to grow spiritually…

the value of being in a small group…

…five times more likely to be active in church than those who attended worship service alone.  They also found that more than eight out of ten of the members who were active in a small group were still in church 5 years later.  However, only two of ten were still active in the church five years later if they attended worship services only.

The reality is that most life change occurs in a small group!

Note the beginning of the excerpts set up the premise that he’s going to talk about spiritual growth. Then he quotes the president of LifeWay about the value of small groups and how going ensures you’ll still be going five years down the road whereas those who only take a small dose each week were so much less likely to be as active.

So, what’s wrong with this? Where’s the growth, other than the number of folks filing through the doors each week of course? We are talking about growing spiritually, right?

So, here’s the unquestioned assumption here not being challenged is “are those who are still involved five years later actually walking more like Christ (not do they go to church more often, tithe more, walk and talk like ‘us’)?” While I would submit there are a handful who truly live more like Jesus I would also submit it’s not the small groups, or the worship services that changed those lives. In fact, I would submit that those lives would have been changed even apart from the millions of dollars it took to “make it happen” through weekly experiences at the church. Those individuals, given a genuine one on one relationship with another believer would have grown and saved “the kingdom” millions of dollars.

David, I don’t know if you will read this or not. And I hope that, if you do, you won’t be offended that I chose to blog about this rather than write a personal email. I sat and listened to your preaching for about a year and a half as I had begun to awake from my Churchianity. I heard the inner struggle you too were going through coming through in your own preaching. I heard you lament that you stayed awake at nights knowing the lack of impact all the weekly efforts were really making in the multitude surrounding you. Of all the churches I had been a part of and visited, Long Hollow seemed to have the most potential for turning the tide and throwing out the business-focused church growth questions and evaluators and trying to truly find a way to measure and evaluate personal spiritual growth. I hope God will continue to allow you to be tormented with those questions rather than, as it appears in this article, settling for the numbers=growth model which has paralyzed those who call themselves believers for decades. It was through torment like that I was awakened and realized God was doing something brand new and I wanted to be a part of it.

Let me challenge you to read the book Plan A. And There Is No Plan B. by Dwight Robertson. Specifically looking for the illustration about the man who invented the game of checkers. I believe churches, like the emperor of China in that illustration, would be offended that any believer would “ask for so little” as to invest themselves into two others, who would in turn invest themselves into two, who would eventually, the pattern continued, change the world. Why do we always have to find more productive ways of doing it ourselves when Jesus gave to us The Way and showed us how to do it.

It’s part of becoming amphibious and being able to move openly among the a-churched (they just don’t care if they are churched or unchurched… they are a-church) without them discovering some of my religion-ramblings which might both scare them off from the relationships we are developing and make them feel I was deceiving them as a zealot-wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Everything from here down (older/previous) has been moved from my personal/family blog (the old life|simple one).

You’ve probably seen a movie or TV show that follows that standard story line where some individual wakes up from a bonk on the head and can hear the thoughts of everyone around him. While novel at first, it becomes deafening and tortuous.

Stopped at a street corner seeing a homeless person with a sign, we don’t hear the cries from the life of the person in the car next to us who is at the end of his rope and near the point of taking his own life. Or the car behind us who has had hearing trouble from birth. Or the person passing us in the other lane who is wondering how to find their teen daughter who just ran away from home.

At that very moment God began teaching me something brand new. God revealed to me that as His son walked and taught among the crowds he not only saw the multitude, but he KNEW every single person in the crowds. Jesus knew each person and their life at any given moment. Imagine that same standard story plot except rather than just hearing the thoughts of every person around you at any given moment, KNOWING the complete persons… their life (remember the woman at the well?). How deafening could that be for a mere human?
QUESTION: How did Jesus, who didn’t just see a written sign in the hands of someone asking for help, but who ‘heard’ the lives of a multitude crying out around him, know when to stop and meet the specific needs of specific individuals?

ANSWER: He was always in tune with His Father and did only that which He saw His Father doing.

So Jesus explained himself at length. “I’m telling you this straight. The Son can’t independently do a thing, only what he sees the Father doing. What the Father does, the Son does.“ John 5:19

In our first trek down a singular-focused re-reading we are watching specifically for passages that appear to speak to the global Church, the local Body of Christ (church), and synagogues or meeting places. It’s already been interesting as we discover how many fliters we unknowingly apply as we explore and encounter Scripture.
It’s already been awesome. I started this new category just for posting insights from our readings.