Sometimes you just gotta beat it to death…. I was talking with a friend, and he was telling me about his small group. It sounded like they were spinning their wheels a bit. So I asked him why his church had small groups. He said, “I don’t think anyone knows.”
Then, of course, he said, “We need them to experience community.” But that was just the “right” answer. We talked a little more; I asked him, “Would you die for the people in your small group?” He admitted that he probably wouldn’t.
Probably the major challenge of being a Christian is to “love”. Most of us understand that love has no limits. As a result we imagine loving the whole world and are frightened by the immensity of the challenge. It’s even hard to imagine loving everyone who shows up on Sunday morning for church. But when you sit around the same table, and you can take in everyone’s name, and know a fair amount about each person, it becomes, if not easy, at least within the realm of possibility.
But what is it to love these people? I believe it means being available to one another. It means hearing one another and sharing ourselves at whatever level we are capable of.
The wonderful thing is that love is a gift. There is something precious about the most halting attempts a person makes to love someone. Because at that point the person has given a gift, perhaps one that took great courage. Maybe the person never opens up to anyone, but for once has been coaxed out of his or her shell. What a wonderful moment.
I envision a small group of Christians as a kind of “church concentrate” or “essence of church.” Within this group we can really live out the commandment Christ gave, that we love one another. We can really lay down our lives for each other.
It’s not a hundred people; it’s not a bunch of strangers. It’s a group that we have come to know, small enough that we aren’t stretched too thin. And it’s not 24/7, it’s maybe two or three hours a week.
THAT is the point; THAT is the moment when eternity intersects time, when what we are becoming intersects what we are, when the Church becomes real in the world. That’s the time and place where time and place reach their full potential as each of us reveals what God is making of us, and affirms what God is doing in the other person.
And the amazing thing about it is how much laughter there is in the whole process. It sounds serious and terribly important, but if you aren’t laughing you aren’t getting it. Because each person is glorious; each is a Son or Daughter of God. How can our hearts not sing when we see the beauty of the glory of the Lord reflected in each face?
I believe these groups are the foundation of our lives as Christians. They either make us or break us. When we are in them we are at the point where we have the best opportunity to really love. If it doesn’t happen here, it won’t happen anywhere.
– August 2012