THE VALUE OF COMMUNITY – PART I
The Biblical Basis for Group Ministry
Series Text: Acts 2:46-47 - Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, [47] praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
For the next 3 messages I will be sharing from the pulpit in February, we will be looking at the Value of Community within the local church, especially as a church grows. I have shared these messages with you before, but with so many new people in our midst, as well as an increased focus on Growth Groups, I thought it would be of value to share with you again.
Those of you who have been involved in some of the Growth Groups in the past know how exciting it has been to be part of these groups, and it includes our Sunday School classes as well.
Today, we are looking at the Biblical Basis For Group Ministry, then on the 8thth, we will be talking about The Spiritual Basis For Group Ministry (How do we grow?), and on the 15th, we will look at the Relational Basis for Group Ministry (How important is Fellowship to our growth in God?)
As we begin this Series of messages on the Value of Community, we see group life in:
I. JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES
While Jesus ministered to the masses, both physically and spiritually by the way, He also took time to meet with people on a one-on-one basis such as Nicodemus, The Woman at the well, Zaccheus, and so on, and we also know that Jesus had a group of people that he worked with on a daily basis, and they were the 12 Disciples.
Jesus was able to teach these 12 with words of wisdom, and even how to react in situations that would make most of us lash out at those who misunderstood us.
I believe also that there were times that Jesus did appreciate, and even need the support and prayers of His disciples, especially in times of great difficulty. Remember, when Jesus was here, he felt the same feelings that you and I feel at times, yet He maintained his love for the Father through communion and prayer, and fellowship with God.
Hebrews 4:15 - For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin.
One can also think on the time in the Garden of Gethsemane when He went to pray directly preceding His arrest, and some of his closest Disciples went with Him: Matthew 26:36-38
Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. [37] And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. [38] Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.
Matthew 26:40 And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?
Here was the Son of God in the most trying hour of his life up to this point, and he was asking for the Disciples to be with Him, to pray with Him, and to be there as a support to Him.
How much more do we need the prayers and support of one another, especially during our crisis points in life? We will look at this point in greater detail in later messages, but if we believe that somehow we are going to make it in life as a success in God, and a witness to others around us, yet maintaining our complete independence from people, then we have missed it.
One might say, I’ll only be involved in a group if things are perfect! Well, I need not remind you that the Son of God at times might say that all the members of his group weren’t exactly “perfect” – They were often arguing over position and importance, Peter denied Christ, and Judas betrayed Christ, and the list could go on and on of how these men were hardly perfect, yet Christ knew that they needed him, and he needed them during His time on earth.
Not that Jesus “needed” these 12 men to survive, yet we know that if the work of God was going to be carried on following his ascension back into heaven after the Day of Pentecost, it was going to come as a result of what He had taught these men on a daily basis as they walked the shores of Galilee, and the dusty roads of that day.
The small group was Jesus’ method for leadership training. He devoted Himself primarily to the task of developing a select group of men, the Apostles.
His goal was to equip this small group of disciples to carry on the work of the gospel after He returned to the Father. Success was to be measured in terms of their future ministries, not in present achievement.
Sometimes, we get too caught up in the moment, believing that unless we see success “overnight” that it really is never going to happen. I have seen overnight successes, and often as quickly as they came to Christ, they leave Him. Many of you know the story of the Tortoise and the Hare, and it’s important to remember that it’s usually “slow and steady” that wins the race, and not fast and flashy.
Jesus selected common men — unlearned and ignorant by worldly standards (Acts 4:13) — who were ready to follow Him and were teachable, and willing to sit in the slow cooker for awhile and be taught.
Acts 4:13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.
You see, the world, in it’s elitist attitude and spirit will always feel like they are a step above you and I, yet I believe there is a great equalizer, and it is when we have been in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ!
While the early apostles spent time in the presence of Christ, In turn, He poured His life into these men and thrust the future of His whole ministry on them:
They received God’s Word: John 17:14 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.
They received Jesus’ protection John 17:12 While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.
Thanking the Father for “the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world” John 17:6 "I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.
The purpose of Jesus while here on earth was to reveal the love of the Father for a lost and dying world, and the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to point people to Jesus Christ and His love.
It would be “through their word” that many would come to believe (verse 20). John 17:20 "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,
So, even Jesus recognized the value of ministry in a group setting, and that not only was it better for the group involved, it was also a great training tool for future ministry that would take place.
Next, we look at:
II. THE EARLY CHURCH
As we further examine the Value of Community, we are going to go all the way back to the beginning of the Church, which as we know, was on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out on a group of believers who were told to go and wait for the promised outpouring.
Christ had already ascended back into Heaven 10 days earlier, and 50 days after the Resurrection of Christ, the Spirit came down in a powerful way.
Acts 2:1-4 - When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. [2] Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. [3] They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. [4] All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
The Bible then goes on to say in the same chapter that following the message Peter gave in which he explained the outpouring, and that it had been prophesied in the book of Joel, and that the people gathered that day needed to accept Christ into their lives, we see that 3,000 people were added to the church.
