Fireside Chat

What had discipleship looked like for thousands of years leading up to the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason? Let’s face it: the world we are familiar with is the post-Enlightenment era. Do you want to know about something? Buy a book and read it! (OK, I’m showing my age. “Read a blog or listen to a podcast!”) And personal discipleship in the church today is driven by the call to “quiet time.” But for thousands of years leading up to the invention of the printing press, very few people could actually read. Were they weak in their faith? Were they deficient in some way because they weren’t daily reading their Bible and journaling their thoughts?

Well, I certainly hope that you didn’t answer “Yes” to those rhetorical questions. Frankly, this was a time when individualism was less popular, even seen as dangerous. Community played a huge part in discipleship. Whether it was the family, the church, or the village, folks got together and interacted with one another around God’s Word and life. People spent time together, sharing food, insights, and struggles. They learned and practiced, sometimes all in the same gathering. And their faith was extremely practical, impacting their lives and casting their culture.

Last Saturday, 23 Leaders from our CONNECT Small Groups Ministry got together at the home of Denny and Gini Hummer for our first Quarterly CONNECT Leadership Fireside Chat. It was an opportunity to come together as the leaders of Grace Church. Does that sound strange to you? “Aren’t the leaders of Grace Church the pastors and elders?” Certainly. But biblical leadership is primarily about influence. And who is more influential in the lives of the members of a small group than the one who pours himself or herself out for them, their group leader. And your pastor and Coach want to do the same for your group, namely to make ourselves very accessible to the people in our ministry.

We had a great night of sharing about what God is doing in our groups and about how we are struggling. Yes, I “taught” more than I wanted to. I felt it was needed at a couple points, and it led to great dialog. Afterward, one Leader told me that he was encouraged most to know that the difficulties he was facing did not indicate that he was failing as a Leader, but that he was truly engaging in real discipleship. He clearly heard that there were other groups struggling through the very same issues. Another Leader told me that for the first time she was beginning to understand that group was not the place people go to grow but actually how people grow. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Can We Use the Bible?

When I arrived here at Grace in September 2008, I had a month to organize and launch a Small Groups ministry. That wasn’t a lot of time, even if I had been in this culture for my entire life. As you can imagine, I had to learn about the culture and the church very quickly. And, the church had been warned by Pastor Scott for about 2 months that I was coming from Saddleback Church. Now, nearly everyone has heard of Saddleback or Rick Warren. And everyone seems to have a strong opinion regarding Rick. Some absolutely love him while some loath him. There doesn’t seem to be too many in the middle! As you can imagine, most of the people I would work with at Grace had ideas about me before I arrived.

I have to tell you about one gal in particular. She and her husband had agreed to lead one of our beta groups in October. I was explaining to her the options available to their group for study materials. I had a nice selection of study guides to choose from. As I explained, she was very quiet. I thought she was considering which one to select. When I was finished, she looked me squarely in the eyes and said, “Do you have any problem with us using the Bible?”

OK. Before I get on with the point of this post, let me tell you that I now have a great relationship with this gal and her husband. We just had to spend a little time together, sharing our hearts for God and His church, to realize we are likeminded. Now, back to the point…

The Bible should be at the core of what we do in group and in life. Does that mean that we can only study the Bible? No. Does it mean that we should study the Bible? Absolutely! Here are some of the things I would want you to know about Bible study in CONNECT group:

• Don’t do consecutive Bible studies. We want you to mix things up a bit in your group time. After you work through a passage or book of the Bible, do something different. You might decide to do a topical survey of the Bible, like parenting or stewardship or anxiety. Maybe you want to use a study guide or DVD. Perhaps it’s time for a service project or party or movie. Maybe you want to take a couple sessions and just discuss life and what God is asking of each of you. Mix it up or else your group will become too scholastic and one dimensional and ineffective.


• Use a good Bible. CONNECT Ministry has offered every continuing group leader the Serendipity Small Groups Study Bible. This is a very helpful tool for groups wanting to spend more time in the Word together. For each section of Scripture, it provides sample ice breaker, study, and application questions. You can either use it as provided or as a guide for developing your own questions. The key is that it helps you structure a transformational group interaction while also keeping you honest to the intended purpose of the passage.


• Ask the question, “So what?” While I touched on this above, I can’t over-emphasize the importance of this point. You have to bring the Bible “home” in your study. You can’t leave your group in Babylonian captivity. There has to be a takeaway. And be cautious of intangible applications. The sovereignty of God is a wonderful point to a passage, but how does His sovereignty impact your daily life? How does that information help you deal with a wayward son or diagnosis of cancer? The application portion of your time together is the part where you acknowledge receiving God’s truth and commit to a plan of implementation.

