http://timchester.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/community-as-identity-2/

Peace

7 Reasons We Need Small Groups

“He has given pastors to the church “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-12). I believe in what I do. And I believe that it is not enough. Here are the seven reasons I gave the small group leaders.

1. The impulse avoid painful growth by disappearing safely into the crowd in corporate worship is very strong.
2. The tendency toward passivity in listening to a sermon is part of our human weakness.
3. Listeners in a big group can more easily evade redemptive crises. If tears well up in your eyes in a small group, wise friends will gently find out why. But in a large gathering, you can just walk away from it.
4. Listeners in a large group tend to neglect efforts of personal application. The sermon may touch a nerve of conviction, but without someone to press in, it can easily be avoided.
5. Opportunity for questions leading to growth is missing. Sermons are not dialogue. Nor should they be. But asking questions is a key to understanding and growth. Small groups are great occasions for this.
6. Accountability for follow-through on good resolves is missing. But if someone knows what you intended to do, the resolve is stronger.
7. Prayer support for a specific need or conviction or resolve goes wanting. O how many blessings we do not have because we are not surrounded by a band of friends who pray for us.” Read more.

Guilt (true guilt as a result of sin and not man made manipulated guilt) before God is something to be taken serious. It is the conscience responding to the Holy law of a personal God who says we are guilty of idolatry. When internally in our thinking we place our self, someone else (other than God) or something else at the center of our thinking and declare it by our own authority something worthy to be worshiped, we commit idolatry. This is a sin against the holy and righteous God who really is there and has said “you shall have no other gods before me.” The result is a guilty conscience saying “wrong.”  

As one who without shame believes in the Jesus of the Old and New Testaments (not the therapeutic relative Jesus constructed in the 21^st century), God has given people a real way (I really mean a true and only way) in which my idolatry and guilt in turn be dealt with. If my guilt is a result of my idolatry, and my performance (ex. social justice, attending church, praying more, entertainment etc…) can not truly remove from me the idols of my heart (including the exaltation of me in performing good deeds), then what can? 

Briefly consider some options that are lengthy blog posts in themselves. If the bible is not true then you are left with the authority of the ethical (what is right?), epistemological (how do you know?) and ontological (says who?) “experts” in the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology and philosophy. Do not get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with these fields of study. However, only the Jesus of the Old and New Testaments can supply the true answers (that make rational and experiential sense of what really is) to the major questions in these fields of study. The reality of who Jesus is and what he has done really gives the basis for studying these subjects as we seek to answer the questions in these various fields of study. Apart from the authority and reality of Jesus, ones only option is the relative authority of himself, society and state (no matter what party or form of government). The question becomes “by whose authority?”

There is good news for those who believe in the authority of the Jesus of the Bible. We can have freedom from the tyranny of a guilty conscience.  It is not running to people or things with an attempt to suppress our conscience. It is believing and thus resting in Jesus. It was Jesus, as God and man, who came and lived on this earth to please God the Father in perfect obedience to the point of death on the cross in order to pay for our idolatry. After satisfying the Justice that a holy, good and righteous God demands on our behalf, He resurrected from the grave to live not only as King over all things, but as intercessor before His Father for us. Through Jesus I am declared righteous before God. Through the person and finished work of Jesus the loving and gracious Father has pitied and accepted me as his own. I have nothing to add. I simply with the empty hands of faith receive Jesus as King and redeemer of my life who was judged and then resurrected on my behalf. 

So, what do I do I when experience true moral guilt before God? Call sin what it is. I confess to God what He says it really is (1 John 1:8-10). It is me thinking and acting upon the lie that something or someone else other than God is to be worshiped. However, I must not continue to live in this guilt. As a believer, to do so would minimize the work of Jesus on my behalf. Further, I would not be living in what He has accomplished for me. We often run into 2 dangers. We sometimes do not call sin what it really is. Second, we (as believers) do not often rest in what Jesus has really accomplished for us. We minimize sin and the cross. As we equally call and confess sin as sin, so we must also simply call on and confess Jesus as our only hope.

To conclude, Jesus is the only way in which God has chosen to deal with sin and our guilty conscience as a result. Jesus is the only way I can be reconciled to a God that I have rebelled against. This is very good news. It makes sense of what I am as both a fallen and a redeemed man. Through Jesus I may now live by faith in Him as I experience peace with and enjoy God. Through Jesus my relationship with God has been restored. Paul put it this way. He said in Romans 5:1-2 that, “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” I am no longer a condemned man. Yes, I am a man who still struggles with sin. I am also a man standing before God through Jesus loved and accepted. I am not standing on what I can or cannot do. Rather I am standing and resting in who Jesus is and what he has done. If this is not true, then you are left to find an authority who can sufficiently explain to you a cause and solution as it pertains to guilt. I submit to you. To do so would be a vain and very cruel search.

