A Community Group is like spaghetti. Huh?
Each person is a noodle, a life with twists and turns and messiness (or sauciness!). Pile all those noodles together and you find a big tangled plate of spaghetti.
A Christian's life is linked with Jesus and with other Christians in community. His grace and mercy affects all of the lives in that group. Each individual life now has a context that helps to put it in perspective and... with patience, straighten it out a bit. The joy and excitement of a Community Group comes from people sharing the way that the gospel changes them.
My picture of God's mercy expands every time I hear someone else's story of Jesus and how they have been changed. My appreciation of grace and God's patience deepens every time I hear about people's struggles and dependence. Left to myself, my perspective is small; but in a community I can see a bigger God, more powerful transformation, clarity of Scripture and humble reliance on grace.
Jesus wants his disciples to follow him together so that they can encourage each other on their life-long walk. That is one of the main reasons that Community Groups are so important at Grace Church. They truly are the best context for rich discipleship. Everything that a good group does -- worship, study, fellowship, service -- is a means of following Jesus with others. Each person helps and each person is helped.
Two questions: What ways do Community Groups help you to follow Jesus?
And... what do the meatballs represent?
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Community groups help me: through lessons which force me to look at issues in my life, by helping me apply one-anothering in my interactions with fellow community members, and pointing my focus toward God and his purposes.
Meatballs ... hmmm. They could be events in our lives that we must work around, sharing that process with community members. These events are: meaty as in - rich in matter for thought, everything in life (meat and gristle) is ground up in there, they can be big or small, and they can be sweet and spicy.
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