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The Bible as Small Group Experience

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 by Jared Musgrove

Bible reading, meditation, journaling, meaty theology books—they are crucial and quite individualistic. And while there is a place for your personal, passionate pursuit of God, the Bible was never meant to remain a solely singular endeavor. The reading of the Word of God has always been a communal experience.

These books, letters, stories, poems, and prophecies are meant to be read aloud. It is the call upon the people of God to worship Him through His Word recounted and recited in the midst of biblical community.

Dr. Jeff Arthurs presents five reasons why the public reading of Scripture is integral to Christian communal worship, not as mere perfunctory recitation but as impassioned and Spirit-empowered speaking of the very words of God:

  1. We are commanded to read the Bible publicly. Referring to 1 Timothy 4:13, “Devote yourself to the public reading.” We are a forgetful people, all too often foggy in our thinking and heart’s desires. We need to be reminded who we are, so God commands us to read Scripture devotedly and publicly.
  2. When we read the Bible publicly, we do what the people of God have always done. Based on the prominence public reading of Scripture has had through the millennia, Timothy Ralston concludes, “Public reading and preaching within the worship exposes [God’s] demands, our inadequacy, and his grace. It calls for covenant renewal and lies at the heart of spiritual revival. Therefore, how can we offer acceptable worship, if his Word does not have a prominent place in our liturgy?”
  3. God transforms us through the Word. Dallas Willard explains with an analogy: “In the same way that your hand moves in response to your thought and emotion,” just so does God perform his will (creating, ruling, and redeeming) through the unmediated extension of his will expressed in words….What we call natural laws, then, must be regarded as God’s thoughts and intentions [that is, his words] as to how the world should run.”
  4. The Bible was meant to be read aloud. Before it was inscribed on vellum and papyrus, the stories, proverbs, and poetry of the Bible circulated orally, and after the oral literature was written down, it continued to be transmitted orally. Literature in the ancient world was spoken, not read silently—even when reading privately. This is still the case today in much of the worldwide Church, and that is appropriate because the Bible was meant to be received aurally.
  5. Hearing the Word is different than reading it silently. Hearing and seeing a reader embody the text is a different experience than silently pondering a script in the privacy of the study. Have you heard the Word read well? Vistas of new understanding and worship open as the people of God receive His words together.

These reasons form a basis for seeing the Scriptures as a community treasure. Reading the Word in community need not be long-faced and doleful. It should come alive with the very personalities behind the words themselves.

Dr. Jared Steven Musgrove serves as Groups Pastor and an elder at The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from The University of Oklahoma, a Master of Divinity in preaching from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a Doctorate of Ministry from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the husband of Jenny and the father of Jordan and Joshua. You can follow him on Twitter at @jsmusgrove.

 

Group Leadership

Don’t Glorify Your Busyness: An Appeal to Community

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In an age where Google provides us with all the answers, texting becomes easier than talking, and the number of followers we have on Instagram dictates our level of popularity, the adjective we could most easily use to describe our lifestyle is: “busy.”


“I won’t make it to worship service, I’m busy with errands.” 

“I don’t have enough time to read my Bible this evening, I’m busy with the family.”

“I can’t go to small group this evening, I’m too busy with work.”

Busy, busy, busy.

We Millenials have elevated our busyness to be a status symbol. The busier you are, the more important you are. The more texts you can’t respond to, the more popular you must be. The harder you are to reach, the more you’re wanted. Supply and demand, I guess.

Ironically, one of the reasons we need small groups is because they serve as the antidote to our busyness. Despite your busy schedule, below are three reasons you need to keep “penciling in” your local body of believers.

  1. Small groups force us to know each other at a deeper level. One of the temptations of busyness is the descent into superficiality. Yet when we go to small group, we are given the opportunity to confess our sins and open our hearts to discipleship. Small groups encourage us to be vulnerable. When we’re surrounded by some of the closest people in our lives, the ability to hide is nearly impossible.
  1. Small groups help us reorient our priorities. They remind us of Who comes first. When we make it a point to attend a weekly group, we are consistently reminded of why we gather every week. By putting us in direct contact with God’s Word and fellowship with other believers, the small group gatherings themselves emphasize the importance of discipleship.
  1. Small groups put us in a position to hear from God, and to live out what really matters. Small groups directly counter self-centered living by having us open Scripture, study God’s words, and take on Jesus’ lifestyle. Small groups put us in the position to not only absorb truth, but also to go and live out what we believe. We are able to spur one another on toward love and good deeds (Heb. 10:24)—this includes serving our community.

