The primary pastoral objective of our church LifeGroups is to promote relational care, friendship, and spiritual maturity through Christian community. It's difficult, however, to get people in our church to embrace and pursue this objective.
It's no surprise that one of the difficult things about any small group program is trying to promote genuine community rather than comfortable association or, worse yet, cliques. One of the most common reasons people give for not wanting to be in a LifeGroup is their discomfort with being with people they don't really like. There's always someone the wrong age, or socially ackward, or always whining about life, or always dominating the conversation.
In short, when small groups are not formed by easy and comfortable associations, they tend to expose how difficult it is to really share our lives with others. Small groups reveal how miserable we are at truly being kind and generous with poeple different from ourselves. They uncover our selfish and lazy hearts. They make clear our need for grace and spiritual maturity. In other words, they're not naturally comfortable.
So okay, I will come clean and admit that my pastoral goal for our church's LifeGroup ministry is uncomfortable fellowship. I'd rather have fewer groups that truly stretch people toward true community, than have lots of groups that don't make us grow spiritually and become able to break through social barriers.
Yesterday, Richard Beck, posted about community on his Experimental Theology blog. His post was prompted by his recent reading of Jean Vanier's book, Community and Growth. As the founder of L'Arche, an international network of homes and programs dedicated to helping people with disabilities, Vanier knows very well the sacrifice and challenge of Christlike community. Beck quoted from Vanier's book and challenged his readers to think about their own church communities as they read the following excerpt.
Community is the place where our limitations, our fears and our egotism are revealed to us. We discover our poverty and our weaknesses, our inability to get on with some people, our mental and emotional blocks, our affective and sexual disturbances, our seemingly insatiable desires, our frustrations and jealousies, our hatred and our wish to destroy. While we are alone, we could believe we loved everyone. Now that we are with others, living with them all the time, we realise how incapable we are of loving, how much we deny to others, how closed in on ourselves we are.Beck then followed the Vanier quotation with these comments:
I think the reason I found this quote to be so powerful is that I've encountered many Christians who love people in the abstract. That is, they believe they love everyone. But when it comes time to loving flesh and blood people they remove themselves from the daily grind of simply getting along with others. (The classic illustration of this is liberal Christians talking a great deal about loving the poor but never getting around to being friends with any poor people.)So for any of my Valley Christian Church friends reading this, I urge you to think of our LifeGroups with these ideas in mind. Consider being part of a LifeGroup as a way to be stretched and pulled toward true community. Think about hosting or leading a LifeGroup, knowing full well it will require you and others to change and grow.
I used to think this was a failure of effort, of not wanting to put in the time and effort to be in concrete relationships with others. But in light of Vanier's quote I wonder how much of this might be driven by ego. The disciplines of community expose our selfishness, vanity, impatience, entitlement and our brokenness. Rather than face this exposure it's easier to withdraw and live with the illusion that we're awesome loving people.
LifeGroups challenge us to participate in genuine fellowship that extends beyond our comfort zones. After all, what good is it if we only love people like ourselves? We don't even need God or grace or church for that! Think about it. Isn't this the challenge Jesus calls us to embrace? Read Matthew 5:46-47.
What is interesting to me is that at some large churches and mega-churches, people crave small groups to find community. In fact, such churches which do not foster such community building risk making congregants feel like a number. That craving may be somewhat dampened in smaller congregations. I am guessing the tricky part for Valley is being in that stressful in-between size.
ReplyDeleteI also firmly believe the excuses to reject the concept of a small group, and the feelings of discomfort, result of the prevalence of cliques in our society. I see it everywhere -- at work, at church, and pretty much always at kids activities. There are always discrete groups of "friends" who form tight groups, but are reluctant to bring in new entrants. Those who have been rejected by such cliques are left jaded. They come to immediately recognize a clique, and shy away.
Perhaps the challenge then lies with encouraging small group leaders -- whether they lead LifeGroups, bible studies, or other fellowships -- to make true efforts to "de-clique" their group image. In addition, I think a continual reminder that being part of a church goes far, far beyond simply showing up on Sunday for their weekly dose of worship, even to go so far as to remind people that the church is at risk of losing programming and value if people do not ascribe to the true intentions of the programming.