I’ve posted HERE, HERE, and HERE about the ways that small groups are difficult for you whether you’re introverted or extroverted.  In closing, here are a few things to remember:

1. Being introverted or extroverted isn’t a sin. It’s just how God made you.  Don’t let anybody criticize you for your wiring in this area.

2. The Church needs both introverts and extroverts. Without both, things can get out of balance.

3. You need small group life. When the Bible talks about our need for authentic community (see Acts 2:42-47; Hebrews 10:24-25; the “one anothers“) it doesn’t distinguish that need to just one personality type.  The Church is a diverse body with diverse needs…but we all have the need for community, because our need for community is rooted in God’s design, not in a personality type.  Our need for community is not a result of the Fall (though it’s certainly complicated by the Fall), rather rooted in the fact God lives in community (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit living in perfect community at all times) and has designed us with that need.  Using your personality isn’t a valid excuse to not plugging into the life of the body of Christ (the Church).  There will be difficulties along the way, for sure.  And at times, you’ll find yourself wanting to back out because it’s too tough.  But when you press on through that difficulty, I’m convinced you’ll find biblical community life-transforming.

Find a group of people.  It may be 3.  Or it may be 23.  But find a small group of people that you can grow with, that love you, will encourage and admonish you, and that you can serve.

Whether you’re and introvert or an extrovert.

(HT: Allen White)

There are certain things I say that make me feel like I’m giving up my man card.

I tweet.

I use Hootsuite.

I have Twittelator on my phone.

Scripty (as in Scripty Goddess’ scaler HERE) is a tool I use on my blog.

Accountabili-buddy (a word my small group has coined).

Part of me likes Ikea.** (see below)

I have never seen Godfather.

I own Crocs.

I tend a garden.

I read a digizine.

It’s after saying the above phrases that I have to go outside and blow something up.  Or go grill something.  Or smoke a cigarette.

I’ve found myself saying “Digizine” more and more often.  Sometimes, it’s just random…while I’m walking around, before I go to bed, after I eat dinner.  It’s kind of fun…go ahead, try it.

I’ve been saying “Digizine” more and more because I’m completely blown away by SmallGroups.com ‘s new digital magazine (get a copy HERE).

Why is this digizine so great?

The content is superb. This issue contains articles by Sam O’Neal (managing editor of SmallGroups.com, a division of Christianity Today), John Ortberg(pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, and author of numerous books), and Pat Sikora (founder of Mighty Oak Ministries).

The advertisements are great. Since I live and breathe small groups, ads that are about small groups are right up my alley.  They appeal to small group leaders and small group pastors.

There are videos embedded in the digizine. You’re not going to get that in a magazine.  And if you could…it would be weird to see a small video screen in a magazine you get in the mail.  So instead of just reading an interview with Mark Batterson and Heather Zempel, you can actually watch it…right there on the same page.

It’s digital. Anything that’s digital is cooler, right?  Case in point: digital clocks.  Digital means means I can read it anywhere…and not wonder, “Where did I leave that magazine?”

But here’s one thing I wish was included:

Social networking ability. Give me the ability to tweet (see…there I go again…giving up yet another man card) what I’m reading.  Make it easy for me to share this content with my followers.  I want to share insights I get from around the internet…this digizine doesn’t readily give me that opportunity.

You need to get this free resource.  If for no other reason that it gives you the opportunity to tell people you read digizines.

**Let it be known, I am a man.  When I get stuff from Ikea, I don’t even use the instruction book.  Bam.

In the meantime, check out this promo video from Threads Media.

Holy Vocabulary Promo from Threads on Vimeo.

Eating the equivalent of a savory version of Listerine Breath Strip and drinking half of an espresso shot of wine (or grape juice, for us Baptists) is a huge deal in the Church today.

For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:26)

The weight a local church places on communion (a.k.a., the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist), the frequency it’s practiced, who administers it, how it is administered, whether it’s fresh bread or stale, the effect (or affect…I never know which to use) it has on a person’s life (the removal of sin, a dispensation of grace, a memorialization, etc.), what happens in the bread and wine (does it change from its visible form to the actual body and blood of Christ?), among other debates points to the significance of this symbolic post-breakfast, incredibly light and untasty, snack.

One thing I’m working through at Grace is the idea of small groups holding communion with their group.  I know that many people will throw up red flags at the very thought of communion happening outside of the walls of a church building, administered by someone not on a church staff.  But hear me out.

It seems to make sense for a few reasons.

Why it makes sense to encourage communion in small groups:

1. It’s difficult to do on Sunday mornings because of the way our theater is set up.  Holding services in a school has its limitations, and the logistics of pulling off the Lord’s Supper is a difficult one.  We’ve tried many different ways, and to be honest, none has worked exceedingly well.

2. It doesn’t feel intimate.  It loses its relational edge in a Sunday morning gathering environment.

3. Our services are 1 hour long.  In order to do communion “right” (giving it its proper place, explaining its significance, giving people space to process, celebrating, etc.), it takes some time.  And in a 1 hour service, either everything is rushed or various parts are cut out, neither of which is desirable.  Small groups afford much more time.