The temptation to hide behind our schedules—to distract ourselves so we don’t deal with our sin and our sainthood—is a real one. But it’s a temptation that gets a little less strong the more we spend time in community with other believers.

Caroline Case is a proud Nashville transplant from Naples, Florida, who serves as the Production Editor for LifeWay’s SmallGroup.com and Discipleship in Context teams. Caroline has a Bachelor of Communication from Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, FL. She is pursuing her Master of Arts in English at Belmont University in Nashville, where she will go on to pursue her doctorate and teach.

Group Leadership

Three Christian Perspectives on Time

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What is your most precious resource?

Is it money? Property? Bitcoin? Perhaps. But I suspect that in a world of increasing busyness, when the lines between work and rest are blurred by technology—when there is always another email, another podcast, another post, another opportunity—that the one resource you wish you had more of is time.

But you don’t. And I don’t. Furthermore, we can’t. We can’t gain more than what God has allotted to us in our lives; we can’t make the sun slow down; we can’t stop the calendar pages from flipping. Time is marching on, and every single second we have less of it in our lives than we did the second before. The best we can do is make the most of what we have.

But for Christians, doing this means having a unique perspective on time, one informed by God’s Word. The Christian should, then, view time through the lens of Scripture and have that perspective shaped by a few key truths:

1. Time is futile.

The clock is ticking on both a macro and micro level. Time is ticking through the day and, on a broader scale, through our lives. Every moment that goes by is a moment that we’ll never have back. It’s this issue of time that the Teacher in Ecclesiastes address in Ecclesiastes 3. In that chapter, he acknowledges that there is a season for everything under the sun. And if we rephrased Ecclesiastes 3 into our modern culture, we might find something like this:

There is a season, turn, turn, turn, for everything, turn, turn, turn…There is a time for the healthy pregnancy and a time for the miscarriage. There is a time for the good days of fun with kids and a time for when they are too cool to hang out with you anymore. There is a time for the diapers and a time when you wonder how you can afford the groceries for the teenager. There is a time to earn a good living and a time to wonder if you’ve saved enough for retirement. There is a time for chemotherapy and a time for remission. There is a time for diplomacy in the tenuous regions across the world and a time for bombs to be dropped. Turn, turn, turn…

When you put it like that, it’s not so easygoing. It does, however, expose at least part of the reason why the Teacher looks at time and—along with so many other things—cries, “Vanity!”

The Christian perspective on time is formed by the reality of the seasons. Coming and going. We don’t need to struggle to hold onto the past, nor do we need to be in a hurry to get into the future. We don’t need to be the people who constantly seek plastic surgery to keep our youth, nor do we need to be the people who are always looking to some future opportunity or financial state. There is a season for all things in God’s sovereign design.

2. For such a time as this…

In Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo once remarked to Gandalf, “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” as he lamented the fact that he had lived to see the evil advancing from Mordor. Gandalf responded, “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

We live in the days in which God decided we should live, just as Esther and Mordecai did. Esther, who had been given a position of power and stature in a royal kingdom that was a threat to the very survival of the Jewish people, was not put in that position at that time by accident. This is what Mordecai tells her in Esther 4:14:

“If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jewish people from another place, but you and your father’s family will be destroyed. Who knows, perhaps you have come to your royal position for such a time as this.”

The Christian perspective on time is built on the knowledge that when we are, and where we are, is not by accident. God has planned good works for us to walk in. He has placed us in specific places, times, communities, and positions in order to make the most of them. We must not be the people who are constantly wishing for another time, or another place, or another position, but recognize by faith that this is when and where God has placed us.

3. The present is framed by eternity.

Our knowledge of eternity defines our perspective on the present—not the other way around.

As believers in Jesus, we are the people who know the future. We are those who have a sure and certain hope. We are the ones who have had all the guesswork removed for eternity. Because we are, we should live now in light of what will certainly be true tomorrow:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable,undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. You are being guarded by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:3-5).

This knowledge of eternity changes the way we see time. In some ways, it makes us more urgent with the time we have. It makes us share the gospel freely because we know that every human will spend eternity either in heaven or hell. It makes us want to invest everything we have in the Kingdom because of the future dividends it will pay.

