The Spiritual Basis For Group Ministry Series

THE VALUE OF COMMUNITY – PART II

The Spiritual 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.

We are on Message # 2 today on the Value of Community.

Last time, we looked at the Biblical Basis for Group Ministry and looked at the examples of Jesus and His Disciples, as well as The Early Church.

We were able to see how Jesus and the Early Church utilized this method for the purpose of training, discipleship, and early church growth, as well as come to the realization that the Group approach is not the only approach to Church Growth, but it certainly is a Biblical one.

Today, we are going to take a look at:

THE SPIRITUAL BASIS FOR GROUP MINISTRY

The Spiritual basis in this context means that we are determining the personal spiritual growth potential of being involved in Group Ministry.

The desire of every Christian here today is to be a person who is continuing to grow in their spiritual walk with the Lord. You must decide that you are not satisfied with the status quo, and you want to go “above and beyond” in your relationship with God and His family.

Often, one of the greatest problems with growth is that it’s hard to see happening overnight!

We’ve all seen the measuring marks people make on their doors or walls, or even posters they can buy now as they mark the progress of a growing child, however, if we didn’t have a clue in life and wanted to measure our child’s growth by sitting and watching them grow, it would drive us insane very quickly as we would see no growth whatsoever.

Growth takes time physically, and it also takes time spiritually.

We must give new Christians some “slack” as they grow in God, realizing that like the little song says, “He’s still working on me”

Stuart Briscoe says… So many times, you can’t see anything happening week to week. Spiritual growth takes place beneath the surface.

First of all, we see under this topic:

I. DISCIPLESHIP FOR ALL

What does Discipleship or Disciple mean?

Well, we know that Jesus had the 12 Disciples, and in essence they were “followers” of Christ, and all the time they were following Christ, they were learning and being educated in practical and spiritual ways of serving God.

To be a Disciple basically means that one goes a step further from just being a “believer”, to being a follower who is working to duplicate the acts of the one who is being followed –

When Jesus called His disciples, He used the words “follow me” – This didn’t just mean to get behind Him and make a straight line as they walked from town to town, but it meant that they would now follow His instructions, and live the way He wanted them to live.

They went from surface relationship to that of a Teacher and Student, yet even further than that as they watched him heal the sick, set free the captive, and bring hope to the hopeless. Jesus was instructing them in the ways of God, and showing them the heart of God, yet again, it did not happen overnight, and one might in reality say, they never ARRIVED at the place of perfection.

It was the desire of the Lord that the Disciples reproduce who He was, and the works He did, then, as they began to lead other people duplicate the efforts all over again, not in a physical sense, but in a spiritual sense. They learned from Him, then they went to share what they had learned with others, and the process continues even to today. If the church does not reproduce itself after the pattern of Christ, it simply becomes a warped representation of something, yet not having the power of God.

Apart from a life impacted by Jesus Christ, we have nothing that is worth emulating and duplicating if all we are offering is our answers of the way morality should be defined.

Our children and others need to know that God is still a God of relationship, and holiness, with Biblical answers and absolutes, who expects us to live according to the Word of God in 2009 as much as any time in history.

Too many people are making this thing up as they go along to fit in with their views of how they think God should be, and writing books that are outright heresy covered with titles that seem like you could find them in a local Christian bookstore.