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Shaped By Community

Here are some great thoughts from Michael Mack from the 2005 Willow Creek Small Groups Conference:


We are shaped by community. The theme for the 2005 Willow Creek Small Group Conference, held September 22-24-2005, was spiritual transformation in small groups – how God forms us in relationship to others in community.

How? How does a small group enter into the kind of community that spurs on spiritual transformation? What is the leader’s role? What kinds of things must happen in a group’s life for people to become increasingly like Jesus? These and other questions like them were addressed in two and a half days of worship, teaching, and breakout sessions.

At these kinds of events, everyone has their favorite parts. For me, it was the first session with Larry Crabb, entitled "Circles of Change." I recommend that you get the whole set of tapes, CDs, or DVDs from the main sessions, but if you only get one, get this one (they can be ordered through the Willow Creek Association website at http://www.willowcreek.com).

Crabb proposed three questions (and corollary sub-questions) that we should be asking about spiritual formation in groups. If you direct a small group ministry in your church or if you are leading/shepherding a group, you should be asking these questions. As you design a small group and discipleship strategy, as you determine how to help people grow in community, as you decide on factors such as group size, curriculum choices, leader’s roles, and more, use these questions to plan and evaluate. In essence, the three questions are:

What are we after? What is the goal? What does a spiritually transformed person and group look like?
How do we get there? What is the process? Why does real transformation require real community? Are spiritual disciplines not enough?
What do we do? What is the plan to help people grow? What are the specifics of how we help people grow in groups?
Crabb shared that the basis for what he calls Intentional Spiritual Formation Groups involves two things: to aim high and to get real. I will take the rest of this article to elaborate on these.

Aim for the Right Goal

Aiming high, aiming for "Spirit-alive Christianity," helps us to answer question number one, above. As a small group pastor or director or as a small group leader/shepherd, you must do some work to answer this foundational question. If you are not clear on what a spiritually transformed person looks like, you may unintentionally be guiding people toward the wrong pursuit – an erroneous goal.

Often, Christian leaders mistakenly lead people toward what Crabb calls "good-enough Christianity," which is marked by (1) people believing the right things (right teaching); (2) staying moral – staying away from visible sins (accountability); and (3) keeping busy (opportunity). These things, in and of themselves, are not wrong, of course, but they present a false view of the essence of Christianity.

Crabb defines "Spirit-alive Christianity" by three pursuits: (1) God-Hunger – desiring to know God consumes you; (2) Kingdom Hunger – longing to reveal God no matter how people might treat you; and (3) Holiness Hunger – hating sin more than its pleasures.

How do you define the goal of spiritual transformation? Crabb’s comments are helpful, but, as leaders, we need to pursue this question even further. First, we need to humbly submit ourselves and our discovery process to God and prayerfully seek the guidance of His Spirit. Next, we must carefully investigate what God’s Word has to say about it. Finally, we can read what others who have studied this question deeply have said. Articles and books by Dallas Willard, Brennan Manning, Richard Foster, and Gary Thomas, to name just a few authors, can be very helpful in understanding spiritual formation and transformation.

At the church where I serve, our team has spent months discovering what a process for spiritual growth might look like, how it might involve community, and other questions. As a way of describing the goal, the Holy Spirit guided us to the "Abundant Life" – life to the full (John 10:10). That was a great starting point for us. We then sought out the answer to other relevant questions using John 10:10 as our context. The Abundant Life as a goal helps us to communicate more clearly, teach more wisely, and guide people in their spiritual growth journeys more intentionally. That works well for us. The Holy Spirit may guide you to something else.

The Real Process

Once you have a good understanding – not a perfect understanding! – of what spiritual transformation is and what the goal looks like, it is time to think about the process for getting there. As small group adherents, we assume that the community of small groups must be a big part of the equation. Why is that? Ask what it is about community that leads people to changed lives? Does this "life-changing community," whatever it is, really exist in our small groups? If not, what needs to change?

Crabb says something we have probably all heard before but need to consider again and again – "for us to have real community, we must get real in our groups." We need authenticity. Group authenticity requires two important objectives: (1) to deepen desire, that is, Crabb says, "that every member is desiring what only grace can provide"; and (2) to weaken deception because relational sin requires open exposure in an atmosphere where we are accepted for who we are. This is so true. Perhaps we do not see as much transformation in our groups as we would like to see because so many groups stay so surface-level in community, which really is only pseudo-community. When we joyfully see real transformation taking place, we often see it happening in real, dynamic, authentic, accepting, grace-giving, life-sharing, open community that looks a lot like the community in the book of Acts.