Last night’s community group was so encouraging as we gathered to recount what God has accomplished in the life of this congregation from December of 08 until now. It was amazing to observe how the power of Jesus has gathered people around the reality (and I do mean truth) of the Gospel as we begin to launch 2 more community groups . What did this look like? 

1) Confession of our righteousness only being found in Jesus as we realize that we are messy people.

2) Communicating and acting upon ways in which we can love Jesus by serving and giving ourselves to one another and our city (loving one another).

3)  No one exlated me (It is hard for me to be cool with my deep southern draw) but exalted the One through whom life has been given as His word prevails in our hearts. 

4) Giving thanks to Him who has given us gifts to edify and encourage one another.

5) Expressing excitment about the future as we recall what God has done in the past.

6) Ending with corporate prayer that was centered on the advance of the Gospel in our area and not for personal desires like (pray for me as the doctor removes my toe nail).

As I reflect on last night’s meeting. I have to give God all the praise and glory.

Ephesians 3:20-21 “²⁰ Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” 

In John 17, Jesus is having community with the Father. This is a conversation that I am thankful the Holy Spirit has given us as it has been encouraging in my own journey with God. Jesus is about to go to a cross to receive the just and righteous wrath of God in order that the sins of His people would be paid for. In turn God’s Kingdom people would be declared righteous and thus reconciled to God based upon the finished work of Jesus on the cross and His resurrection. In verse 1 the Son communicates to the Father His desire that He would be glorified in order that the Father would be glorified. Read verses 2-5. You get the picture that the community of the Father and the Son are about exalting one another as God. Further, it is interesting that Jesus also prays for the church to have community centered around the glory of the Father and Son as well. He prays that the believers will be one as He and the Father are one (see verses 11-12, 20-23). The reason that Jesus asked for this was that “the world may believe that you sent me.” In other words, the church is to be a community redeemed by Jesus in order that the Father, Son and Spirit would alone be glorified in all things (including community groups) as God’s Name is being made known through word and deed by the power of the Spirit. As this happens in the life of the church, the world recognizes we are His by His grace (v.23).

In summary, the ultimate purpose of Jesus’ prayer as you read the entire chapter is that He and the Father be made “manifest” or “known.” The Father sent the Son for this purpose. The Son sent the Spirit to empower the Church to be a witness to His Name. The Spirit is continuing this work in the lives of those who are truly sons and daughters of the Kingdom (v.20).

In light of this we could say Jesus and His Gospel is not the foundation of community when:

1)  Community groups are used as a method for the sole purpose of growing the church because small community is what everyone is into now. 

2) Community groups are used for “bible studies” so that everyone can impress each other with their bible knowledge.

3) Community groups are built around trendy cultural fads (building, music, preaching style, clothes etc…) that will be tomorrow’s tradition and split another church leaving a poor witness in the world.

4) Community groups are a group of accountability partners who beat each other over the head with their legalism and do not act accountable by exposing people to the righteousness of Jesus and His grace as the motivating factor for obedience.

5) Community groups are together because they hate the traditional church.

6) Community groups are cool because people have sports, fashion, music or other things in common other than Jesus (though there is nothing wrong with these things in themselves).

7) Community groups are formed to keep you out of the world because you are good and everyone outside your community is bad (self-righteousness).   

These are just a few examples of what we (church community) put in place of Jesus and call it the work of God in our community. In fact the examples listed above can often serve as barriers for people seeing the Gospel. I am learning that a Gospel community, being shaped by the work of the Spirit and the Word, is a group of redeemed sinners who recognize their idolatry. In turn they celebrate the righteousness of Jesus as He and the Father is enjoyed and glorified in their gathering. When this happened in the book of Acts, God also added to their number “day by day those who were being saved.” See Acts 2:42-47.

Jesus, I thank you for community. This was your idea. Only you do it perfectly. Thank you that through the cross you have brought me and the church into your community. I confess that I abuse a good thing like community when you are not the center of gatherings. I confess in my weakness that it is too easy to build community on anything else other than you. Even good things like family, friends, hobbies, music etc…It is impossible in my power to have community centered on You, the Father and Spirit. Therefore I ask that you would powerfully work in my heart and the heart of your people to shape a community of followers who live and gather for your namesake and not ours. Amen.