there are aspects of spiritual growth that you cannot enjoy without being in close proximity to other believers

(I know it is impossible for some – God knows that too)

small group gives me a community to relate to

… it gives me significance

today we live in an era of great personal insignificance

• More than ever our church needs to recapture the priority of community

Psalms 68:4 (p582) Sing to God, sing praise to his name, extol … the LORD- and rejoice before him.

(look at how he’s described)

5 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, (the most powerless and vulnerable of their day) is God …

6 God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing;…

Today we don’t have extended families as David did

• therefore the small groups in the church are some of the most important occasions for personal God-centred and God-honouring interaction between us

Your small group could be one of the most meaning full interactions some of its members have in the whole week.

• God’s love amongst God’s people is always the most convincing argument for the relevance and truth of the gospel.

So small groups are there so you can

• know and be known
• love and be loved
• celebrate and be celebrated by a small group of other people.

they multiply God’s ministry in the church

E.g. Moses

Moses was tired out Exodus 18:13ff (p75)

• The constant barrage of people asking for his help and wisdom was exhausting him and the queues to see him were getting more frustrated by the hour.
• Some were having to wait all day!
• So when Jethro came to visit he saw immediately that ‘this thing is not good’ and advised Moses to subdivide the nation into groups.
• What was the size of the smallest group? Ten! The deal was simple.
• The routine pastoral situations could be dealt with by the leaders of tens, the more complex by the leaders of 50s or 100s and only the most demanding cases were ever to reach Moses ears.
• This freed Moss time and heart to focus on leading the nation, the task God has uniquely called him to.
• The results were impressive.
• The immediate consequence was a pastorally fulfilled people who went home satisfied and not frustrated v23.
• In the longer term there were greater benefits to be had. Within three months Moses was meeting God in Sinai – as task that would have been quite impossible had he been snowed under with the welter of personal demands – and casting God’s vision in the minds of the people which inspired and motivated them to follow.
• Reading the chapters together you could conclude that God instigated this division of the people and the corresponding change in the leadership structure deliberately to pave the way for the blessing that was to follow.

Whenever there has been a lasting revival in the church of Jesus Christ it has always been accompanied by people meeting and caring for each other in small groups

Contrast Whitefield and Wesley.

Whitefield – powerful preacher

• revival broke out time and again when he went to minister

Wesley – another powerful preacher

• revival broke out time and again when he went to minister

There was, however, one noticeable difference between them. In 1778 Wesley he began forming “voluntary bands” – groups of 10 people supervised by a leader to help people understand the Bible and what God was doing in their lives. They were also there to encourage Christian Stewardship – each member gave at lest 1 penny a week!

• These developed into “class meetings” from Latin ‘Classis’ = division. (Nothing to do with school!)
• It was a simple method to help ordianry people like us develop their faith
• From this method they got themselves a nickname – ‘Methodists’

they quickly developed into centres of pastoral care, community and teaching

Let me ask you – which church is still in existence today? Whitefield’s or Wesley’s?

Recap

Pray