But a knowledge of eternity also helps us not just make the most of the present, but endure in the present. We can endure suffering because of what we know is waiting for us in eternity. We are free from the need to seek revenge because we know that God will bring justice in His own time and in His own way.

Because of eternity, we know that today won’t last forever. So the Christian can live, in a way, outside of the bondage of time because we know that we will be with Jesus forever. We don’t panic, but we don’t live lazily. We don’t worry about tomorrow, but we also invest in the future. The Christian lives with a sense of balance because of our knowledge of eternity.

Time is indeed a precious resource, maybe the most precious one we have. But this resource, like all the others, must be framed in light of what we know to be true from God’s Word. Our perspective must be irrevocably altered because of our faith.

Michael Kelley lives in Nashville, TN, with his wife, Jana, and three children: Joshua (10), Andi (7), and Christian (5). He serves as Director of Groups Ministry for Lifeway Christian Resources. As a communicator, Michael speaks across the country at churches, conferences, and retreats and is the author of Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal: A Boy, Cancer, and God; Transformational Discipleship; and Boring: Finding an Extraordinary God in an Ordinary Life. Find him on Twitter:@_MichaelKelley. Check out his latest book, Growing Down: Unlearning the Patterns of Adulthood that Keep Us from Jesus here.

Group Leadership

Four Things to Do With Your Group Before Summer Hits

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Easter has come and gone, and now the countdown is on for summer vacations and activities to kick in. The temptation for a lot of leaders at this point would be to mail in these last few weeks and let the group slide into June. You can avoid that natural slump by doing these four things before Memorial Day.

1. Choose a 6-week study that follows up on Easter.

Easter is always a wonderful time to celebrate the death and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Now is the perfect time to follow that celebration with a study that takes a deeper look at the impact Jesus has in our world and lives today. My small group is starting the study, Jesus Among Secular Gods, by Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale. The Forgotten Jesus by Robby Gallaty would be another great study to check out.

2. Start planning fun group activities for the summer.

Just because your group may not meet every week during the summer months does not mean that you should stop meeting as a group. Take a portion of an upcoming group meeting to discuss fun things for the group to do each month during the summer. Go to a baseball game. Meet for a picnic. Go whitewater rafting. Take in the 4th of July fireworks together. The summer is a perfect time for your group to laugh and play together!

3. Start researching a summer missions opportunity for the group.

Ask one of the group members to start looking for an organization to partner with on a weekend during the summer. Your church may already have opportunities or a list of organizations you can start with. For example, volunteering to help build a house with Habitat for Humanity is a great way for your group to bond and serve your community at the same time.

4. Choose an online study to do during the summer.

Choose a study on smallgroup.com. But instead of meeting together every week for the discussion, set up a Facebook group page to go through it online. Your group members can watch the video on their own, and then post comments on the page. This will allow the group members to do the study at their own pace, but still participate in the discussion. A great study to check out is Onward, by Russell Moore. All of the videos and study guides are available at smallgroup.com.

Let’s take these last few weeks of spring and prepare our groups for a strong summer!

Chris Surratt is a ministry consultant and coach with over 23 years of experience serving the local church. Chris served on the Executive Team at Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN, and was on staff at Seacoast Church in Charleston, SC, for 15 years. He is also the Small Group Specialist for LifeWay Christian Resources. Chris’s first book, Small Groups For The Rest Of Us: How to Design Your Small Groups System to Reach the Fringes, was recently released by Thomas Nelson. You can follow his blog at chrissurratt.com or follow him on Twitter @chrissurratt.

Group Leadership

The Greatest Game: The Call to Make Disciples

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Baseball is my favorite sport, hands down. If you think about it, it involves the highest level of strategy of any sport. Most often, each pitch is different than the prior pitch. Once a batter gets on base, the strategy shifts—not only from the pitcher’s perspective, but also from the batter’s perspective. Pitchers have to face left- and right-handed batters. Batters have to face pitchers from both sides of the mound as well. The goal of the batter is to place the ball in an area of the field that will further the lead runner’s position. And sometimes, if a runner is on third with less than two outs, batters will intentionally hit a fly ball to score the runner, while sacrificing getting on base themselves.

