authentic community
Next Wave is the Small Group sign-up event that happens 3 times a year during which we gather names of interested people and help them find their group.
Over 157 people during this season’s Next Wave let us know they were ready for a group and have been invited to attend an initial meeting. That brings our total of adults engaged in small groups to nearly 600 people. Praise God!
Although I rejoice in the positive trend of the numbers—and being the sinner that I am I fight and fail constantly not to find my identity in the success or failure of Small Groups—our hope is not that we can produce great numbers, but hear great stories. Stories of one beggar in community with other beggars together experiencing the transformative power of the Gospel wrought in their hearts by the Holy Spirit. We say it this way:
The purpose of a Small Group is to provide a safe and predictable environment where people experience spiritual growth lived out in authentic community.
A story from this past year is from a group that has seen it’s members experience some extreme personal high’s and lows: hurting marriages, painful life experiences that don’t seem to go away, and the daily struggle to find the peace of Christ in the midst of complex and messy work and family situations. A member of that group told me this:
“When we meet we have intimate family discourse; sharing and ministering to one another. I have experienced love and acceptance in a way that comes from family that I don’t receive from my own.”
By moving from sitting in rows in worship to sitting in a circle in a home our isolation from other people ends and they become real. Small Group puts you in the position to remove your nicey-nice face and come to grips with the reality of life in a broken world. Admit it, we don’t have it all together, and we all have baggage and need the company of broken and messy travelers like ourselves. We need to know the truth of our forgiveness and the endless depths of Christ’s love for us. It’s found in community where we love and forgive one another “...just as in Christ God forgave you.” Eph. 4:32
Are you ready? The Next Wave is January 23rd.
For more information visit: www.southwood.org/smallgroups