Leadership

Construction: Building Community (Part Two: Towards Personal Space)

By jgiroux ⋅ June 23, 2008 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

This is Part 4 of the Construction series on Thursday Leadership Lesson- Building Community. Last semester, we talked about laying a solid Foundation. This semester, we are focusing on the skills and resources needed to build teams, ministries, and groups. It’s about making disciples.

1 Thessalonians 2:8 says,

We loved you so much that we shared with you not only God’s Good News but our own lives, too.

Many groups become very good at sharing the Gospel. We can give correct answers to the questions and know the right way to think about Scripture. But we must also become skilled at sharing our lives.

Crowded Loneliness

There is a tremendous need for community within our generation and culture. George Gallup said, “Americans are among the loneliest people in the world”

In the book Creating Community, Andy Stanley observed, “We are a culture craving relationship. In the midst of our crowded existence, many of us are living lonely lives. We live and work in a sea of humanity, but we end of missing out on the benefits of regular, meaningful relationships.”

We live in the midst of thousands of people; we pass by them every day on the metro, at work, at church, at lunch. Our lives are full of meetings, acquaintances, myspace friends, phone calls, emails, and text messages. But at the end of the day, we realize that the relational component of our lives could be characterized as “crowded loneliness.”

Relational Spaces

Two weeks ago, we explored the idea of Biblical community and the different levels and purposes that it can serve. We identified four relational spaces:

• Public: connection through common external forces and experiences
• Social: connection through common interests.
• Personal: connection through the sharing of private experiences, feelings, and thoughts.
• Intimate: connection through the sharing of naked experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

For more information on these spaces, read here.

Today, I’d like for us to begin to talk about some ways we can take our groups to the next level in community. How do you take a group that is primarily in public space or social space to personal space? How do you encourage people in your group to develop intimate space without creating that space within the group experience itself?

Let’s begin by looking at how we can move a group from public or social space to personal space.

Towards Personal Space

Most groups begin in the realm of public or social space. We don’t have to talk much about moving from public to social space because the group will naturally navigate towards that just by nature of meeting together regular.

The goal for most groups, however, is personal space. That area where we are sharing with one another, being involved in the lives of one another, and doing life together.

There are two venues for moving towards personal space: within the group and outside of the group.

Inside the Group

You can move the group towards personal space within the context of the group time through sharing together and praying together.

Here are some tips for moving the group to personal space through the sharing time:

• Model the level of transparency you would like to see the group achieve.
• Avoid yes/no questions.
• Develop questions that progress in the following categories: fact questions, opinion questions, feeling questions. (”What does this say?,” “What do you think?,” “How does this make you feel?”). This moves the group to a deeper level of sharing and trust.

The prayer time can also be valuable for moving the group to personal space. Here are some tips:

• Offer personal prayer requests that model the level of transparency you would like to see the group achieve.
• Establish permanent, smaller prayer groups that stay together from week to week.
• Send out prayer emails after group to keep members involved in praying for one another throughout the week.

Outside the Group

Most of us do a good job moving the group deeper during the weekly meeting time. But what we do between group meetings is often more important than what we do in the meetings themselves.

In 8 Habits of Effective Small Group Leaders, Dale Early points out that Jesus used all kinds of environments to build community and make disciples. He built community and developed disciples at weddings (John 2:1-10), dinner parties (Luke 5:29-32, Luke 7:36-48), boat ride (Luke 8:22-25), picking grain (Matthew 12:1-8), at holiday meals (Matthew 26:17-28), on walks (Luke 24:13-27), and even at funerals (John 11:17-44). Let’s not underestimate the importance of sharing such life moments together.

The between times offer leaders the most valuable opportunities to move the group towards personal space. You can do this by playing together and serving together.

I’ve found that spending two hours playing together moves a group into a deeper level of community than an entire semester of discussion. Here are some ideas for playing together as a group:

• Celebrate birthdays.
• Celebrate group member baptisms.
• Go to a movie.
• Play kickball on the mall.
• Go to a baseball game.
• Attend Juman’s Dance Party together.
• Go on a hike.
• Have a theme party.
• Have a cookout.
• Go to a concert at Wolf Trap or a free concert on the mall.
• Play paintball.

The list is endless. Be creative. And don’t do all the work yourself. Remember, a good small group leader can do everything, but a great small group leader does very little. It’s the power of delegation.

Finally, you can move your group towards personal space by serving together. We talked about the power of service and the impact it can have on a community quite extensively in the fall. You can read more about it here. We believe that serving together is one of the fastest ways to build community. Here are some ideas for moving your group towards personal space through involvement in service:

• Make lunches for In Service or dinners for The Living Room (contact Elizabeth Schloesser)
• Help an elderly person with errands or house needs (contact Heather Gonzales)
• Mentor kids at the Southeast White House (contact Paul Irwin)
• Stuff bulletins (contact Bekah Kitterman)
• Assist with communion preparation or handing out bulletins at a weekend service (contact Pat Thomas)

Again, the possibilities are endless and you should harness the uniqueness and the creativity of your group.

Let’s move our groups beyond superficial relationships and pseudo-community and to real life sharing. Let’s pray and share in a way that goes beyond the surface and really touches hearts. Let’s play together and serve together beyond the group meeting time in an effort to do and share life together.

What are some ways that you have found to move your group towards personal space? What are some of the challenges?

Next week, we will talk about the challenges of moving group members into intimate space.

About The Author: Heather Z. is the Pastor of Discipleship at National Community Church in Washington, DC.