Rookies, even though they have likely played the sport for most of their life, still have a lot to learn during their first year. That’s where veterans come in. Vets usually take rookies who play their same position under their wing, teach them the ropes, train them, and prepare for those rookies to take their place. In essence, they are helping to produce a new crop of seasoned players who will reproduce other seasoned players several years down the road. They not only lead the rookies, but they also serve the rookies.

Discipleship and servant leadership are much like baseball. There are two elements of discipleship and servant leadership that we must understand if we are going to be a people who make disciples and act as servant leaders. Both are relational and both are replicable. But make no mistake about it. If you are not intentional, replication will not happen.

There were many people who were intentional in shaping my faith and molding me as a disciple. These included my parents and my pastor at the time, George Barnett. They pointed 7-year-old me to Jesus’ grace. But my journey didn’t end there. Over the course of the next several years, I’d enter high school where Wes Cantrell, my student pastor, continued to point me to Jesus. I chose to attend a Southern Baptist university, one where professors and university leaders pointed me to Jesus. Ultimately, those events and people shaped my faith to the point where I was called to ministry in 2006. Just as Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, I was transformed into the image of the Lord from glory to glory.

Just like baseball, disciples and servant leaders need guidance from other disciples. As believers, and especially as group leaders, we have the privilege of playing powerful roles in the journey of our brothers and sisters in Christ. We see this need that we have for each other all over the Bible. And one place we see that is in Acts 8, when Philip met the Ethiopian eunuch. Philip was one of the apostles scattered out after the early church in Acts fell under persecution. He traveled along a deserted road from Jerusalem to Gaza, and he saw a chariot on the side of the road. In the chariot was an Ethiopian eunuch, the queen’s money man, reading the prophet Isaiah. Scripture tells us Philip was prompted by the Holy Spirit to go up to the man. So Philip ran up to him and asked if he understood what he was reading, and the Ethiopian eunuch asked, “How can I unless someone guides me?”

If we learn anything from the Ethiopian eunuch, it’s that disciples need guidance from other disciples. And that’s exactly what Philip did. He guided the Ethiopian eunuch to grow into the image of Christ. Later in Acts 8, Philip baptized the Ethiopian. Philip not only led the Ethiopian eunuch, but he also served him.

Much like a veteran baseball player who takes a rookie under his wing—teaching him, guiding him, helping him mature as a ball player—disciples are meant to do the same thing. We are meant to guide new disciples. We are meant to serve them. We are meant to help them mature and grow into the image of Christ.

Who are you actively leading to Jesus? Who are you actively discipling? Are you living out servant leadership in a way that edifies Jesus and His gospel? The goal is to help the lead runner, the person you are discipling, advance their position so that they may replicate what they have learned from you and do the exact same thing to serve the next generation of disciples.

Matt Morris is a Brand Manager at LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, Tennessee. He has served in ministry for over 11 years. Matt is married to Carmen and they have twins, Hudson and Harper. Matt and his family are members of First Baptist Church Mount Juliet, where he serves as a deacon.

Group Leadership, Start New Groups

Small Groups that Live Sent

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by Eddie Mosley

Do you have objectives for your small groups? Is the vision clear for group leaders and members? Over the last few years, some churches have helped groups know and remember their purpose by adding descriptive purpose words to the title of their groups. Life Groups, Community Groups, Bible Study Groups, or Missional Groups.  This last title caught my attention, as it not only helps to clarify the biblical purpose of groups, but it also aligns well with my church’s purpose statement, Find Life-Live Sent. We need to address the “new movement” and how to be sure our groups are accomplishing this purpose. What about your groups?

You already know that small groups are not limited to Bible study, community, service, or support; they are designed to be an environment that enables life transformation for Christ followers. So how do you help your groups remember their purpose? What are some steps you take to evaluate your groups’ accomplishment of this purpose? Through research at our church, we discovered two catalysts that stand out as life transformation experiences, as well as which groups can be essential in helping to walk through with their members. The two catalysts are mission trips (Live Sent) and life crises. While we can’t plan a life crisis, groups can be there for the individual. But we can schedule, plan, and promote opportunities for members to Live Sent via mission trips!

