Between reading your Bible reading, praying daily, family commitments, Sunday church and a busy job, you are probably already overwhelmed, tired and maybe stressed-out.
Sound familiar? Why add another responsibility to that list by becoming a small group leader? I’m so glad you asked!
It’s time for us to suspend excuses for why we can’t lead a small group and start asking ourselves if we should be leading a small group. If the answer is yes, then how do we juggle leading a group with the rest of our life? I want to share that solution with you, but before we do that, we have some important blessings to consider.
I want to share with you 10 Benefits of Leading A Small Group:
1. Crucify Consumerism. We have developed some bad habits in the American church. We have reduced our faith to sitting in church services and having a personal quiet time. This develops a selfish inner culture called “consumerism.”
Consumerism entails living out your faith and church orientation for your self. Consumerism is not biblical community. Consumerism is not the gospel. Consumerism must therefore be crucified (Galatians 5:24).
Leading a small group will transform you into a “contributor.” You will have to give up your own time, energy and resources for the spiritual edification and formation of others. That selfish part of you that once dictated your decisions will eventually be starved, dried up and gone.
2. Bring Jesus Home. Leading a small group invites the kingdom of God into your living room. It will move your faith beyond the four walls of the church sanctuary and into the space where the “real you” lives and breathes.
I love having my small group praying and worshiping in my house. I love sensing God’s Presence fill mi casa. I love having my two-year-old son exposed to Christian koinia. I love bringing Jesus home.
3. Increase Your Ability to Talk about Your Faith. Participating in regular group discussion that wrestles with divine truth and our human experience is a fruitful process to say the least. It helps you to put your faith into your own words versus just sitting in a pew and listening to another person’s.
Members of small groups eventually talk about their faith more with unbelievers because their group experience has made it “normal” to talk about. Leading a group discussion only enhances and increases this dynamic in the development of a believer.
4. Develop Hospitality Muscles. In the KJV, 1 Peter 4:9 says, “Use hospitality one to another without grudging.” In the Greek, hospitality means being generous to guests. The biblical concept of guests refers to a person entering your home. In fact, in the NLT, 1 Peter 4:9 reads, “Cheerfully share your home with those who need a meal or place to stay.”
May I suggest that you can’t practice true hospitality until another person crosses the threshold of your front door?
5. Real Connections. When you lead a small group you are putting yourself out there. You’re making yourself vulnerable to others. While this is not always comfortable, you are positioning yourself to experience real connection and relationship with others. You’re inviting people into a closer dimension of your life. This is where life -exchange and life change can occur.
6. Stretched in “One-Anothering.” As I mentioned in a recent article, there are 59 One Anothers in the Bible. Most of them can’t be practiced in a Sunday service.
A huge obstacle for growth in American Christians is there lack of opportunities to release love on others. We have mastered living lives with boundaries all around us that protect us from the responsibility of truly loving others.
Leading a group will make you more familiar with the NT spirit of “one-anothering one another.”
7. Crucify Individualism. America is the most individualistic society in the world. You don’t even realize how much you view the world through the prism of your own individuality. Yet, the collective value of the whole was highly esteemed in the first century church, not the value of a single person.
I think it’s safe to say that leading a small group will help to neutralize this tendency in your life.
Individualism might be the greatest idol in the hearts of American Christians today. Maybe it isn’t a coincidence that the English word for “idol” begins with the letter “I.”
