By now, I think all of the 18-20 Somethings small groups have gone through the first week of the 40 Days of Community small group book. So I thought it’d be a good time to share about my 40 Days small group.
First, though, if you have any comments on what worked well, what didn’t, any cool stories on things that happened in your small group, or anything to share that has to do with 40 days, then by all means leave a comment. We’d love to hear your stories and your input.
This week in my small group was a little different, with both Mike and Allison being gone, and it definitely had a different dynamic to it. After watching the DVD our discussion took off, like most discussions often do, into unexpected territory. We got off on talking about love and whether there is a limit to love when someone starts to take advantage of it. It was a topic I hadn’t expected our discussion to turn to, but it was definitely a good topic to think on. We talked about where to set the line when loving someone who takes advantage of that love and demands a lot, and someone in our group brought up the point that Jesus never set a line when loving people. For Jesus, it was never about whether he was being used by people, he always set out to love people in whatever situation they were in. And as we talked about this in small group, I began to think about the story of the woman who touched “the edge of Jesus’ cloak”, and about how the story says that Jesus was in the midst of a crowd and people where close all around him.
All this just goes to demonstrate that Jesus wasn’t afraid to “get dirty” like Mike talked about in the Messy Spirituality series and this applies to the way that we love people. If we love people like Pharisees, with borders and lines and rules, it’s a conditional love. But when we love people with the “get dirty” mindset, it doesn’t become about how much is too much or how far is too far to go, it becomes an unconditional love that transforms lives.
So those are just some of the thoughts I had left over from 40 days — let’s hear yours.
2 Comments Received
May 4th, 2007 @8:31 am
I’ve been going to the small group on Thursday nights at Scott and Chelsey Schlatter’s house… and I have to say, it’s a really fun group of people and we have an great time with each other. We have some ADD when it comes to staying on task in the book, but I don’t think that’s really what’s most important about this 40 days series. You can sense the genuine desire for the people there to find out more about you and about what’s going on in your life. We have the fellowship thing down for sure. And there is no shortness of laughter there, which for me is totally awesome. Also, there is a strong desire within our group to be challenged, and so I think that is forcing us to go a little deeper than the study itself… and we’re excited about planning a way to serve together. It’s been a fun ride so far!
May 7th, 2007 @4:14 pm
Yah, I definitely see the desire in our group to go deeper with the 40 Days thing. To me, all the 40 Days stuff at Parkcrest is very much a push to get people in small groups, and so the material tends to try to be very user friendly. So I think it’s good that each group treats it differently — as Rick Warren said, the book is not our master.
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