Do I have any problems with groups using the Bible? If they do it rightly, of course not! I encourage it! Let me leave you with James’ description of your how you should implement Bible study:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it-- he will be blessed in what he does. James 1:22-25

More on Studies - Using a Study Guide

Yesterday, I discussed some of the merits of DVD-based small group studies. Now there’s a similar method for doing guided study time which is more common than DVD, namely a Study Guide. To say that study guides are “more common” is a huge understatement. In fact, they are ubiquitous! (Sorry Andy, but I know that Jeff tunes out when he doesn’t find at least one $5 word in my blog. For the rest of us common folk, “they are everywhere!”)

Again, the value of the study guide approach to group study time is that the guide has hopefully been crafted in a way that will facilitate discussion, learning, and life transformation. I say “hopefully” because that is not true of all studies. Some are Sunday School repackaged as group discussion guides. How can you tell the difference? The questions are fact-based and generally have right and wrong answers. Here’s an overly-simplistic comparison:

Read 2 Peter 1:5-7:

Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. (2 Peter 1:5-7)

Sunday School question: Name the 7 characteristics which you should diligently seek to add to your faith.

Small Group discussion questions: From the list of the 7 characteristics Peter instructs us to add to our faith, which one is the most difficult for you? Why do you think you struggle with that characteristic? What might you intentionally do differently tomorrow to overcome that difficulty? Who can help you grow in this area? OR

More than a list, this is a sequence or progression representing spiritual development. How might it help you to grow in your walk with Christ if you use this passage as a guide to help you aim for the right goal? If knowledge is the first step in your growth as a Christian and love is the ultimate goal, how will you restructure your life so that you continue to grow toward love?

One difficulty some groups run into with study guides is that they are generally geared to hit a broad spectrum of users. They will have some questions which are incredibly basic, even obvious and others which can be very difficult, even painful to answer. This is where a little skill on the part of the group leader comes in very handy. Here are a few tips:

• First. read the entire study before your group meets. Pray and reflect upon what the passage or passages are really about, not what you want to make of them.


• Pray and reflect upon the spiritual health and maturity of your group members, especially yourself. Is the group composed of new believers, or have they been in solid studies for 50 years? Are they exhibiting a healthy, vibrant relationship with the Lord, pouring into the lives of others, or are they dealing with an exceptionally difficult season of life?


• Then, in light of your meditations, modify the study guide. This may mean skipping certain questions because they are too difficult, too simple, or too painful. It may mean adding a real-life example to a question, either hypothetical or from your own life. Depending on the persons in the group, it may mean steering into or away from a specific example. If someone has an abortion in her past, you may want your group discussion to center upon regret, shame, forgiveness, or decisions based upon fear or selfishness. If someone is struggling through a terminal illness, you probably want to deal with that issue straight up. You may even find that you don’t use the guide as written at all. Instead, use it for guidance and ideas and then create something specific for your group.

When used in this way, study guides become powerful tools to impact lives across the broadest of spectrums without demanding that the leader be a biblical scholar.

Next, the Bible…

The Question of Studies - DVD Curricula

What does your group do about your study time together? A DVD curriculum? Study Guide? The Bible? A Christian book? Something else? Nothing? Maybe you have a preference. I want to take a couple blog posts and explain how to use the first few of these options.

Right now, our groups are involved in one of two DVD curricula on Serving. We are getting mixed feedback on DVD studies so I want to explain two strengths of them.

DVD studies are perfect for the leader who isn’t, or doesn’t feel, “qualified” to lead a discussion. The “teaching” is all delivered by the expert in the video. So, leading a group is simple: you open your home to a bunch of people, serve them some goodies and coffee, and pop in the DVD. Especially for exposing potential new leaders to the role, DVD curricula cannot be beat!

As many of our groups have discovered, other items can be packaged with the study. In the current materials, there are worship songs and biblical commentaries on the passages being discussed. I have heard very positive feedback from two of our groups who tried out the worship tracks. While they admitted that they were cautious going into that endeavor, they both said that it was a great experience to worship together as a small group.

For those of you who don’t care for the DVD approach, the current Serving studies can be done without the video. So, tailor the DVD approach to your group’s needs and preferences! The point of your time together is to engage in discussion around the biblical content and to commit to appropriate responses which demonstrate faithfulness to God.

Next, Study Guides……

Confess Your Sins

OK, let's be honest about this one. One of the most difficult things to do in a group context is the very thing we are instructed to do in James 5:16:

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

Yeah, we might be good with confessing our sins to God (maybe), but how about to one another? Here is a video a ran across which is related to this subject.

Now, I believe that this guys is on the right track. If we can't confess to one another, what do our confessions to God really mean?

But here's another thing to think about: What does unconfessed sin do to community? Now our American culture which says, "To each his own" and "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" would insist that a person's private life is exactly that, private.

