Last week I explained a bit of the journey that the ministry leaders, elders, and pastors had been on is discovering our priorities and vision for the next phase of development for ANCC.
We talked about:
Mission: Reaching out with the Good News, both home and away.
Discipleship: Teaching and equipping people to become more like Jesus.
Worship: Facilitating authentic worship where everyone is invited to encounter the presence of God.
Legacy: Nurturing and investing in our children, teenagers and young adults - the future church today.
We wrapped this into a vision statement:
Making Jesus known to everyone, everywhere.
Today, I want us to focus a little be on one aspect of how this will be achieved.
You Can’t Fly With Broken Wings
God organised the NT church is a specific way. The people met together in the main gathering and small groups.
Acts 2:42-47: They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
God organised the NT church is a specific way. The people met together in the main gathering place, the temple courts, eventually they were scattered and met in Catacombs, fields, by rivers, and so on. They also met in each others’ homes, where they celebrated communion.
God organised His Church with two meeting places, two wings. William Beckham, in his book, The Second Reformation, writes: “The Creator once created a Church with two wings: one wing was for large group celebration, the other was for small group community. Using both wings, the Church could soar into the heavens, entering into His presence and to do His will over the earth. After a few hundred years of flying across the earth, the Two-Winged church began to question the need for the small group wing… The two-winged church that had soared into the heavens was now for all practical purposes one-winged…. From time to time, the Church dreamed of flying into the presence of the Creator, and doing His will over the earth… In compassion the Creator divinely stretched out His hand and reshaped His church so it could use both wings. Once again the Creator possessed a Church that could fly into is presence and soar over the all the earth, fulfilling His purposes and plans.”
This year we are relaunching our small group network. We care calling them Growth Groups. Our Growth Groups exist to fulfil the mandate to make Disciples, Missional, Worship and Legacy. They will help us fulfil the vision of Making Jesus known to Everyone, Everywhere.
Currently, I think we have five regular homes groups meeting, online and in-person. This is pretty low in terms of a church our size. In fact, my dream would be to have a Growth Group in each of the 16 wards of Reading and further afield.
We grow in three ways in a Growth Group:
- Spiritually, as we grow closer to Jesus.
- Serving, as we seek to serve others and encourage other members of the group.
- Flourishing, healthy groups should grow numerically and eventually sub-divide.
If you’re already part of Growth Group, you’ll already understand this, but here’s some more reasons to join a Growth Group:
1. An Opportunity to Show Love.
People often say to me, “ANCC is too big, we don’t know anyone,” or “smaller churches are better.” The truth is ANCC is not too big. It is not fully-grown yet!
The two wings of God’s Church include big meetings.
We need the second wing of the Growth Group to be able to fly.
Smaller churches are not better, all people mean is that they feel loved because they know more people in the nucleus of the church.
Growth Groups are a fantastic way to make a larger church feel smaller.
Romans 15:7: Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God
Isn’t this a beautiful verse? It reminds us if you’re looking for a perfect church, you’re never going to find it. Instead of trying to find a church that’s perfect, why don’t we just obey this command? Why don’t we accept one another, and begin to love each other, and watch the improvement that happens when we truly love each other?
Psalms 133:1: How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!
Years ago there was a TV series called Cheers. It was set in a Boston bar and featured characters who all shared the bar in common. The theme song’s refrain could have described on of the reasons for Growth Groups:
“Sometimes you want to go, Where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came.”(source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/cheerslyrics.html)
Or another hit show was Friends, and it’s refrain went like this:
“But, I'll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour. I'll be there for you, like I've been there before. I'll be there for you, cause you're there for me too.”(source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/friendslyrics.html)
Friendships are reciprocal. It was more than comedy that kept people watching, it was the friendships.
Friendships in Growth Groups are so powerful.
2. An Opportunity to Give Help.
Galatians 5:13: You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.
When we grow together, we put others’ interests before our own. Jesus showed us how when He washed the feet of the disciples. That serving others brings the blessing of internal happiness to our souls.
The way that the church is made a fellowship is that no one stands alone.
That means that Growth Groups become a place of support, by running the race together. Being alongside one another.
Sometimes things do not turn out the way we expected. When they don’t we need others, even spiritual parents, to come alongside us.
3. An Opportunity to Give Guidance.
Colossians 3:16: Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.
We’ve all heard that two heads are better than one. We know that.
Proverbs 27:17: As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
Notice that the Bible says how to develop our ability to give good advice: Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly. . . you need to know the Word before you can share it in advice. Growth Groups are a place of learning too.
You know more than you think you know. God has given you revelation, insight through experiences and also plain common sense. Not all the teaching happens from the platform in any church, we are constantly teaching one another how to do things.
4. An Opportunity to Reach Out
Acts 1:8: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
No one likes the idea of witnessing. We believe that telling our story will be met with opposition. At times it may be (Matthew 5:12; John 15:20).
But if we are not actively our story we are denying the power of God in our lives. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which we believe in and receive as a Pentecostal church, is deeply connected to our witness.
Growth Groups deliberately have a different rhythm to a traditional House Group. They will meet around the word for three weeks but then on the fourth week they will meet socially, providing an opportunity to invite non-Christian friends.
If your friends only get invited to ANCC at Christmas they are more likely to say no. But of they’ve been to a few social interactions with your Growth Group, they will be much more inclined to say yes to an invitation to an event here.
Overcoming the obstacles is difficult for many of us. That is why we will be giving you simple tools this year to help. All of us have a story of God’s grace to tell.
One final thought before we wrap this up with some discussion time.
I spoke at the beginning about the two-winged church. Let me put this another way for you. A jet aeroplane is flying along and one of its engines cuts out. Will it go around in circles? No. It will fly slower, though. And flying slower means it may lose altitude. it may even hit stalling speed if it’s flight angle is not adjusted, or the weight it is carrying slows it more, or it just puts too much strain on the remaining engine.
Going through church life with no Growth Group involvement means we put a strain on our spiritual lives, we do not grow as fast, do not fly as high as we should and are in danger of stalling.
Wrapping this up:
For the next five minutes I would love you to spend time chatting with the person next to you discussing the three statements/question on the screens:
I belong to a Growth Group and I love….
I don't belong go to a Growth because…
Should we host a Growth Group?
Comments
Post a Comment