Connect Groups

A new person may be more comfortable coming to
somebody’s living room than coming to a church building

Enjoy the following except from a GC Podcast episode. In it, Greg Williams and the host, Anthony Mullins, discuss the Faith Avenue and connect groups. It’s a reminder of the importance of discipleship and community-building activities outside the Sunday gathering. We are Jesus’ Church, not just on Sunday, but every day.

Listen to the full episode here.

[00:13:56] Greg: … these connect group gatherings are designed to help build the believer and help to build the believer as they grow in their walk with Christ. But [they] also help to build the community of the church. Believers are getting to know each other; they’re loving each other. They’re caring for each other.

And as much as the connect groups are really designed to build the community, the church, they might end up being a front door for someone who is a new person. It very well could be that a new person is more comfortable coming to that type of gathering in somebody’s living room setting as opposed to coming to a church building. …

[00:15:46] Anthony: … as you said, these connect groups can be a front door to the church, as it were. Just as an example. A small group that my wife and I were hosting in our home. She had a friend in the neighborhood that started attending that group. And at this point in his journey with Jesus, he probably would not come to our formal Hope Avenue gathering on Sunday.

But he loves showing up and sharing a meal on Wednesday night and talking about God. Is that not church? And is that not a place where he can feel comfortable in a smaller group format, where there’s a little more intimacy in the relationship? And we pray one day he will step in the doors of the formal church setting on Sunday morning, but even if he does not, he’s being discipled there.

Talk more about the connect groups and … how you see the connect groups working in this healthy church vision and how really it is vital to the life of the local church.

[00:17:21] Greg: … Recently I was meeting with some leaders with the Christian Missionary Alliance Church. … And one of their ministry leaders there was saying, before COVID, 80% of our time and energy was all going toward our Sunday service. Everything was so focused on what we were doing on Sunday morning. But because of COVID, it’s making us think, are we distributing our time, attention, and resources in the way that we should?

So, you can see where the Faith Avenue really comes into that. And the thing about the connect groups — the connect groups are not just the traditional small groups that we think of the past.

I like the fresh expression of using the term connect group because it makes you think, okay, how is this going to be different from what we’ve done in the past?

Because in the past, there have been churches who’ve done small groups. Some have done them very well; some of them have struggled, and it did not go so well. But a lot of times when we would think of small group, we would think, okay, the pastor’s coming to give us a Bible study with a group of eight or 10 or 12 people, and that’s what that’s going to look like.

A connect group is not really about the pastor giving another Bible study to a small group of people. In fact, I hope for a lot of our pastors, they do not really have to facilitate a connect group. I hope that our pastors can participate in connect groups; they can actually be ministered to as well through their participation.

But you make a great point, Anthony. Do we count someone as being an active church member who does not show up at a Sunday morning service? I think we’re going to have to be challenged and be willing to rethink that. There is something about being in the connect group where you do feel a sense of being loved, of being understood, of being seen, and being heard that a lot of times in a larger church gathering, you just get lost in the sea of people. So, the connect groups really do support the kind of love and experience that we want someone to have.

And they’re very much a part of the church by being a part of a connect group.