There is a motto you will hear often around my church: “The more you grow the more you serve. The more you serve the more you grow.” Knowing the results of the research, we knew we had to plan mission trips and encourage participation for more than just helping another church, city or community. The motivation had to clearly communicate that this experience had the potential of changing the participants’ lives, as well as serving the churches and communities for which the trip was planned. To increase the emphasis on the importance of missional efforts of groups, we challenged every small group leader to participate in a mission experience within the next two years. If for some reason the leader could not serve on a mission experience, the group was asked to sponsor someone from the group to represent their group.

This challenge was met with mixed responses, but in the end a large percentage of groups were able to meet the challenge. Celebration of what God was doing in and through the mission trips was communicated over the years at each leadership training event and weekly newsletter, which included stories from the various trips. 

How can you help your groups live missionally?
How can you partner with your missions ministry area to plan ahead and promote mission opportunities?
What could be a goal for your church’s groups to Live Sent over the next two years?

Eddie has served as Small Groups Pastor at LifePoint Church, a multi-site campus in Smyrna, TN, since 2005. His enthusiasm for seeing life change happen in the lives of individuals in his church, neighborhood and community is infectious. Eddie is author of Connecting in Communities, Understanding the Dynamics of Small Groups and various other articles on practical approaches to reaching people for Bible study. Eddie earned a MDiv at Southern Seminary and a DMin at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a sought after speaker for small group ministry as well as neighborhood impact. His passion is to help pastors and leaders develop strategy to implement Small Groups in the local church which build community that impacts their communities. 

Group Leadership, Start New Groups

Four Reasons to Give Your Groups a Discipleship Plan

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I have a go-to low carb eating plan that I turn to whenever I sense the extra pounds starting to come back on. The diet includes mostly eating eggs and black beans every morning. I will be honest, before starting this plan I was not a raving fan of eggs and black beans. But what I had not yet discovered was how creative you can get when you are desperate. I knew the only way I was going to last longer than one week on this diet was by coming up with a variety of ways to prepare eggs and beans. However, no matter how many ways you spice it, I was still only eating eggs and beans. Every day. That might be great for the short-term gain, but it’s not exactly a balanced, healthy diet.

In the same way, our small groups are not going to be their healthiest without a balanced spiritual diet. Our goal should be to create mature disciples who make disciples, and the best way to achieve this is by offering our groups a well-rounded discipleship plan to follow throughout the year.

Here are four reasons to provide a balanced curriculum plan for your group leaders to follow.

1. They know what to study next.

Research for the book Transformational Groups found that 75% of group leaders want more direction from church leaders when it comes to their groups. The majority do not have the time or the ability to choose the best studies for their groups. They often feel burdened by and unprepared for the task of setting a course for discipleship. They are grateful to have a plan to follow that is taking their group somewhere spiritually and purposefully.

2. It drives members toward spiritual maturity.

Paul compels us to seek maturity in Hebrews 6:1: “Therefore, leaving the elementary message about the Messiah, let us go on to maturity…”

J. Oswald Sanders said that the correct sense of the verb in this passage is, “Let us continue progressing toward maturity.” In other words, maturity will not occur overnight. There is not one event or moment—or Bible study—that will make us mature Christians. It happens slowly through a growing knowledge of Jesus and Scripture, and the way to get there is through intentional study after intentional study with a small group of believers.

3. It helps assure sound theology.

Groupthink can quickly lead to bad theology. Not every leader will be mature enough to just open Scripture and exegete it correctly for the group. They need doctrinally sound content to keep the group on the true path. Not every published study is created equal, so we have to be diligent in what we put in our leaders’ curriculum toolbox.

4. It helps raise up new leaders.

If you are looking for new leaders for your groups (and we all are), the best way to develop them is through existing groups. After following a balanced discipleship plan for a year, they will be ready to step out and guide others along the same path.

This is why LifeWay has developed a Balanced Discipleship Plan for group leaders to follow. Throughout the course of a year, they will choose studies from seven categories—Foundational Discipleship, Bible Book or Character, Doctrine, Real Life Issues, Identity, Mission, and Community—that will ultimately move them toward spiritual maturity.

It’s time to stop just eating scrambled eggs every day. Let’s help our groups get healthy through a balanced plan.

Chris Surratt is a ministry consultant and coach with over 23 years of experience serving the local church. Chris served on the Executive Team at Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN, and was on staff at Seacoast Church in Charleston, SC, for 15 years. He is also the Small Group Specialist for LifeWay Christian Resources. Chris’s first book, Small Groups For The Rest Of Us: How to Design Your Small Groups System to Reach the Fringes, was recently released by Thomas Nelson. You can follow his blog at chrissurratt.com or follow him on Twitter @chrissurratt.