Are you familiar with the story of Achan in the Old Testament (Joshua 6-7)? You see, God told Joshua that Jericho had been delivered to the Israelites and Joshua gave explicit instruction to the people that the city was an offering to God. They were not to take anything for themselves from the city because it was the Lord's.

But Achan took Babylonian wealth for himself and hid it in his tent. And the Lord's anger rained down on all of Israel. Did you get that? All of Israel! Why? Does that sound wrong to you? Well, try this on for size. When Achan confessed his sin, he was stoned, but so were his belongings, his livestock, and his children. All stoned and burned.

OK, let's not go too far off track with this story. The point is that individual, private sins affect the whole community. And maybe, like the video suggested, we don't confess because we don't truly believe. Or, maybe we don't confess because we fear the reaction. If you confess to your Christian brothers and sisters, will they stone you and your entire household? Or, is your Christian community going to follow Christ's instructions. Take a look at the reason, according to James for confessing your sins:

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. James 5:16

The American Way!

Are you aware of all the things that infiltrate our Christian faith from outside, from the world? Most of our Christmas and Easter traditions are imported from paganism. Some of this was done intentionally so that the Church could connect with people in a different religious context.

Often, the church within a region or culture unknowingly contextualizes the faith to match something with which they are familiar. Some of these changes are fine, even proper:

Four times in four different epistles, Paul tells his readers to “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” While some of our brothers in the Lord still practice this literally (or I should say “literalistically,” the topic of another post for another week), the North American church has generally practiced this as a firm handshake or, my preference, a hug.

On the other hand, there are also features of the world which infiltrate our faith and in so doing degrade or corrupt “pure religion.” This is known as syncretism and it is defined as “the attempted reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as in philosophy or religion.” What does that look like? Well, in Southern Germany, where my father grew up, the Catholic farmers would have both a crucifix over their kitchen table and a Wurzelsepp near the front door. A Wurzelsepp is a tree root which naturally looked like a man’s face (wurzel – root, sepp – short for Joseph) and was carved a bit to accentuate the human features. The Wurzelsepp represented tree spirits found in the woods and would be prayed to, even as the crucifix, for protection.

Well, we are currently seeing in Western Christianity a movement in missions toward microfinance. This is a capitalistic response to the imperialistic missionary practices of the past. Historically, the solution to social and economic problems in developing nations was to make those people more like us people. We would Americanize (or Europeanize) them! In extreme cases, it meant bringing them to our country where they could learn a “better” way. In more subtle, but I believe more insidious circumstances, it meant pouring our money into foreign welfare programs designed, although not intended, to build wealth among the corrupt and to enslave the poor. But now, microfinance offers what capitalists are viewing as a healthier solution. And the church is jumping onboard.

Basically, microfinance offers entrepreneurs in developing economies a loan to grow a small business. This is a loan that is expected to be paid back. The return on the investment is then lent again to another entrepreneur. This eliminates local loan sharking and usury in the neighborhood of 400%. It also encourages the thinking and activities that build economic stability in communities. And the really good news for American Christians looking for ways to impact global, systemic poverty issues is that our few dollars go a LONG way in desperate economies. Here is a video from World Vision highlighting their microfinance efforts. Watch it at home. Then, watch it as a CONNECT group. Begin talking about what your group could do in the world. Begin praying about how God has blessed us all immensely and given us so many opportunities to make a real impact for His Kingdom. Two web sites to check out would be: World Vision Micro and Kiva.

Since I’m originally from Southern California and my wife’s family is in Arizona, let me put it into a context familiar to me. What if, instead of demonizing desperate Latin Americans who are trying to sneak into our country for a better life, we invested in them in their communities so they could begin to build a better life where they are? Do you think they really want to leave behind the place of their birth and the members of their families?

BTW, I know this isn’t the final solution. I’m not naïve. I understand systemic corruption and Godless leadership. But microfinance seems to me to be a way to deal with poverty so as to preserve human dignity and the imago dei, the “image of God” in humanity. And you can get started making a difference right now. So, do you want to know something about how God has SHAPE’d you for His Kingdom? Well, He put you here and He led me to blog this. So, now what are you going to do? It’s your move…

Generous Church

Lately I have been flooded with calls about generosity. I must confess to all of you that nothing makes me happier than to hear that God’s children are modeling Him in their lives by richly pouring out from their wealth in order to bless others, especially during tough economic times like we have today. Someday soon, I will devote a chunk of time toward developing material on Generosity and Stewardship and how those concepts are intrinsically linked to the Christian faith. Suffice it to say here that God is generous in many ways and we are to be His ambassadors, His image bearers in this world.

So, back to the calls. Most of them boil down to questions like these:

• If a group wants to bless someone financially, does the church get involved in that?


• Can the church set up a fund for our group where we would designate monies to go until they are needed?


• Can we get a giving receipt from the church for our cash donations to hurting people?


