*This is adapted from an email I wrote to a group of small-group leaders. Though it’s tied to a specific discussion around a book we're reading together: Cloud and Townsend's Making Small Groups Work, the principles apply widely to anyone thinking about discipleship and spiritual growth.
Grace, truth, and time.
First, time. “Helping your group take the long view.” Life Groups aren’t meant to be just a thing we do every week. They’re meant to be a time where we stop together, open up our brokenness, our wounds, our failures together, and seek grace and truth.
Grace — “unmerited favor, something brought to us, not created or produced by us.”
I suspect we have Life Groups full of very independent, self-sufficient people. How often does someone in our group really need something? Or express that need? Not just a meal when we’re sick—something needed in order to move forward in life, in order to heal.
Are our groups providing for one another?
Grace is so much more than forgiveness. It’s the gas that gets us moving in holiness, in healing, in growth. That truth alone could really change the culture of our Life Groups.
Are we asking one another, “What do you need that we can give you?”
Are we asking, “What good things can each person receive from others in the group?”
As Life Group leaders, we have to help people ask these questions. It sounds counterintuitive—almost self-centered—but if we never ask, “What do I need to be getting from others in this group?” then each group becomes a place where everyone has permission to stay the same. If no one is being asked how they need to change, how they need to grow, and if no one is specifically giving them what they need to grow, we shouldn’t be surprised when no one grows.
Truth works the same way. We need to be groups where we ask:
“What truths do the people in this group need to hear in order to move forward?”
And then we take it further:
What experience does this person need in order to own that truth?
What experience will help them believe it?
What experience will help them start living it?
What experience will help them see the sin or the personal problem that’s keeping them stuck?
What experience will help them heal from the wounds in their past?
These are the questions Life Group leaders have to ask and gently lead their groups through.
We’re bringing Jesus into our groups and asking him to heal people and give growth—in our souls and in the souls of those around us. But we also have to begin saying, “Show me where I need to change so I can be and do better. Show me the truth and where I am in relation to it.”
That’s where we’re leading our people. It’s what we’re trying to facilitate each week so that our group time really is redemptive time.
How do we turn our groups into experiences—experiences that happen over time and lead to real healing and growth?
Experiences where people receive truth and unmerited favor—not just forgiveness, but gifts given from others that move them forward in personal growth and holiness?
What are those gifts?
And what do we need in order to make the changes and do the healing that give us a taste of heaven to come?
