Leading Life-changing Small Groups

This has been a very busy week for me to fit in my job responsibilities along with going to camp meeting every night. But I have been attending each night so far. The speaker is talking about developing the correct kind of attributes and character that would be most Christ-like. He is using several people out of the Old Testament and teaching us through their faults and successes how to accomplish the work of God. He is showing us that god uses those who are week in a worldly sense and how God makes them strong. There is also a missionary family who speaks each night. Their last name is Volstad and they are in Russia. Last week I wrote in my blog the discouragement I had with ministering to people who had issues involving alcohol. The missionary addressed that last night as he shared a testimony about a young man who struggles with that same problem. His family are Christian and he also has accepted Christ, but still struggles with it. In fact his doctor has warned him many times that he will die if he doesn't quit. The missionary shared that the average life expectancy in Russia is around 60, because of the abuse of alcohol. It is good to know others who are also experiencing similar struggles in their ministries. They have also been sharing the testimony of a lady who they have been descipling and she has now been trusted with some ministries in the church they have developed in Moscow. It has taken about five years for her to reach that point of ministering. It shows me that if you work with descipling people it will be frustrating and it will be a long commitment and it takes lots of love and nurturing.

I was sharing with Pastor Cliff last week some of my frustrations with ministry. At first it seemed like things were going great, but my Bible study at the neighbors house seemed like it was getting stale. It seemed like I was just going through the motions and not seeing any progress being made in me or those who are coming. Let's watch the video, pray a few sentences eat cake, go home and see you next week. I felt like I was supposed to go to the book store after camp meeting Tuesday night, and I promised Pastor Cliff that I would pray about what to do. As I started looking at the book titles I reached down and found this book Leading Life-changing small groups and it had many of the same ideas that Pastor Larry taught me when I was a part of a leadership team of small groups several years ago. We also last summer had to fill out a questionnaire for the church health group team that is an outside of the church organization that determines where a church needs to go next in order to become healthy. Through this study, it was determined that we need to develop small group Bible studies. After I began to read the advice in the book, I realized how off the course I am in leading my neighbors in this study group. I have been writing down many of the suggestions in the book. We are so off course that at this point it would be impossible to go next week and just do all the things suggested in the book, but I am praying about it, and I will plan to add something new every couple of weeks and we will gradually change and become more Christlike. One of the ideas is to pick one or two of those who are now coming and gradually train them to be leaders and gradually invite a few new people and as those leaders begin to lead the group that already exists the idea is to divide the group into two or more other groups in other homes. It is suggested that this process may take more than a year. In future blogs I will give you information about what I added to the group and keep you updated on the progress we are making. I am glad to see that Christ is so quickly giving me new hope and through the sharing of the night speaker and the missionary that reaching out to people will be difficult at times, but if we continue to be steadfast and patient we will bear fruit in due season. Continue to pray for our church that we will continue to see lives changed and that we will work on getting people placed in caring ministries and that Christ will show us unique and new ways to show love to our brothers and sisters in Christ and also those who are not yet part of His church. Pray that Christ will cause us not to spend time with just friends we feal comfortable with, but that we would get out of our comfort zones and reach out in some way to include and minister to the new families and individuals that He has sent to us that we would include them in our fellowship in a loving way.