This kind of authentic community requires authentic leadership. As leaders, we must begin by asking ourselves if we are leading from a place of superiority or brokenness. Do we own – and own up to – our shortcomings and failures? Do we hate our own shortcomings more than we hate the shortcomings of others? Are we real with the group or do we feel like, as a leader, we must be above all that? Could it be that people are not growing because, at the root of it all, leaders are not being real?

(A timeout for an important word of caution from my own experience: Do not "try" to be more authentic and vulnerable with your group. It probably will not work and could even do more harm than good. Authenticity begins with surrender of your will to God. When we surrender what we really want for what He really wants, it brings us to a place where we can acknowledge our brokenness – our complete inability to be good and do good on our own. In an interview with Leadership Journal, Crabb said, "On one level, brokenness is simply the release of spiritual power, the Spirit doing his thing and power coming out. It only happens through brokenness, which I think is the most underrated virtue in the Christian community today. But beyond the release of power, there’s this deep understanding of our weakness." When we as leaders come to our group as surrendered, broken servants, then we are ready to be truly authentic and vulnerable with our groups.)

The Real Plan

Broken, surrendered, authentic leaders are primary to bring about authentic small groups. What else is necessary? How do we design and develop authentic, transformational, groups? That is the next question, and it has a corollary: What actually happens in a small group that spiritually forms and transforms participants? What does that kind of community life look like on a week-to-week and daily basis? Books have been written, and are being written, to answer those questions. Entire web sites are devoted to help leaders form this kind of life-changing community! Crabb summarized some of this in three points – three concepts worth spending some time thinking about and studying further:

Tune into the Spirit. Remember that this is the Holy Spirit’s work. Anything else and it will all just be in the flesh. Nothing of eternal value can happen apart from the Spirit. As a leader, consider how do you tune into the Spirit yourself? As a group? In meetings? How do you keep the focus on God, not yourselves? How do you remember that it is His group, not yours?
Share and listen to stories of the soul. Crabb has discussed this at more length in his books Connecting and The Safest Place on Earth. When we connect and share with one another at a soul-level, God’s grace can flow freely from one to another. This is a powerful vehicle for spiritual transformation.
Relate like the Trinity. Sounds deep, and it is, because we perhaps do not have a very deep understanding about how God relates in Trinitarian community. "God is in eternal community," Crabb says. "a radically other-centered relationship where the Father is always saying, Isn’t my Son something? The Son’s always saying Look at the Father. And the Spirit is always saying Look at Jesus. Until we start pondering the mystery of the Trinity, we won’t have a clue that we’re a million miles from it in terms of community."
Shaped by community. That’s God’s intention for us. What an awesome privilege God has entrusted to us!

"I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me" (John 17:20-21).


"We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:3).

5 Practices To Help Small Groups Dive Deep

John Ortberg (Well known pastor and author) wrote a great article for Christianity Today this past week that talks about 5 ways to move beyond surface conversation to transformation.

"Personalities united can contain more of God and sustain the force of his greater presence better than scattered individuals."
-Dallas Willard

Transformation is the new Small Groups buzz word. The heart of what Ortberg and Willard are trying to drive to is that it is within the context of community - authentic abiding caring sharing fighting forgiving resolving - that lives are changed for eternity. Here are 5 things that you should think about as you plan your next Home Group meeting:

1) Confession - Be Authentic and Live in the Light
2) Application - Put God's Word Into Play In Your Life
3) Accountability - Allow Others To Push You
4) Guidance - Invite The Wisdom of Others Into Your Decisions
5) Encouragement - Celebrate & Care For One Another

As you live your life in the context of community dream big for what God could do as you live for others and serve a God that loves to watch His children walk in step with the Spirit . . . together.

What Is Community?

Which is the greatest commandment in the Law?

Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

We define community as sharing the pursuit of these 3 Core:

1. Pursuing God
2. Community with Insiders
3. Influence with Outsiders

Welcome - First Thoughts

[Christ] works on us in all sorts of ways . . . But above all, He works on us through each other. Men are mirrors, or 'carriers' of Christ to other men . . . Usually it is those who know Him that bring Him to others. That is why the Church, the whole body of Christians showing Him to one another, is so important . . . It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects education, building, missions, holding services . . . The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity