These things, which we hope to be true for our home groups, we also hope to be true for our entire church community. Generally, home groups are important vehicles for our individual journeys of discipleship as we each grow together in our abilities to be present to God, connected to each other, and engaged in the world. Specifically, home groups give us a better shot at focusing on and achieving a “primarily local, relentlessly personal, and unceasingly prayerful” community.[1] These communities exist not just to form little book clubs or social cliques (though books and socializing will probably be involved at some point!), but rather to be committed to forming meaningful friendships and to share in learning and growing in the Spirit together.

The green boxes below contain Scripture notations that are in no way exhaustive, but provide small pictures and biblical capsules to help you begin to imagine what each of those features might look like in your group.

ROOM

Home groups shall provide participants with a safe space to explore, recover, question, struggle, and celebrate. Our fast-paced, isolated world often makes it difficult for us to even conceive of this sort of opportunity. Home groups should be a respite from this way of doing things. Each group has the potential to be an enclave where people have the time and confidence to take down their guards, to share their hopes & dreams, to take risks and make mistakes, to break down and be built up, to know and be known. These things take time. They take intent. They take a group of normal people open to the extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit among them.

Friendship (John 15:9-17) | Transparency (2 Cor 1:3-11) | Care (Acts 2:42)

Though groups may not even take place in someone’s home, the word home represents the kind of hospitality and welcome these groups should embody. Home says, “Take your shoes off and stay awhile.” Referring to these groups as home groups particularly reminds us that one of the key elements of them is the space created by and for friendship, transparency, and care. If these values are threatened by growth, group dynamic, or anything else, it is essential for the home group leader to use his/her resources to continue to shape and reshape the group.

You might think of home groups as greenhouses where participants can grow. This growth may take separate forms: growing in fidelity, discipleship, and in urgency to witness to the Good News of God in Christ to the world. To participate in a home group means having a green mindset, recognizing that the development of root system is essential.

ROOTS & FRUITS

root growth

If home groups at the Gathering Church are growing well, we’ll find ourselves (as individuals and as a group) growing increasingly more in-step with the story of God. This story arches from Creation>Fall>Redemption>New Creation. It is our firm belief that home groups give us a great shot at learning this Good News story (Gospel) and being a part of it as disciples. Because these groups are small, they’re able to be interactive. When we crack open the Bible or some other study, we learn and teach each other with the help of the Holy Spirit what God has done, is doing, and will continue to do. When we pray together, we share the concerns and praises that arise as we journey with Christ. When we serve each other and our wider community, we put ourselves in a better position to discover and exhibit the “rare, relentless grace”[2] and love given to us by God in Jesus.

Study (2 Tim 3:16) | Prayer (Phil 4:4-9; 1 Thes 5:16-18) | Service (Phil 2:1-11)

Finally, a “room to grow” mindset, requires that we will be growing something or growing into something that we are not yet, and that there will be a fruitful harvest in people’s lives and in the world. Growing roots together involves the continual call to repentance from the ways we fail follow and embrace the grace offered to us by God in Jesus’ life, cross, and resurrection. Growing roots together charts our course on journey of discipleship, where we live by the power of God’s Spirit. Cultivating these roots helps us to realize how God has included us in his Story of Salvation and how we are to be agents of that very same reconciliation.

fruit growth

A home group that is growing in their roots will exhibit fruits of that growth (some observable, some less obvious). No matter what a group’s individual concentration, it’s goal should be the cultivation of more mature disciples of the Lord Jesus. Other signs of fruitfulness might be the development of members’ passions, gifts, and creativity, the emergence of leadership qualities, and life transformation (family, social, spiritual, vocational…). This kind of fruit growth is exciting and to be hoped for, but mostly comes as the by-product of lives lived in the community that the Jesus makes possible.

Maturity (Eph 4:13) | Leadership (1 Pet 4:10-11) | Contagiousness (Acts 2:47) | Transformation (Gal 5:22-24)

Another type of fruit we might expect from our groups is numerical multiplication. While crafting the Christ followers, groups will be growing the type of disciples that heed Jesus’ call to seek out the lost, destitute, and those who feel far from God. Home groups grow deep, but also outward. This outward growth necessitates a level of accessibility to people who are encountering the Church and Christ for the first time. For this reason, instead of capping or closing groups, our hope is that growing groups will proactively respond to opportunities to multiply leaders and groups.

[1] Eugene Peterson, The Pastor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 5.