I recently read Pastor Jim Miller’s (my dad) blog on the necessity for deep intimate community in our Christian walk. In this blog he told the story of a friend of his who is in a small group that has saved two of the marriages in the group over the past several years. This happened through the small group getting into the middle of very messy marital conflict that was on the verge of divorce and the group acted as a mediator between the couple and helped them fight for their marriage and work out the problems that were destroying them.
These kind of relationships are hard to come by in the church. First of all, we put up guards to keep people from seeing all our junk and getting to close to us, or they might find out that we are sinners. This is not the type of relationships that the Bible calls Christians to have with one another. We need to be willing to lay our very lives down for one another, and this includes opening the doors to our lives to those in our Christian community.
I have been blessed in the past to be a member of a small group that was willing to go beneath the surface and many members of the group found true healing in their marriages and a deepened commitment to their spouse. I did not always enjoy being in that group, because of how much conflict we had to work through, but I will say that it was all worth it.
Small groups can truly be a benefit to the people who are involved in them. The difficulty in small groups is building trust. I think that sometimes people my try to push to fast. They do not allow time for the trust to build. It is ok for group to engage in getting evolved in situation that other members of the group are going through, but this must be done carefully, and it must be done consent of the other group members. This consent may not come right away, because some people need time to build relationships in the group. People do put their guard up, but over time as they start to build relationships in the group, walls will come down.
ReplyDeleteThe leader of the group can to help to facilitate the building of relationships within the group. As the group grows closer the leader can help group member to start to come out of their shell. The leader can facilitate the group opening up to each other. Like you I have also been blessed by being a member of small groups. The cohort small group has been a blessing, and I am better person because of it.