• Is it OK to give part of our tithe to someone outside the church?


• Does the church have a list of people to whom we can give assistance?


• Can we advertise our fundraiser at the church?

Rather than hit each of these questions here, let me just tell you how I’ve been instructing groups for years concerning Benevolent Outreach. You can direct specific questions that remain unanswered to me by email. First, anything that your group decides to do is up to you. I would certainly like to know what you’re doing, not to control it, but to counsel you and to capture your story in order to encourage others. However, Malachi 3:10 says that you are to bring your “whole tithe” into God’s house (meaning the Temple, with the church being our contemporary equivalent). Therefore, anything that your group does would be considered an offering, the amount over and above your tithe which you bring to church. (Note: Have you tried online giving? It is very easy and quick.)

Next, you don’t need to run your donations through the church to get a tax write-off. Please check with your tax preparer, but you should be able to document your un-receipted cash donations and all your “ministry miles” for tax purposes.

Finally, here is what I suggest groups do. Assign two trustworthy members of your group, ones from different households is best, as treasurers. Get a big plastic storage jug with a flip-top lid and designate it “Our Group Giving Jar.” Each week, the Giving Jar should be available for group members to toss in money according to their personal conviction. At the end of each group session, the treasurers should record the value of the Jar in a ledger. Monthly, they should give a Finance Report to the group. The advantage of the Giving Jar is that, when needs arise, your group already has funds set aside for outreach.

I will post next week (I hope) about ideas we have for outreach. For now, you are welcome to ask if we know anyone who needs assistance, but you should be looking first and foremost to your own spheres of interaction, namely neighbors, co-workers, family, anyone your life routinely touches. If you say that you don’t know anyone in need, I might be tempted to suggest that you don’t really “know” anyone because there is need and brokenness and lostness all around us.

Change or Die!

One of the sessions at the conference that I found very interesting was the one on Making Sense of the Journey. It took a look at spiritual formation as a process, not as a program. During that time, Greg Bowman shared his understanding of the Four Stages of Spiritual Formation, Non-Faith, Institutional Faith, Desert (no, not Dessert!), and Mystical/Practical. While I tend to disagree with this being the process of spiritual growth (perhaps the subject of another post), there was insightful information along the way.

One comment he made really rang true. It was a quote that was attributed to Alan Deutschman from his book, Change or Die. Mind you, this is not a Christian book. Here is its Amazon.com synopsis:

Change or Die. What if you were given that choice? If you didn't, your time would end soon—a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change matters most? This is the question Alan Deutschman poses in Change or Die, which began as a sensational cover story by the same title for Fast Company. Deutschman concludes that although we all have the ability to change our behavior, we rarely ever do. From patients suffering from heart disease to repeat offenders in the criminal justice system to companies trapped in the mold of unsuccessful business practices, many of us could prevent ominous outcomes by simply changing our mindset.

So, what was the quote that got me thinking? It was this: “Breaking from your ‘old community’ is the most effective way to change your life.” Now, clearly, as Christians we believe that the Holy Spirit is the One in the life change business. Upon offering ourselves to the Lord, placing all of our trust and hope in Him, we are indwelt by the Spirit of God. And bit by bit He works to overcome our enslavement to sin as we fight or cooperate with Him. But there is tremendous truth in Deutschman’s statement about community.

Think about how we learn most things, by immersion. We associate ourselves with family, peers, society, systems which provide the context for our learning. When I lived in Southern California, this was more evident. We had recent immigrants from Vietnam flooding into Orange County. Guess what. Vietnamese people like to eat duck. And Mile Square Park had a lovely selection from which to choose. It was as simple as scaring the flock into the busy traffic. Voila, dinner! They also developed a taste for dog meat. If Fido got out of your yard in Westminster, well, buy another dog. The debate in the press and in the courts became one of cultural conditioning. “Is it wrong for people who grew up believing it’s OK to kill and consume wild fowl and stray canines to do those same things in a culture that values these same creatures for their aesthetic and domestic qualities? After all, they don’t know any better.”

So, why did I focus on this? It’s because we are all the product of our upbringing. And this applies to the church and our discipleship efforts too. We know and trust what is familiar to us. The more “conservative” we are, the stronger this is. But what if we’ve been settling for something less than God’s best? Not to say that what we have is wrong or bad. But what if God has something amazing for us and we’re content to settle. When I think of the heroes of the Bible, their lives don’t communicate The Quest for Mediocrity.

So, where are you? Is Sunday attendance at a Bible-saturated “show” good enough for you? Are you doggedly holding on to a discipleship program that never leaves the classroom? Has your small group run its course and no longer stretches and challenges you? Have you been burying your gifts and abilities because Leadership is too much work and too big a responsibility?

Organically speaking, something which is not growing is dying. Are you growing? Deutschman says, “Change, or Die!”