Small Group Barnabasses 4

Intentional encouragement for growth

I want to give you my 4 As of encouragement. You get an expectation of growth in an environment where there is:

Assessment – encouragement to consider “where am I currently?” Not threatening. People may and will be in very good standing with the Lord, but getting them to not be just satisfied with where they are but want to move on starts with knowing where we are now

Aspiration – dreaming dreams about what God could do with you. About how we might know, love and serve him better. Vision, asking where we would like to be with him, how we would like to grow, what gifts we would like to develop in his service, so that we can start to prayerfully seek him for growth

Advancement – helping those in your flock decide what next steps they want to take with Christ that get them from one to the other

Accountability – aid in helping them walk the walk. To share with someone else that they trust and respect the steps they want to take with God and to take a measure of responsibility for encouraging them to keep at it

 

Let's finish these posts with a question: what would you ask to help someone consider what steps of faith God might be calling them to take next? Maybe some of these might be useful:

  • what excites you or brings you joy in your Christian walk?
  • what do you dream about doing for God?
  • where do you most want to see growth in your life?
  • in what areas do you want to see progress in the battle with sin?
  • what gifts or skills would you like to grow in exercising for God?

Small Group Barnabasses 3

When I think about spiritual growth and spiritual maturity I think about the centrality of the cross over everything I am an everything I do. And that is what I want to lead others to see and to reckon on in their lives. Effectively to live every aspect of life working out what it means in practice to be justified and sanctified by grace through faith. What does having a big saviour and a big cross mean for my work life? What does it mean for my relationships? What does it mean for the way I direct all my energies and spend my money? What does it mean for the way I watch TV that I am justified by grace?
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Small Group Barnabasses 1

Some reflections from a student Bible groups training I led back in Autumn 2009.

 

What is the aim of group Bible discussions? What do you want to accomplish with them?

The point of the question is that the way you think about the purpose of the group determines what you do with it and how you do it. In my view one of the biggest hurdles to discipleship, spiritual growth and missions in a student context is the received idea that we do inductive Bible study for its own sake. In student situations the easiest notion to sink in is that we study for the sake of education. You do that in every other context, and unless you are very overt, very specific and very applied that will be the assumption that people bring to small groups and Bible discussions. 

So let me start with a provocative plea: let’s get rid of the term Bible study. By which you must NOT hear “let’s get rid of the Bible” but let’s decide from the outset that the Bible doesn’t exist so that we can study it as an end in itself. Bible study is a 20th century phrase, rather than a biblical phrase. Small groups weren’t always defined like that or, indeed, always devoted to Bible study. Jonathan Edwards calls them “individual praying companies” that met for prayer and personal encouragement and spiritual accountability, but that came together for Bible input from a preacher or teacher. 

My problem is not with people eagerly searching the scriptures. Pouring over them, digging deep into them, meditating on them day and night, teaching them to our children and our children's children. Oh no! My problem is that today the word “study” probably doesn’t carry all the connotations of knowing God and obedience and commitment to missions that it once did. It carries the connotation of coming for an evening of education, rather than an evening of making our hearts happy in God, discipleship and following him to the ends of the earth.

I want to ditch the term in favour of “Bible discussion” or “Bible application” (or “Bible salivation”!). Or any other term that helpfully gets into our heads that Bible discussion in our groups isn’t done for its own sake. Its done for a purpose – namely that people do and live whatever it is the Bible requires of us. That we know and love and worship and adore and obey God and go into all the world with the gospel. Bible discussions for kingdom growth, not just for individual knowledge.  

How you define the purpose of the group determines how you see what the leader ought to do. And that defines how the leaders ought to be trained. I remember a student worker telling me he did 8 121s a day. He prepared an hour’s Bible study, sat in a  refectory, the first student came at 8, prayed did the study, prayed and left. And the next one came. If your aim is to communicate facts from one pad to another, that’s an efficient way to do it, and its easy to see how to train a leader to do that kind of Bible study. I hope you will never train anyone to do that in your life. I want you to think about leadership roles in completely different ways to that.

It is easy to think about leaders as people who fulfil a task – for example Bible study leader - and then train them to that task. What does a Bible study leader do? Leads Bible studies. Therefore train them how to put together a Bible study. Job done.

I want to give small group leaders a new title: your leadership role is now to be a son of encouragement, a daughter of encouragement. Not a Bible discussion leader because Bible discussion is a means to an end, not the end itself. The end is that the believers should be encouraged in God to live for him, love like him and speak for him.

Henceforth all small group leaders should be known as small group Barnabasses.