Group Leadership

The Sermon and the Small Group 

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by Jared Musgrove

If preaching matters so much, what are we to do with the sermon in our communities? For far too long we’ve placed preaching and community in separate silos. But clear, biblical proclamation must always be connected to gospel-centered community.

Believer, the best you have to offer the people in your daily sphere is your own passionate pursuit of God. Biblical preaching serves the role of God speaking to His people, and you are called to be faithful to that planted Word, nourishing it so that it may grow to its fullest expression and application in community.

So the first heart that the preached Word must affect in your gospel-centered community is yours.

May I recommend you focus your Monday morning devotion on reviewing and rehearsing the preached Word you heard over the weekend? Take notes during the sermon and devote Monday’s waking hours to the call God gave through His preacher. What was the Holy Spirit directing you to do out of the text? What spurred you on in holiness? What convicted you? What direction and conviction was given for you to encourage, confess, repent, reconcile or reach out? Be faithful to follow up on these God-given directions, and share them with your community.

The outgrowth of your obedience to God’s Word spreads directly into your gospel-centered community. Those with whom you walk are always affected by your decision for or against obedience to Scripture.

John Wesley recognized that the need for church members to share their lives and convictions was not met in the large weekend service. So he purposed “band meetings,” smaller groups of believers from within the church, to encourage one another for holy living. He saw these groups as an outgrowth of Sunday’s sermon, building into them an emphasis on application of the preached Word as members regularly shared their spiritual condition, confessed sin and hardship, and prayed together.

As churches preach through the books of the Bible, there is a wonderful opportunity for us to be confronted with the same Word of God both as individuals and as a community. We can create a culture of unity and authenticity as we lead our groups to devote their shared study time to the books and passages preached on the weekends. The complementary resources provided are based in the Scriptures and are a direct outgrowth of your commitment to holistically equip saints to do the work of ministry. None of us are interested in developing connoisseurs of sermons, but in making disciples passionate about acting upon God’s call upon us.

This is the place of the preached Word in your community. Spiritual vision is cast from the pulpit and carried out in your small group. A gospel-centered community is the ideal opportunity for applying God’s Word in caring deeply for one another and ministering in the trenches.

In this, we have the opportunity not only for increased gospel-centered community but also for gospel-centered multiplication. Preaching and community are not the end goals. Making a disciple is. Even as preaching is to drive and direct small groups, the truly gospel-centered community knows the message doesn’t stop with the group. Together, we constantly consider ways the Word of God may multiply out into the souls with whom we share a wider sphere.

Dr. Jared Steven Musgrove serves as Groups Pastor and an elder at The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas. He earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from The University of Oklahoma, a Master of Divinity in preaching from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a Doctorate of Ministry from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the husband of Jenny and the father of Jordan and Joshua. You can follow him on Twitter at @jsmusgrove.

Group Leadership

Links We Love

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What You Can Look Forward to on the Other Side of Being Overwhelmed – Eric Geiger

The cliché: “Don’t bite off more than you can chew” is unhelpful because it is good for a leader’s development to occasionally do so.

3 Spiritual Reasons Why You Should Take Control of Your Calendar – Michael Kelley

…taking control of your calendar isn’t just an issue of time management. Maybe there’s something deeper going on here. Maybe taking control of your calendar is actually a spiritual discipline; maybe it’s an act of discipleship.

Beyond the Pancake Breakfast – 10 Fellowship Ideas for Men’s Groups – Kris Dolberry

Everyone loves pancakes– especially when there’s bacon involved. But, when it comes to Saturday morning pancake breakfasts, most of us have been-there-done-that. So, beyond the pancakes, bacon, and dude sharing a quick devotional, here are 10 fellowship ideas for your men’s group to consider:

You Have Stayed Long Enough – LifeWay Women’s Ministry

Is there a place in your life where you have stayed long enough? Is there something that God is calling you to do that may require you putting your foot on the gas and stepping bravely into the unknown?

Maximizing Mentorship – LifeWay Leadership

Mentoring is something I believe every leader should be involved in. But it’s not easy. It requires a tremendous amount of time and energy and is a big commitment for a leader. That’s why it’s important that we learn to maximize our mentoring relationships. So here are a few things that you might find useful to help maximize your mentorship.

