How to change an established group

For the Soul Care Questions, click HERE.

Here are a couple of excerpts from a good article about change in your small group.  It is written specifically for small group leaders.  As I was reading through the article I kept thinking about how true these things are and how much I believe them.
Gospel growth EQUALS change for God's glory.
Gospel  growth DOES NOT EQUAL maintaining status quo for comfortablity.

Yet the gospel equals change even for the most established and highly functional groups.  This is because the gospel and change go hand in hand.  Paul wrote in Colossians how the gospel has gone into the whole world and "is bearing fruit and increasing" (Col. 1:6).  For the Colossians, this meant more people believing and more believers growing in maturity.  For Paul, this gospel growth meant a life of almost constant change as he traveled from place to place an sent away dear friends such as Titus and Tychicus for gospel ministry (2 Tim. 4:10-12).  The gospel and change go hand in hand. 

For us today this means that gospel-driven change will sometimes or often be necessary for our established groups.  It could be because the regular leader has gone to Bible college or on overseas mission or because new people have joined your church and new groups are needed or because a new ministry has started and people are keen to be involved.  There's all sorts of ways the gospel compels us to change our groups.

Here are four practical tips to help make changes well and overcome obstacles.  These are just the main points the full article develops each in more detail:

1. Respect and work closely with the pastor or leader who wants to change things.
2. Preach the gospel to your group.
3. Grieve the losses and celebrate the opportunities.
4. Work with your pastor to manage the change as best you can.

Click HERE for the entire article.

Soul care questions for September 27

Take some time to answer one or two of these questions

Romans 4
Why is it important to reject self boasting?
We all struggle with self boasting. Leaders: you can ask your group what are some personal ways they have relied on themselves and boasted in themselves. How can we fight against self boasting?

Psalm 32
What are the blessings of joy found in this psalm?

Proverbs 4:23, 24
God's righteousness through faith is the ground for our heart surrendered obedience. How and why do we do the things in this week's verse

A Great Question to ask is "How did this Bible teaching make you feel?"

O.K.  I have spoken to Soul Care leaders and Bible teachers about how bad the question "What does this passage mean to  you?" is.
Why is this a bad question:  What the passage means to me is not the big question to ask in Bible study.
The questions should be "What did the writer mean?" and "How does it apply to me?"

So, if "What does the passage mean to you?" is a bad question,
why do I think "How did this Bible teaching make you feel?" is a good question.

At the Biblical Counseling Conference this weekend we were reminded that
feelings reveal desire.  
If you ask, "how did this Bible teaching make you feel?" merely to satisfy your own curiosity or to make you feel better about yourself and your teaching than it is wrong.
If you ask the question to see what is going on in someone's heart, it is a good question

If a person answers the question by focusing on themselves and their circumstances,
there is a focus problem.  The Bible was not written for our entertainment.  Sermons are not preached to win the praise of men.
If a person answers the question with an expectant joy that can be know only through Christ, 
there is a God-focused life.  The Bible was written to show God's glory.  Sermons are preached to proclaim the glory of God.

"How did this Bible teaching make you feel?"  provides a great opportunity to expose the big desires in someone's life.  

Soul Care Email sent 09.15.15 with some additional info in RED!

This blog post (email) contains information you will want to sure you check out because people in your group will have questions about changes to prayer sheets and other things.

At the end of this email I included some people who asked about being in groups.  Who can you invite to join your group?

This week is the start of our Soul Care Groups!

• Thank you for your response to the training this summer.  Almost every leader received training on at least 3 of the 4 topics.  The training pdfs are available HERE 
• Encourage Godly men in your group to take the NEXT STEP and lead a group.  If you have someone in your group who could be a leader, email me.  In thinking through and reading about small groups ministries, I am more convinced that these settings provide a great environment to develop leaders.
• Several groups met last week to get together for fellowship and reconnection.  That is a great way to reconnect and build some community.
• If you didn’t pick up Soul Care notes for this week, you can find them at www.emmanuelbaptist.com/adults.   This week I have put a Soul Care Question Sheet with some discussion helps for your HERE.
• We want to help each person grow in their spiritual discipline of Bible memory.  You can find out more at http://blog.emmanuelbaptist.com/biblememory/   The Fighters Verses have weekly devotionals and resources to help people learn these verses.
• We want to help each person grow in the spiritual discipline of prayer.  We have modified our prayer sheet from a weekly sheet to a monthly sheet in order to help people grow in this.  You can find out more at  http://blog.emmanuelbaptist.com/category/prayer/.  TYou will get or you may have questions about why we changed from a weekly sheet to a monthly sheet.  I am providing this brief explanation to help you understand for yourself and explain to others some of the reasons.  If you or someone in your group has questions, please have them contact me by calling the church or emailing drodgers@emmanuelbaptist.com.   

The challenge with doing a monthly prayer sheet instead of a weekly sheet is keeping the "information" up to date.  One of the attitudes I pray would develop is that these sheets would be seen more as helpful guides to help people focus on God as they prayer for people rather than a list of hospital updates and details.   

• With the change from weekly to monthly, every Soul Care leader is going to be added to a prayer update list.  Recent and updated prayer items will go out twice a week to people on this list.  You can encourage your group members to sign up by emailing or contacting Jane Lee (jlee@emmanuelbaptist.com)

I sent out SOME GROUP INFORMATION for Members and Welcome Class attenders who asked specifically about Soul Care.  If you didn't receive this email, please let me.

“Asked” doesn’t mean “do not ask.”  It only means they have been asked.

Being asked by more than one group is not a problem.  

Ron and Mary Farley really want to host one at their house.  They need a leader.