Building Friendships One of the best things about life groups is the friendships you will make. It is important to have people in your life who are seeking God just as you are. They can encourage, support and challenge you. Small groups meet this need by providing a time and place to learn about God, build each other up, and have a lot of fun at the same time. A Life Group is typically made up of six to twelve people who meet to share about their lives, support one another, and study biblical truths. Each group has a host/leader (or one person may host and lead). Life Groups are located in and around Cheney.
Key Small Group Values
All groups operate according to certain values and expectations. Often these go unspoken or unwritten. In order to foster open communication and clarity about the purpose and values of the group, it is important to get your core values in writing.
Below you find values that are key for small group relationships. This is only a sample set of values. You and your group should create your own list with the kinds of values central to your group.
Again, consider your ministry when deciding on the right approach for your group. The important thing is that your members are committed to growing in interpersonal relationships and maturity in Christ.
1. Affirmation - It is important to create an atmosphere where group members affirm and encourage one another, build each other up in Christ, and help each other grow.
2. Availability - Group members and their resources should be available to each other. People's time, attention, insight, as well as material resources, must be made available to each other in order to meet needs and serve one another.
3. Prayer - Prayer is valued in group life. The group comes together before God to praise, ask, confess, and thank Him for all He has done. Prayer encourages group members to be humble, knowing that all comes from God. In prayer, they also feel valued and come to understand their own worth. As you see God move to answer the prayer concerns of your members, the whole group will be very encouraged.
4. Openness - Openness in the relationships within the group promotes honesty and an ease of sharing feelings, struggles, joys, and hurts. Reaching the goal of authentic relationships begins with being open with each other and by opening the group to new members.
5. Honesty - The desire to be honest with each other is critical to authentic relationships. In order for trust to be built among the group members, they must speak the truth in love, so that "we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ" (Eph. 4:15).
6. Safety - Honest, open relationships must be guarded with an agreement of safety-that what is said in the group will remain confidential, that opinions will be respected and differences will be allowed.
7. Confidentiality - As part of the concept of safety, confidentiality promotes openness by promising that whatever is shared within the confines of the group will not be repeated elsewhere.
8. Sensitivity - A commitment to sensitivity to the needs, feelings, backgrounds, and current situations of other group members will help build relationships in the group.
9. Accountability - In authentic relationships, accountability is voluntary submission to another group member(s) for support, encouragement, and help in a particular area of your life, giving them some responsibility for assisting you in that area.
10. Evangelism - As a group, evangelism is being committed to expanding the community of believers through such things as sharing your faith, using the "open chair" to invite people into the group, or other types of outreach.
11. Multiplication - Having your group grow and eventually birth a new group enables the group to carry out the vision of seeing more people connected in Christian community, growing in their relationship with Christ.
Leading Life-Changing Small Groups; Edited by Jack Kuhatschek and Rachel Boers
Copyright© 1996, 2002, by the Willow Creek Association
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530