4. We don’t hold communion with great frequency.  Why not?  See above reasons.

5. We ask our small group leaders to act as shepherd leaders.  It makes great sense for them to administer this with their groups.

6. Life change is happening at the small group level.  One beautiful way of acknowledging and celebrating the change that Christ is making, and has made, in a person’s life, is through celebrating the death, burial, and resurrection (communion) together.

7. Small groups can practice communion as often as they would like.

8. The relational aspect of the Lord’s Supper can really happen in a small group environment.  In a large group setting (Sunday mornings), often the relational side of communing together just can’t happen.

Some concerns that will be brought up:

1. We’ve never done it this way before.  It’s not what we’re used to.

2. In a small group, it’s outside of the direct oversight of the church leadership/elders.

3. It could get really messy really quickly.  If you have small group leaders who don’t know what they’re doing, they could wrongly administer the Lord’s Supper. (see 1 Corinthians 11:27-32)

4. It’s not biblical.

I’ll follow up this post with my thoughts concerning each of the above objections.

What do you think?  Is it right (and good) for small groups to administer the Lord’s Supper?  Or is a dangerous, non-biblical slope you’re not willing to go down?

Before the invention of newspaper deliver services, if you wanted the daily news, you had to visit a newsstand.  And if you wanted more than one newspaper, you were having to go to more than one newsstand every morning to purchase the papers (in hopes that they were still available by the time you arrived).

But then things changed.  Enter the newspaper subscription service.

Wake up.  Walk to your front porch.  Bam…you’ve got your newspapers waiting on you every day.  Genius.

Convenience for you.  Guaranteed service for you.  Guaranteed sales for the newspaper industry.

But when news began to be offered increasingly online (through media outlets and blogs), we as a consumer industry fell right back into the days of walking to multiple newsstands.  We would peruse multiple sites, visit countless blogs, and still not get all of the great news that was available.  Because for every site you checked, there were 1,000 others you didn’t check.  And it just wasn’t feasible to keep up with all of the blogs you found helpful, because you would forget to check them for a few days (or a few weeks), and when you finally remembered, you were way behind.

It’s time to make the internet work for us.

Google Reader

Enter the automated delivery service for digital media: RSS (Really Simple Syndication).  Google Reader is my feed reader of choice.  It gathers all of the new content from the blogs and sites that I visit, and keeps me from having to visit each of those sites individually.  And I can read this content on any computer or mobile phone by simply logging into my account.  Here’s how to get started:

1. Register for a Google Reader account.

2. Come back to my site and click the “RSS” link.

The next step is to visit the sites you love, and look for this symbol: Just click on that button (to the right), and it will prompt you to subscribe to their content.  Simple.

Here are some of the small group sites (some not solely focused on group life) that I have on my Google Reader:

• Triple Threat Leadership (Alan Danielson)
• Bill Donahue
• Simply community (Eddie Mosley)
• 2 Or More Resources (Reid Smith)
• Simple Small Groups (Bill Search)
• Small Group Resources (Mark Howell)
• From Messiness to God’s Masterpiece (Kirby Holmes)
• Small Group Trader
• Small Group World (Rick Howerton)
• Small Groups Guy (Spence Shelton)
• SmallGroups.com (Christianity Today)
• The Naked Truth about Small Groups (Randall Neighbour)
• Thinking Small (Dave Treat)
• Wineskins for Discipleship (Heather Zempel)
• Adam Workman
• Allen White
• Community is God’s Design (Josh Rose)
• Serendipity Team
• Just Thots (John Ratz)
• eFlections on Doing Life (Randy Kinnick)

Google Reader is free.  And it keeps you from having to visit multiple newsstands every day.

Did I miss any blogs that are small groups-related?

This is a guest post by Matt Harmer, small groups pastor at Manna Church. You can find him on Twitter HERE and on Facebook HERE.  If you’ve got a small groups story to share, or a unique perspective on small groups ministry, and would like to guest post on this blog, please see these guidelines HERE.

I recently traveled to a nearby city to meet with a Small Groups Pastor friend of mine for a time of connection. It was the first time we’d actually met face to face, although we had quickly become e-acquaintances (twitter friends, really). As we sat in his office and began to talk, one of the first questions that came up was, “So, how did you end up as the Small Groups Pastor?” The stories unfolded…

“Well I did this job for a while, and I interned here. I worked as this while I obtained my degree from such and such, and then someone came along and said, ‘We think you’d be great at doing the Small Groups stuff.’ And that’s how I ended up where I am.” We laughed and joked about how it seems that small groups people have the best stories.

In this post I want to unfold for you not so much the story of how I ended up in the small groups ministry at Manna Church, but how small groups got into me.

