Being a home group leader is really not easy. For the three years I led a home group, I only rarely felt I'd "got it right", and I found it far harder than preaching or leading or one-to-oneing. How you teach the Bible, how you encourage and guide the discussion, how you phrase questions… these are all things learned mainly through experience/mistakes/stumbling across what works.
Now there's a bit of a short cut: at this new blog for home group leaders, you can find some "potted proverbs". Well worth going to if you're a home group leader, obviously, but also if you're a home group member, so you can see what home groups can and should be, and how you can be a really encouraging part of it.
Just a quick flavour of the latest couple of posts:
This year’s London Men's Convention theme exhorts us to be Faithful to God at work, home, church and in mission, whatever the cost. Convention speakers include:
With solo music from Nathan Tasker and the spine-tingling experience of praising the Lord in a choir of 4000 at the Royal Albert Hall, this will be a convention not to miss. More details from the Christian conventions website or book tickets from the Royal Albert Hall.
Here’s a helpful explanation for why the resurrection isn’t automatically ridiculous, from Paul Perkin, once a theoretical physicist and now vicar of St Mark’s Battersea.
Of course, just because Jesus could have risen doesn’t mean he did. Which brings us onto the wealth of historical evidence for his rising from the dead…
That strikes me as an answer which begins where most people are at, and helps people to see that you don’t have to rule resurrection out as an sensible explanation.
You’ll be able to watch Paul’s full answer, as well as many other great answers to common objections to Christianity, on the new evangelistic Christianity Explored website, which is set to be launched in April along with the new CE DVD and books.
If you’re anything like me, there’s an instinctive tendency to see some roles in the local church as “spiritual” and others as merely “practical”.
The “spiritual stuff” is the preaching, the prayer meetings and the latest evangelistic initiative. The “practical stuff” is writing the minutes, printing the newsletter and emailing the rotas round… obvious.
And then God goes and says that administration is a spiritual gift (1 Corinthians 12 v 28). It’s right there in the list with teaching and healing and helping.
Why? Because God knows that if the body of Christ is to proclaim the gospel faithfully, then good administration is essential.
As far as I can see, church administration isn’t designed to be about bureaucracy. At its heart it’s all about helping the people of God to communicate, and ensuring the wonderful resources God gives us are co-ordinated, so that we can all play our part in the extension of God’s kingdom.
It’s “spiritual stuff”.
At its best, good administration:
It’s exciting, essential gospel work that helps bring people to Christ and grow in Christ.
As someone who’s done a lot of admin this really encourages me, particularly this week as I prepare a workshop on administration for the CRE exhibition in Peterborough next week.
And hopefully if you’re someone who does some admin work for your church, it’ll encourage you. Your work isn’t just “practical stuff”; it’s spiritual, and you’re using a spiritual gift to serve God. If you’re someone who has a different role in the church, why not make a point of “encouraging an administrator” every week this year?
After all, church admin is “spiritual stuff”—part of the way God’s people continue the biggest point on any church’s to-do list: to go and make disciples of all nations.
Your weekly filter of news and interesting stuff from the internet.
How not to do church
“It melts away fears and worries, and puts in their place a sense of security, warmth and calm. This can be a life-changing experience.”
That’s what drunkenness offers, as pointed out by this Telegraph article which picks up on the actor Charlie Sheen’s struggle with the bottle.
And let’s be honest: that’s what drunkenness delivers for many people.
Of course, there’s a downside. Andrew Brown continues: “life for heavy boozers tends to be punctuated with agonizing catastrophes, messes that need to be cleared up, phone calls, pleas for forgiveness.”
But still, alcohol offers us a chance to be the "me that I want to be". It gets rid of inhibitions and gives the confidence to be "yourself".
I wonder if that’s why the traditional line churches (and particularly youth groups) give doesn’t work for people who struggle with drunkenness, as I did for years. I regularly heard: “Don’t get drunk. It’s not good. God doesn’t like it”. And yet the thing is: in many ways, drunkenness is good. And in many ways, I like it!
So this article got me thinking about how I need to remember, and I need to encourage others to remember, the sentence which follows Paul’s famous “no” to getting drunk in Ephesians 5 v 18:
“Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery…
“Instead, be filled with the Spirit.”
Why is the answer to the temptation of drunkenness to look at the Spirit? Because the Spirit “melts away fears and worries, and puts in their place a sense of security, warmth, and calm.”
To put it another way, people filled with the Spirit, who work to let the Spirit work in them, “are being transformed into [Christ’s] likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from … the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3 v 18).
The Spirit offers us the ability to become the me that I want to be: a Christ-like me. And there’s no downside, no morning after, no hangover. There's no need to get drunk because for the Christian, there is something better than the good things alcohol offers. I wonder if that’s why Paul finishes Ephesians 5 v 18 as he does.
ITV's Daybreak had a revealing piece this morning on Michael Carroll, who won over ÂŁ9 million on the National Lottery in 2002, spent it all, and found he was miserable and suspicious.
Amazing to find at the end that he still buys lottery tickets: I’m trying to come up with an answer as to what’s going on in his mind that leads him to chase an idol he’s discovered is worthless.
Maybe Tim Keller’s insight in Counterfeit Gods sheds some light. He's talking about a famous US millionaire and writes: “[he] knew money was an idol in his heart, but he didn’t know how to root it out. It can’t be removed, only replaced. It must be supplanted by the one who, though rich, became poor, so that we might truly be rich.
“When you see Jesus dying to make you his treasure, that will make him yours.”
Been working on a seminar I'm running for home group leaders at CRE Peterborough next week, and keep coming back to a fundamental question: What exactly is a home group for?
When you ask a random selection of small group leaders, you get a huge range of responses:
But when you quiz people to find out how they actually spend their time in the small group, you often discover that many groups are given over to what we might call the human needs of the group, rather than on listening to God's word together. They eat, they talk, they laugh (a lot!), they share needs, they enjoy each other's company, they feel supported, loved, affirmed, prayed for.
I think I want to say (as gently as I'm able) that this surely has to be the tail wagging the dog.
In Acts 2 v 42, we read a familiar description of what the first Christian community did when they met together:
"And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." (ESV)
They did a whole lot of stuff—but the first thing they did was devote themselves to the apostles' teaching. All the other stuff they did sprang out of this fundamental activity—they listened to the authoritative word of God, delivered to them through His chosen representatives.
And this is a pattern that persisted: In Colossians 3 v 16 we read:
"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God."
The first Christians did many things when they met together, but the thing that was at the heart of each of them was that the word of Christ was there, giving shape to their songs, their prayers, even the way they told each other off!
People come to home groups for many reasons. They may be lonely and need company; they may be hungry and need feeding; they may be discouraged or struggling in their lives, and need support.
But what I think my main point at this seminar will be is: if you are the leader of a home group, you need to have firmly fixed in your mind that the way you will meet their real needs is to let the word of Christ from the Bible take centre stage in your time together.
Bacon sandwiches help with the physical hunger, but the hunger in our hearts will only be fed by allowing the words of Jesus, and the Bible's witness to Jesus, to be the menu for the evening.