Group Leadership

Four Ways to Deal With Tricky Questions in Your Group

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If you teach a Bible study group long enough, someone is going to ask you a tricky question. It’s just bound to happen. It’s one of the most uncomfortable things that happen to group leaders. I’ve seen two categories of tricky questions in the groups I’ve taught. “Category 1 questions” are what I’m going to call “innocent” tricky questions. They are asked with pure motives, but can be hard for a group leader to answer. The second category of tricky questions is what I’m going to call “malevolent questions.” These tricky questions are not asked with pure motives. In fact, these are asked by group members when they are intentionally trying to stir up something in the group. Here are four ways to deal with each category of questions.

Four ways to deal with tricky, but innocent, questions:

  • ADMIT – Learn to use three powerful little words: “I don’t know.” It’s OK to admit that you don’t have an immediate response for the person. Use this when you really don’t care to address the question. You’ll earn people’s trust and respect by not simply making up an answer—because everyone knows when we do that.
  • AFFIRM – Say something to the person who’s asked the question like, “That’s a good question,” or, “You’ve helped me see this in a different way.” You can affirm their question, but you don’t necessarily have to stop to address it. Move on. Keep the lesson on track. Affirm the person by saying, “You’ve given me something to ponder.”
  • ASK – This is where it gets fun! Turn the tables, as Jesus did (Luke 20) and simply say, “Now that’s an interesting question—how would you answer it?” 9 times out of 10, the person is eager to share their insight. They asked you, but now you’ve asked them.
  • ACKNOWLEDGE – This is a cousin to the first solution above, Admit. The difference here is that you admit your lack of knowledge and you commit to do further study. You simply acknowledge that you don’t have an answer, but you also promise to do some further study and get back to the person and/or the group.

Four ways to deal with malevolent questions:

If you’ve ever been put on the spot intentionally by someone during a Bible study, don’t despair! This happened to Jesus at various times. In Luke 20 a group of men came to Him to trick Him, and He turned the tables on them. He wouldn’t respond to their question before they responded to a question He decided to throw at them. The result? They dared not ask Him any more questions! I think there is some humor in the Bible, and that’s one of the spots—I would have loved to have been there to see Jesus expertly handle a group of people with a malevolent question!

When you sense that a question has been asked to derail the study or to challenge you, take a deep breath, compose yourself, and choose one or more of the following ways to deal with that malevolent question:

  • DEFLECT – Deal with that potential barbed question by deflecting it. Say, “If I have time before the Bible study is over, I’ll get to that question. If not, I’ll visit with you after class. Let’s continue our study…” I never get to the person’s question (imagine that!). If I sense that the question was asked to do me or the group some level of harm, I always want to isolate the person and not give him or her a platform in front of the group. I always meet with the person afterwards.
  • DEFEND – On occasion, when I really do want to bring correction to the person asking the snarky question, I choose to respond. Jesus did this in Matthew 24 when He was asked an intentionally tricky question about which was the greatest command in the law. Sometimes the best course of action is to confront the person and give your response. Defend your position. Use Scripture. Stand your ground—but do it humbly and gently.
  • DIVIDE – This is a great response that normally puts the person in their place, and causes them not to ask challenging questions anymore. When asked one of those malevolent questions, say: “John has posed a hard question. Let’s divide into groups of 3 or 4 and work quickly to respond based on Scripture. Elect a spokesperson for you group. You have 5 minutes. Go!” What always happens is that the groups of people end up “policing” the person with the malevolent question. They put the questioner in their place using Scripture, and you don’t have to say a word. It also give you, the teacher, time to think about a response while the groups are doing their work.
  • DIG – Normally when you are asked a malevolent question, there’s a question behind the question. Do a little digging and find out the real issue. Say, “Wow—I didn’t anticipate that kind of question in our study today. Why do you ask that?” Continue probing with an even more pointed question, “Why is it important to you that we answer that right now?” or, “Help me see how that question connects to our study.” Just keep digging and ultimately the person will either back off, or that person will reveal the true reason he or she is putting you on the spot.

Ken manages the Ongoing Adult Bible Studies and Church Trainers at LifeWay. He has been a group leader for 6 years, and has over 20 years of church education ministry experience. He blogs daily about groups at kenbraddy.com.