A common misconception is that small groups are just another aspect of local church ministry. Even as I considered taking the position, I viewed it as a small component of our church’s life – my primary responsibilities being to process the data and plan the events, and basically just “keep that thing going.” As I began to dig deeply into importance of what I was doing, my thinking about small groups, ministry, and Christian life in general changed. Essentially, I had “ended up” in a position where a powerful philosophy of ministry was able to be inculcated into my thinking. The result of this change of view was a fresh vigor for the task of “keeping that thing going” – knowing where you’re going makes the driving to get there worth it.

In a nutshell, here’s what I’ve learned:

Every person who has received Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior is absolutely called to the “game” of ministry, and it’s absolutely necessary that each individual engage in that call. We must be a people who take seriously the responsibility to be ministers for Him. That being so…

Small groups are where the “game” is played. It’s in Biblical community that believers receive mentoring, encouragement, support, prayer, challenge, teaching, etc… (It’s important to note that both the group leader and members receive the benefits this community has to offer.) Moreover, it’s through community (small groups) that the unreached are reached!

The life of any church is in the relationships the people have with one another, and small groups facilitate the building of those relationships. I know now that what I’m doing in processing the data, planning the events, training leaders, and launching them into the game is THE thing. It’s not some small aspect of church life – it’s a part of it, yes – but it’s the most important aspect…

If we don’t have small groups…if we don’t have people who understand biblical community, build it, and DO their Christian lives together while reaching out to the unreached around them…if we only have a bunch of people who gather on Sunday mornings to sing some songs and hear a great message and then go home… Then all we have is a Christian social club, and that’s not what the Church is supposed to be.

I posted this question last week on my blog:

What does it take for a “regular” Bible study to turn into a “deep” Bible study?  What goes into making small group time a “deep” Bible study?

You can see all of the great comments I received HERE.

Instead of jumping straight into the methodological (how-to), it’s appropriate to look at the theological/philosophical (why?) definitions of what I believe is a “deep” discussion in a small group.  Starting with the theology behind the methodology helps to give a framework so that groups know why they are doing what they are doing…and why change is (or might be) necessary.  If we were to jump straight to the “here’s how to lead a deep discussion” topic, we’d be undercutting the foundation.

When we go about defining what a “deep” study is, we find it’s pretty simple.

A truly “deep” study is one that helps us to take steps of faith.  A “shallow” one does not.

And what does it look like to take a step of faith?

1. Start following Christ. As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. (Matthew 9:9)

2. Understand what it means to follow. Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:  “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:34-40)

3. Repeat daily. Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. (Luke 9:23-24)

4. Go. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

I’m not negating the sovereignty of God to draw and grow people, nor am I doing away with personal responsibility, but if a small group discussion doesn’t help the group members to love God and their neighbor more (which Jesus defined as that which the Law and Prophets hang), then it’s not deep.  Period.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about a “seeker” small group, a college group, a preschool group, or a boating affinity group.  Discussions that don’t put feet to the Word and propel us to go are ultimately fruitless.

There will be much debate on how to flesh that out, depending on whether you operate with Sunday School classes, cell groups, home groups, community groups, or knitting groups.  And that’s okay.  I know that the way that each small group system fleshes the disciple-making process out will be a bit different. But here’s my admonition to us all: let’s not make the Christian life (and becoming a disciple) too difficult.  Jesus didn’t.  Love God.  Love your neighbor.  That’s difficult enough.

Depth is less about the transfer of information and more about life transformation.

I’ll continue this series of posts tomorrow, and talk about various aspects of studies that lend to the disciple-making process as described above.

What do you think?  Have your thoughts on “deep” studies been challenged?

An essential part of building community is laughing together.

Those I feel closest to I also laugh with.  I mean, we do talk about really important stuff.  Life-changing.  Heart-wrenching.  Tear-enducing.

But we also laugh together.  So hard that we cry.  So hard that it hurts our stomachs.  So hard that we accidentally pass gas.

And I’m convinced that it’s healthy to laugh together.  Ecclesiastes 3:4 says that there is “a time to laugh.”  Laughing together helps to build relationship.  It helps to build trust.  And community is fostered when you laugh with somebody.

Too many people think that “religion” has to be completely stoic.  To be a “good” follower of Christ means that you’re straight-faced, walk around with blank stares, and have furled brows.  But that’s just not true.

God created humor.  And if you never experience that with other followers of Christ then you’re missing out on a great blessing.

I laugh a lot with the guys I work with at the Grace offices.  At the end of one of our Sunday services, a few of us went out on stage as Adam Bayne’s “band” to help him with an announcement.  Enjoy laughing at this picture…at our expense.  Go ahead…I’m giving you “a time to laugh.”

And while you’re at it, why not invite your neighbor over for a cup of coffee, and laugh together with them, too.  Who knows?  It may be that God uses that to help you build a relationship with them that leads them to follow Christ.

I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve watched this short video of a sermon given by Alan Danielson (you can follow him HERE on Twitter).  So I thought I’d share it with you.

I love this quote from the video:

“We are so far educated, above and beyond the level of our obedience, that it’s disgusting.  It’s time, if we’re going to say we want to be like Jesus, to stop just talking about it, and start doing it.”

Is your small group too safe?