What are community groups?

WHAT ARE THEY
Community groups meet weekly and serve as the primary means of community and gospel transformation at Grace Marin. They are a safe place for adults and children to learn to live by faith in Christ together.

In community, people are listened to, trusted, and known. These groups consist of discussion, sharing, prayer, and strategic community investment, and are facilitated by trained leaders who are given continued oversight and support.

Individual groups are geared to cultivate an environment where Jesus Christ is experienced in his presence and power, such that his Spirit ministers to participants so that each person is cared for and encouraged to pursue a God-pleasing life. Wherever you are on your spiritual journey, whether skeptical or mildly curious about Christianity, or whether you are already a committed follower of Jesus Christ, our Community Groups welcome you.

WHY ARE THEY
We live in a fragmented and hurried county, in a rootless and transient culture. And consistent with our broader philosophy of ministry, the intention of our Community Groups is not to encourage surface-level relationships, tribal ‘Christian’ language, or easy answers. We’re not interested religious 'how-tos' or self-help or 'church as usual.' Our desire is that Christ would be honored and the gospel of grace would change us, because it's the only thing that can. It’s with the hope of this promise of the gospel that we encourage you to enter into deeper community at Grace Marin, where questions are encouraged, doubt is welcomed, and belief is celebrated.

Christian Fellowship can be defined as seeking to share with others what God has made known to you while letting them share what they know of him. This becomes a means of finding strength, refreshment and instruction for one's own soul. The Scriptures give us numerous commands concerning how we should interact in fellowship with one another. We are told to encourage one another, serve one another, rejoice and weep with one another, correct, instruct, sing to, build up, accept and love one another. There is no better way to put yourself in a position to fulfill these commands than by becoming part of a Community Group.

These groups also serve as a key way to keep the leadership aware of the pastoral concerns and troubles which face the members of our congregation which might otherwise remain hidden.

Community Groups are a place where individuals who are seeking truth can be invited and encouraged to enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ. In addition, they serve as a place where we can remind one another of our call to share the gospel and pray for those with whom we are sharing good news that God has reconciled himself to us in Jesus Christ.

Because these groups are expected to be reaching out to seekers and inviting newcomers in the church to join them, they must have a vision for multiplying new groups and developing new leadership.

The church is sometimes compared to a football stadium where you find 22 people who desperately need a rest and thousands of people who desperately need exercise. Community Groups are a place where spiritual gifts are discovered and exercised within the group itself, within the larger church, and to the world. They are a place where a vision for ministry and service are developed.

THE THEOLOGY OF A COMMUNITY GROUP CHURCH
While some congregations may have Community Groups, our congregation is Community Groups They are the primary place for pastoral care at Grace Marin. They are also the chief means by which the following are accomplished:

· assimilation of new members
· accountability and discipleship
· leadership development
· gift identification
· evangelism and outreach
· service and ministry to felt needs
· communication

Therefore, we hope that a great majority of Grace Marin members and attenders will be involved in a Community Group
"I tell you the truth," Jesus said, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, fields - and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life." Mark 10:29-30

When Jesus made this statement he was talking about the church. In that statement we are reminded that what matters most in life are relationships. And that is what the church is all about: relationship - with God and with one another. It is our great privilege and our great responsibility to engage in such relationships with zest and delight. At Grace Marin, the chief opportunity to cultivate and develop such relationships is in our Community Groups.


· In the Old Testament (OT), the tabernacle and temple are called God's dwelling, or his "house" (1 Chron. 6:48, 25:6; Ezra 5:2, 15)

· In the New Testament (NT), the people of God themselves now become the dwelling of God. Individual Christians receive the Holy Spirit and now become "living stones" being built up into God's "spiritual house" (1 Peter 2:5). 1 Corinthians 3:9 says: "you are God's building"

· Now the main work of Christ in the church is oikodomeo, or "building up". Now "God is the one who can build you up" (Acts 20:32) and "In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord" (Eph. 2:21). The church grows not by joining physical stones but by joining and uniting human lives filled with the Spirit of God

· So, too, the main work of the living stones themselves is oikodomeo. "Therefore
encourage one another and build each other up" (1 Thess. 5:11) and "Speaking the truth in love...the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work." (Eph. 4:15-16). Now how does that happen? How does the church grow and build itself up? When we speak the truth in love to one another, when lives are joined to lives, when the living stones are united. This cannot happen only (or even mainly!) in the large worship service. It happens in face-to-face groups, house churches.

· Traditional churches expect the pastoral staff to "build up the believers", but the Bible expects believers to "build up one another". Traditional churches expect the pastoral staff to attract and win new persons mainly through programs, but the Bible says that the body grows member-to-member as each speaks the truth in love, builds up, and equips the other.

The early church certainly recognized that the essence of being the church was face-to-face every member ministry in small groups. In 1 Cor. 14, Paul assumes that when they meet together "each one of you has a psalm, a teaching...let all things be done for building up (oikodomeo)". See! Paul is clearly talking of house churches, in which everyone participated. He assumed everyone ministered. The New Testament epistles talk of "the church that meets in their house" (1 Cor. 16:19; Romans 16:5). Acts 2:24 and Acts 20:20 tells how the Christians all met in homes as well as in the temple courts.

"Within God's very nature is a divine 'rhythm' or pattern of continuous giving and receiving - not only love, but also glory, honor, life...each in its fullness. Think. God the Father loves and delights in the Son (Matt. 3:17), Jesus receives that love and pleases the Father (John 8;29). Jesus honors the Spirit (Matt. 12:31) and the Spirit glorifies the Father and the Son (John 16:14). Each person in the Trinity loves, honors and glorifies the other and receives love and honor back from the others....there is never any lack." - John Samaan, Servants Among the Poor newsletter