I'm Interested... I think

This week, I am going to explain how the fall season is going to work. This promises to be very boring (hopefully I can spice it up a little) but very informative and necessary. I’ve found in the year that I have been here that Lancaster (and Lebanon) County folks generally need to know every last detail before they are willing to commit to something. We will do our best to help you with any concerns or uncertainties you might have.

Yesterday, you found an Interest Form concerning the Grace Matters series. We have already received back dozens of these forms. Thanks for your eagerness to go deeper with the weekend message with a small group of others from your church family. For those who are still considering group, please try to get your completed forms back to us by next Sunday, September 6.

Everyone who submits an Interest Form will receive a letter in the mail. This letter will serve as confirmation of receipt of your form. Also, there will be instructions concerning the three options you will have for getting into a group. We wish to make this as accommodating to your lifestyle as possible. Briefly, those three options are:

• Use our GroupFinder Database to join an existing group,


• Give us a list of other people with whom you would like to be in group (Note: you should probably check with them before putting their name on a list.), or


• Come to one of the Connection Events we are planning for later in September. At a Connection Event, you will have the opportunity to mingle with others who are looking to participate in our group interaction and hopefully find people who feel like a match for you.

Soon, we will be posting an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) informational page. If you have questions now, please email them to CONNECThelp@lgbc.org. If general enough, they will be included in the FAQ. If more specific in nature, we will respond directly via email or phone.

Come back tomorrow to find out what the CONNECT Leadership Team will do to help your group experience be the best it can be.

"Teach Me, Father"

Most people would agree that one of the greatest ways to grow in any endeavor is by having a committed mentor. But let’s deal with reality. Very few people are so committed to discipling others that they are willing to enter into a mentoring relationship. Frankly, most people don’t have the time. Yet, the number one regret I hear from younger people, especially men, is that no one from the more-seasoned generation is willing to mentor them.

Most people partly fill this need through friendships, i.e., peer relationship. Group provides the structure required to take something that every one of us knows we desperately need and make it more intentional. Furthermore, I want to drop a plug in here for multi-generational groups. When the generations mix, it’s a beautiful thing! The more mature generation lends wisdom and prudence to the younger generation. They represent the “fathers” of the faith, people who have traveled the road of faithfulness and know the hazards along the path. What a blessing they are to the next generation. But the fathers also have something to gain from intergenerational relationships. They get to be fully-engaged in the battle with the powers of darkness. You see, a few decades earlier, they were on the front lines of the battle for the Kingdom of God. But now, they often feel as though the church has “outgrown” them and it’s not their church anymore. However, when they find a place where they can fill the God-designated role for them in His church, they once again feel as though they are contributing vitally to God’s work of redemption in the world.

Don’t have time to mentor? Get in a multi-generational group where you can pour into the life of the next generation. Need a mentor? Need peer relationships? Get into a multi-generational group where you will be exposed to both those who have incredible wisdom to share with the next generation and those alongside of whom you will be battling the forces of the evil one.

Doing Church or Being the Church

This post has a bit of overlap with a previous post, but I feel so strongly about this that it merits its own entry. Group life is the best way I know to help Christians to begin being the church rather than to fall into the trap of doing church. There’s something I heard from Greg Laurie years back that has stuck with me: “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than hanging out at McDonalds makes you a hamburger!” OK, so the analogy breaks down a bit, but you have to love the core of the message, namely that you can spend your entire life in a church and never really get it. How many times have you listened to an excellent sermon, one which exposed the truth of the Word very clearly, and heard the applications, even challenges, offered by the preacher, and nodded in agreement, yet failed to follow through?

It is a very difficult thing to be in a group, agree on an item of action, and then flake out. It’s called peer pressure, or better yet, peer accountability. All of us know of the sway that others can have on behavior. Unfortunately, most of the time we recognize the negative potential from peer influence rather than seizing the good that God actually designed into us as social creatures. In community, we have every opportunity to actually put feet to our faith and live out our calling. And others will be there to help you "get 'er done." But, be forewarned: You can still flake out, but you’re going to have a much harder time explaining it away.

Read this blog post: http://ricksthoughtsandramblings.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-bike-ride-and-great-small-group.html

Integrity

I was told a few days ago that one family (likely, only one) was very excited to have me come to Grace Church because I hadn’t been a pastor all of my life – like Scott, Tim, and Whitey came from the womb thumping a Bible. Frankly, what this dear saint was trying to say was that pastors ask “common Christians” to do too much, that we don’t understand the demands of life.

Frankly, I would say that the American church has become something that you do in a certain place (for us, a building on a plot of land at 501 W. Lincoln in Lititz) at certain times. Those times in the American Christian culture are Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. It’s what’s expected. Some churches expect you to be there “whenever the doors are open and the lights are on.” And a tremendous amount of energy is exerted trying to guilt you into serving the multitude of programs that the church offers to attract more people into our fellowship. This puts tremendous stress on the lives of the few people who accept this modus operandi, this way of doing “church.”

