MAKING HOME FELLOWSHIP (HF) GROUPS WORK

I attend many secular/atheist discussion groups. I am an alien there, but I do not feel alienated. Why not? I have no expectation of making connections and am content to be an alien in their midst. Of course, when I do manage to build a bridge of mutual understanding, I am glad about it.

However, my experience in Christian groups is entirely different. I come in hope of finding fellowship, an elusive commodity. I don’t come as an alien, but it is far more likely that I will feel alienated there than at an atheist discussion group.

Why? I enter with the hope that I will become an integral part of the discussion but painful distance is often our lot. Loneliness is most painful among others with whom we hope to connect. In contrast to this, we seldom feel lonely walking down a crowded street alongside of complete strangers.

How then do we make our groups warm and welcoming? Another way to ask this same question is, “How can we express and build upon the unity created by the Spirit?” (Ephesians 4:1-5). We have to speak to one another in our common and unifying language, the language of the Scriptures:

·       What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. (1 Corinthians 14:26)

This will do more to unite us than any talk about politics of the football game. The Scriptures must provide the soil from which everything grows (2 Peter 1:2-4). It is the flag around which we must rally to experience the unity of the Spirit:

·       And he [God] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:11-16)

The Word must be ministered until we “attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” This something that will not be completed until our Savior returns for us.  This also suggests our ministry doesn’t start in the community but at home, within the Body of Christ, where we impart growth to one another “speaking the truth in love,” as “each part [member] is working properly.”

We all have a role to play, and the HF has a duty to help the brethren discover their Scripture centered and prescribed role, the perfect antidote to feelings of alienation.

Charles White, professor of Christian Thought and History at Spring Arbor University, wrote about the role that the small groups played in the Methodist revival:

·       The Methodists made such an impact on their nation that in 1962 historian Elie Halevy theorized that the Wesleyan revival created England’s middle class and saved England from the kind of bloody revolution that crippled France. Other historians, building on his work, go further to suggest that God used Methodism to show all the oppressed peoples of the world that feeding their souls on the heavenly bread of the lordship of Christ is the path to providing the daily bread their bodies also need. (Mission Frontiers, Sept-Oct 2011, 6)

·       Coming to Christ through the Methodist movement changed the loves of a million people in Britain and North American in the eighteenth century….most of these people and their children moved from the desperation of hand-to mouth poverty to the security of middle-class life as they made Christ their Lord and experienced the impact of His power on their economic lives. As these people moved up the social ladder, they began to influence the political life of their nation. They helped to transform Britain from an eighteenth-century kleptocracy – where the powerful fueled their lives of indulgence by exploiting the poor into a nineteenth century democracy – which abolished slavery and used its empire to enrich the lives of every subject of the crown. (9)

Before this glorious movement of the Spirit, England had been in turmoil. White explains:

·       The police were also overwhelmed by the fighting and killing of the mob. The law executed people for 169 capital crimes, but the regular march to the gallows did nothing to make the streets safe at night. Sexual immorality was common at all levels of society, and the nation was overwhelmed with illegitimate children. (7)

What made the difference? Wesley had formed the people into small groups where they would pray, confess their sins, and pledge to follow Christ in all His teachings and fundamentals (Matthew 28:19-20)!

The small groups were serious stuff. All were accountable to one another. All had a voice and a role to play. With such important business at hand, there was little room for alienation.

What happened to the Methodist Church? With their increased affluence, the requirement for membership in a HF was dropped and they “progressed” to a professional clergy instead of appointing leadership from within their groups.