Relationships

Our church just recently had a men's prayer and worship meeting that lasted a good portion of the day; one of the pastors of our church shared some observations with me about the day:

Of the over 30 men who showed up to the prayer time, aproximately 90% were involved in one of our discipleship groups.

Two men stated during the meeting that they would not have come to the prayer meeting were it not for the role the discipleship groups had played in their lives.

Two other men shared with my friend that they were only at the meeting because of their involvement in the discipleship groups.

I find these observations telling...

This is by far the largest turnout we have ever had to a men's event of this nature. We have spent months beating the men of our church over the head with guilt (only a slight exageration) and not had this level of attendance at men's retreats and breakfasts. This time around there was much less emphasis during our Sunday gathering times; men were simply invited by the leaders of the groups they attended (if they attended a discipleship group) or else were invited by one of our pastors.

The telling aspect of this occurance is that the men who chose to show up were predominantly men who were involved in a discipleship group, in other words, men who had RELATIONSHIP with other men in our church. It never ceases to amaze me how complucated we think it is as compared to how simple it really turns out to be.

These are pictures from some of our Discipleship Groups:







As the Church we continue to put together programs for this and programs for that when all that is really needed is groups of people who will get together in the name of Jesus to pursue His purposes for our lives. As we gather in His name we will discover Jesus leading us into the Father's love, into community, into mission and service, and into equipping and training others. It is this group of individuals comitted to loving God, loving people, making and teaching disciples, that is the basic unit of Church; the "cells" of the body of Christ.

It is simply impossible to be a disciple of Jesus outside of one of these communities!