Acts 2:41 - Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.
What do do with the tremendous influx of souls? The Bible says that they continued to meet on a daily basis in the temple courtyard, yet also met in homes as the infant church began to get on it’s feet and walk.
Acts 2:46a - Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.
Now, we see here that not only did they meet together as a large group in the temple courts, but they also found it necessary to meet together in their homes where they developed relationships and friendships that would get them through the difficult times of persecution that were still to come.
We know that if there is one thing God desires of mankind, it is a relationship with us. We often talk about the fact that He is not a God of “religion” or formality, but He is a God who desires to have a living, breathing, ongoing relationship.
The stronger our relationship with God, the stronger we become in living the Christian life.
I believe that not only does He desire that we have relationship with Him, but that we also develop lasting Godly relationships with one another, and this can be done in spite of any faults or failures we may have, or others may have.
We have often heard the statement that no man is an island, and frankly, I pity the man or woman who believes that somehow they can make it in God as a Lone Ranger type.
1 Cor. 12:12 The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.
During the first two centuries of the Christian era church buildings did not exist, so it was necessary that people met in their homes. It is significant that the earliest church building discovered by archeologists is one recently discovered in the ancient Roman port of Aila, now within the modern city of Aqaba. It’s proposed dating is around AD 300, built during a period of relative toleration before the Great Persecution of 303-311. Eusebius, the "Father of Church History" (c. 260-340) tells us that many large churches were built in his day, but none have yet been discovered and it would only have been likely during the last half of the third century.
The Early Church could not just go out and start church building programs, because the persecution, and attempts to stamp out Christianity was at a fever pitch. People were being thrown into the Coliseum’s where cheering crowds would watch as they were torn to pieces, all in the name of entertainment.
All of the Disciples, except for John and Judas died a martyr’s death. – Boiled alive in hot oil, Peter was crucified upside down, others were tortured to death, yet would not give up their relationship with Christ, and the Church continued to grow.
The only apostle’s death the Bible records is James (Acts 12:2). King Herod had James put to death “with the sword,” likely a reference to beheading. The circumstances of the deaths of the other apostles can only be known based on church traditions, so we should not put too much weight on any of the other accounts.
The most commonly accepted church tradition in regards to the death of an apostle is that the Apostle Peter was crucified upside-down on an x-shaped cross, in Rome, in fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy (John 21:18). Following are the most popular “traditions” in regards to the deaths of the other apostles.
Matthew suffered martyrdom in Ethiopia, killed by a sword wound. John faced martyrdom when he was boiled in a huge basin of boiling oil during a wave of persecution in Rome. However, he was miraculously delivered from death.
John was then sentenced to the mines on the prison island of Patmos. He wrote his prophetic book of Revelation on Patmos.
James, the brother of Jesus (not officially an apostle), the leader of the church in Jerusalem, was thrown from the southeast pinnacle of the Temple (over a hundred feet down) when he refused to deny his faith in Christ. When they discovered that he survived the fall, his enemies beat James to death with a club. This was the same pinnacle Satan had shown Jesus during the temptation.
Bartholomew, also known as Nathanael, was a missionary to Asia. He witnessed in present-day Turkey and was martyred for his preaching in Armenia, being flayed to death by a whip.
Andrew was crucified on an x-shaped cross in Greece. After being whipped severely by seven soldiers, they tied his body to the cross with cords to prolong his agony. His followers reported that when he was led toward the cross, Andrew saluted it in these words: "I have long desired and expected this happy hour. The cross has been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it." He continued to preach to his tormentors for two days until he died.
The apostle Thomas was stabbed with a spear in India during one of his missionary trips to establish the church there.
Matthias, the apostle chosen to replace the traitor Judas Iscariot, was stoned and then beheaded.
The apostle Paul was tortured and then beheaded by the evil Emperor Nero in Rome in A.D. 67. There are traditions regarding the other apostles as well, but none with any reliable historical or traditional support.
It is not so important how the apostles died. What is important is the fact that they were all willing to die for their faith. If Jesus had not been resurrected, the disciples would have known it. No one will die for something he knows is a lie. The fact that all of the apostles were willing to die horrible deaths, refusing to renounce their faith in Christ is tremendous evidence that they had truly witnessed the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
But there was really no way for them to build a church and congregate together in massive amounts because they would easily be found, and become the Lion’s lunch for the day, and lights for the road at night as they were set on fire to burn all night.
Houses were the key to escape persecution, but it was also the key for explosive growth in the Early Church as people developed relationships in realizing they truly are the body of Christ.
In the early house churches we know that they would often gather together with meals being a central part of what they were doing as a group. We often joke a bit about food having a great pull in getting people to attend events, but I believe it is biblically true as well.
Acts 2:46b They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,
Eddie Gibbs, in I Believe in Church Growth, says: “In all my eleven years of itinerant ministry I cannot recall any growing church which does not encourage small groups.”