One huge reason I am an advocate of small groups is that groups shatter these views of faithfulness and church. We are not called to a spiritual or sacred life that lives in opposition to our “real” life in the “secular world.” We are called to allow the truths of the gospel message to transform us in the midst of a rebellious world. We are called to “be” the church, not to “do” church. And as far as a compelling, attractive message… How about transformed lives and peace in the midst of turmoil, even tribulation? I love group life because it forces us to live out our faith and to do it in the regular routine of life. It becomes incredibly difficult to live a life caught in the tension of compartmentalization when you have others in your life, preferably daily, who are invested in you and even relying on you.

Are you worried that you might be living a life of lies, the life of a hypocrite? Get into a healthy group. You think it will take more of your time away. It will actually help you to organize, prioritize, and integrate your life. Christ asks us to live in community, and He claimed, “My purpose is to give life in all its fullness” (John 10:10 NLT). Do you believe Him? Do you trust Him?

Breaking Free of Culture

There are a lot of obstacles to growing in the Christian faith. Many of them are within us, patterns and routines we follow, things that we hold as essential truths. These are things that we learn as we grow, some from family, some from formal education, and most from the culture. I blogged a couple weeks back about one of those patterns that we are taught by the educational culture, namely that summer is a time to disengage. Today, I’d like to blog about another.

Being an American means that you value freedom. Especially in this area of the country, the birthplace of the American Revolution, we learn that freedom is a HUGE issue. And, in case you needed a little more help learning that, look around town, at the end of your block, or maybe in your own backyard, and see the ancient grave markers, constant reminders that freedom is worth fighting for, even worth dying for. However, what was fought for and achieved a couple hundred years ago was something radically different than what we call “freedom” today. We have enculturated “individualism,” and in the extreme “libertinism,” as our highest values. The values of our Forefathers have been corrupted, and we no longer have a place for “We the people” and “the common good.”

These definitions of “freedom” are decidedly foreign to the Bible and pure Christian faith. We certainly make personal confessions of faith, but we are expected to live out the implications of our commitment in community. At its core, the Christian life is one modeled after Christ, and His life was characterized as one that gave up personal freedoms and poured out life for the sake of others. This is something that you gradually learn how to do when you commit to living intimately in Christian community. You learn how to live and love like Christ.

Train Your Children Well

For any of us who are parents, we have concerns over whether we are raising our kids rightly, if they will turn out OK. For Christian parents, the concern is that they would also become Christians. However, we all have different approaches toward reaching those goals. Some see their primary responsibility as bringing their kids to church where they will be exposed to the Christian message and culture. Others take a more hands-on approach, teaching their children through devotions, Bible studies, and the like. Maybe they’ll put their kids into Christian school trying to immerse them in Christian culture.

Can I suggest something that has been perhaps more significant in our life than all of those wonderful things? It’s small group. Now I can hear most of you thinking, “Sure he’ll say that – He’s the Groups guy!” But hear me out. You have to admit that most of what your kids truly learn and adopt is caught, not taught. They look to parents, grandparents, peers, and cultural icons to determine how they will live their lives. And we have found, and seen in the lives of countless others, that when we live out the implications of the gospel which we profess, when our kids see us seeking to live faithful lives in the community which God has prepared for us, it has a profound impact on their spiritual development. Our kids have seen us shuffle our schedule, even say “no” to some neat opportunities, because our fellowship community was a priority for us. Our daughters learned how to love people, even difficult people, through our group experiences. They learned how to serve and how to encourage others. They have learned to look for spiritual gifts in others and point out those they see. Most importantly, they understand what it means to belong and how the worst experience of life is not physical pain, but the pain of loneliness and separation, from God and from His people.

Do you want your kids to grow spiritually? I suggest that you consider how you can start living out your faith in ways that are intentional. A great way is to get involved in a group. Make the hard decisions that carve out time for community. And take your kids along on the journey. They’re watching you to see what you really believe – our behaviors betray the innermost desires of our hearts.

The Summer Riddle?

So, what is it about summer? We should have the very most available time. Kids aren't in school. Most of their extracurricular activities are on hold. Days are significantly longer. But we have less time. It's like being a kid at Disney, a million things to do and experience collide with the physical realities of time, space, and energy. So we either run ourselves to death, like that kid, because we want it all and we must have it now, or we make some things priorities and say "No" to the rest.

Which are you? How do you choose which things to do, assuming you do? To set priorities, you must have a standard against which you test everything. This is your worldview; it's how you attribute value. So, what's your standard?