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How Small Groups Strengthen Your Church

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How Small Groups Strengthen Your Church

There are two essential elements of community.

1) Interpersonal Commitments

2) A Sense of Belonging. 

True community needs both elements in operation.

Without interpersonal commitments, a sense of belonging would soon be lost as a sense of belonging is derived from and is a result of the interpersonal commitments.

Relationships are powerful. A good relationship will build a person up and a bad relationship has the potential to destroy someone. We often fail to realize the value of relationships within the church. We exhaust ourselves with evangelistic efforts and get excited over a sudden growth or influx of visitors. However, if we fail to blend these new people into bonding relationships within the church, we will most likely lose them.

Relationships, not jobs or job titles are the most valuable and most bonding element for new believers. Jesus understood this. Notice in the whole 3 years He discipled the 12, He never did hand out offices or titles. He built relationships. He not only connected them to Himself, but He connected them to one another. Why did He eat at their houses and teach in their homes? He knew this was the place where deep meaningful relationships could be developed.

It is the early relationships in a person’s life that molds their emotional and spiritual make up. A child who is wounded by those relationships will grow up a wounded adult. Relationships give us identity within a unit. They give us purpose and reason for belonging. A bad relationship in a marriage will cause a person to seek ways to leave the marriage. A good relationship in a marriage will cause a person to find ways to improve that relationship. This principle works the same in any case.

Within the church we realize that difficulties will arise. Negative personalities and complications within a congregation will work to drive people away, causing them to leave. However, those influences will have little result if the individual is in a deep and meaningful relationship with others in the church.

For this reason, it is imperative that we labor as hard at building relationships within the church as we do at evangelizing. 

A relationship takes work. It takes commitment. It brings us to a place with others in the church where we have to work through relational problems, rather than just write each other off. It gives significance to Jesus’ statement when He said “the world would know we are His disciples because we have Love one for another.”

Small Groups offer to the church the mechanism needed to create and maintain genuine and loving relationships. Within a small group these relationships work together to reinforce the teachings of the church as well as bind the person to the family unit that is the local church.

Looking for small group lessons? Preachit.org has a vast library of small group materials that can be taught as is or easily edited to match your churches goals.