A couple years ago, we had a Missionary who is going into Cuba on a regular basis, and while not able to build a church, is finding ways to secure Missionaries within Cuba who are Cuban citizens who are willing to reach their own people in growing numbers.
New church construction is still forbidden in Cuba, but the Assemblies of God has grown from 9,000 to over 100,000 in ten years and has more than 2,000 house churches.
Many people believe that small groups, where all the members participate as directly as possible, are more effective for changing attitudes and behavior than the lecture method. This has been shown by "a whole series of studies", according to Paul Hare in the Handbook of Small Group Studies.
One lady told how she took her granddaughter to church for the first time. As they knelt in the tall-sided pew, the little girl whispered, "Who are we hiding from?" It is harder to hide from ourselves or from one another in the smaller group, than in the crowd.
John Stott wrote in One People: Clergy and Laity in God’s Church:
I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that small groups, Christian family or fellowship groups, are indispensable for our growth into spiritual maturity.
It is not really a mistake that the largest church in the world, Yoido Full Gospel Church, an Assemblies of God church in Seoul South Korea with a Membership of over 830,000 people grew from the very beginning, and even to this day as a result of powerful prayer meetings in addition to thousands of small groups called Cell Groups that gather during the week, then come together as one large church on Sundays.
Problems will always be part of the ongoing process of seeing the Church of Jesus Christ progress and move forward, and it has been that way since the early stages of the church as we see evidenced numerous times in the writings of Paul and others in the New Testament.
So often, the enemy gets God’s people into traps believing that if they try something new or different that it is bound for failure and problems, especially if there were problems in the past.
R.T. Kendall said these words: “The greatest obstacle to what God is doing today comes from those who were on the cutting edge of what God did yesterday.”
I believe this is one of the greatest reasons that you see churches across America and around the world putting padlocks on their doors forever, because they are too tied down to their past successes, great as they were, to realize that it is now time to forget ahead with vision and victory!
One of the greatest obstacle statements in a dying church goes like this: “We’ve never done it that way before”.
The world looks at the church often with untrusting eyes, believing that we are only in it for ourselves, and not for the good of the communities we minister in, and sadly that may be the case in some areas of the Nation, yet we must continue to forge ahead in spite of what the world might think our motives might be.
I believe that author and pastor Mark Batterson, who wrote “In a pit with a lion on a snowy day, and wild goose chase” was right when he said, “the church is more known for what we’re against than what we’re for”!
I believe that as a church, we need to look at ways we can reach out and bless our community, instead of always seeming to have our hand out to be supported.
We’ve talked about this before, but I believe in random acts of kindness!
The other night I thought I would commit one of these random acts as I pulled through the McDonald’s drive through to get some “diet food”, and felt prompted to bless the car in back of me. I told the person at the window that I wanted to pay for the person in back of me, and asked “oh by the way, how much is it for what they ordered?” I was feeling really generous until I found out that their “meal” was 1.05! I paid for it anyway, and left a card, and felt like yelling back at them that they should have ordered more!
How about giving out some Connection Cards if you’re able?
Let God work through you, and in you, and follow His promptings as you go throughout your day.
We still serve a perfect God working with imperfect human vessels, yet we continue to see the church Worldwide grow for the glory of God in spite of the attempts of the enemy to stamp out the church at every turn.
Just going through the Financial Peace University as a few groups met together was a powerful life-changing event for me personally as I continually apply the principles learned in that group.
Many of you have gone through the Bait of Satan Elective Class and have learned together the importance of not taking the Bait of Satan and becoming offended at every event that happens in your life or your families.
We have had groups dealing with facing the difficult challenges of life, strengthening marriages such as fireproof, Nothing’s Too Hard for God and more! Yet, these groups and others like them will be more powerful as we offer them at more times throughout the year.
God is going to help us to develop these groups even more in the future, as well as other groups that will help people connect in great ways to become stronger in the Lord.
Some of the groups we’d like to see developed as we move forward are:
Outflow Evangelism
The Bait of Satan
Under Cover
Nothing’s Too Hard For God
Fireproof – Marriage and Relationships
Every Man’s Battle
Every Woman’s Battle
Anxiety and Depression
Overcoming Addictions
Purpose Driven Life
Financial Peace University
Fundamentals of Faith
Book Club
Gifts of the Spirit
Prayer Groups
Parenting
Bible Study
The Value of Community can only be understated and hardly overstated. We need one another, and the different parts of the body of Christ must connect with each other like never before to have an impact on a lost and dying world.
So today, we see that Jesus believed in the value of a Small Group even in His own life, and the early church grew exponentially as a result of meeting house to house in the early days, and that God is still using groups to reach people today.
In the next weeks we talk about this, we are going to look at some of the reasons for small groups and how it can help us both spiritually and relationally.
Key words for these times will be Discipleship, Evangelism, Accountability, Relationships, Pastoral Care, Service Opportunities, and Remedies for Loneliness.
We are going to have ways you can become involved in Growth Groups, whether it be as a host, or as a participant. Please be in prayer whether this is something you would be interested in doing.
It is Biblical!
