Cross Wave Church Article: Envisioning Your House Group

Cross Waves Church

Coaches Corner

Envisioning Your House Group

            First and foremost, you can do this. As you plan your meeting, there are two things you should think of. One is what role do you play in your house group? And the other is where to begin?  Let us start with what role you play in your house group.  Acts 5:42 says, “Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.” Bill Bradley, a former professional basketball player and a three-term U.S. Senator from New Jersey, once said, “Respect your fellow human being, treat them fairly, disagree with them honestly, enjoy their friendship, explore your thoughts about one another candidly, work together towards a common goal, and help one another achieve it.” With that, we should have two goals in our house groups.

             First fellowship, the Bible says the disciples ate together with glad and sincere hearts. Secondly, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. This means they devoted themselves to growing in Christ and maturity. How are these acts done you might ask? A relationship is key. I am a big believer in relational evangelism, which simply means we work on building a relationship with our guests and make our home welcoming. Doing this in time helps when the hard questions come up, and also when there is a need. Begin your fellowship by offering time to talk and get to know one another. That is why we begin our HotSpots with dinner.  Also, we should arrange a time for prayer. I like what is called community prayer. This is done so that people in your group can get comfortable participating in prayer together. It also helps to unite the group in a common bond. Finally, you may have people coming to your group with diverse understandings of the Bible, God, Jesus, and Christianity.  By first building a relationship, each person will begin to feel more comfortable in the question segment of the Bible talk message.

The second goal is discipleship. By definition, disciple simply means a follower. The apostle Paul said, "follow me as I follow Christ." So even though we are all flawed in some way, we may all, as a house group, follow one another just as the disciples followed Christ. Here are some insights from the book Leading Small Groups with Purpose, by Steve Gladen, “Your role as a small group leader is not one of a teacher or sage: ‘I am up here and you are down there.’ Ideally, all group members will be helping each other to grow and take spiritual next steps.” (P. 45).

In conclusion, as we join you from week to week in this Coaches Corner, we want you to know that we, the members of Cross Waves Church, are here to support you and help guide you. Feel free to contact the office with any questions you may have and also for suggested topics or issues you are experiencing in your groups. Chances are that someone else is having the same issues and could use similar advice from our coach’s corner.