The following article I read this week from a blog I keep up with. It just so happens to be the main speaker for our Pulse Conference this upcoming year. Dr. Thom Rainer, a church consultant researched and found a few reasons why Sunday school classes and small groups should be on the same page as the Pastoral staff, here is what he found:

The Five Dangers of Unaligned Small Groups

The first time I encountered this issue was in a church consultation nearly twenty years ago. I asked the pastor to tell me what was being taught in the church’s small groups. He seemed to be nonplused in his response: “I have no idea.”  I was taken aback.

I tried a different approach. “Tell me,” I said, “how the church decides what will be taught in the small groups.” Again, I was unprepared for his response: “The church leaders have no input into what small groups teach,” he said. “We let every class decide on its own. We don’t want to be like dictators telling them what they have to do. They decide according to what’s best in their own eyes.”

So, I continued, “I guess you let anybody teach or preach anything from the pulpit on Sunday mornings?”

“Of course not,” he said with some indignation. “We are very strict about the Sunday morning preaching. If I’m not teaching, then we have someone who is closely aligned to where we are going and what we believe.”

He did not get my attempt to connect the approach of the small groups with that of the Sunday morning teaching and preaching. How can you be so concerned about one and so nonchalant about the other?

Over the years I have been surprised to find out how many church leaders have a laissez faire attitude about what is being taught in small groups and Sunday school classes. Allow me to share five dangers of this “anything goes” approach.

1. Because preaching is held to a higher standard, the perception becomes that the small group teaching is just not that important. The reality is that most small groups or Sunday school classes spend more time in their groups than the time they take to listen to a sermon.
2. The vision of the church could be distracted or derailed. When the preaching and small group teaching are not aligned, the small groups can become alternative little churches with their own vision and priorities. Unfortunately, I have seen this reality a number of times.
3. It opens the door for heretical teaching. I know of one church that gave no thought to the content of the teaching in the small groups. They would soon discover that one group was studying a book that denied the deity of Christ.
4. It takes away from the unity of the church. The preaching is headed in one direction. The small group teaching is headed in another direction, or multiple directions. There is no unity in what the church is learning or how the members are growing spiritually.
5. It does not allow for strategic teaching. Indeed, the contrary may be true. The teaching in the small groups can negate the strategic intent of the preaching plan of the pastor.

Leaders in churches need not be autocratic in their desire to get small group teaching aligned with the ministry of the church. It can and should be a mutually agreed upon goal to move people toward greater maturity in Christ with clear and known material.

Indeed many churches are now moving to a uniform curriculum across all ages in all small groups and Sunday school classes. I see this development as a healthy trend. The leaders are making a statement that what is taught in every group is vitally important for the spiritual health of the members and for the church as a whole.

I found this article to be extremely relevant to our church and to what we are trying to accomplish here at Faith. I hope you do too. 

http://thomrainer.com/2013/06/24/five-dangers-of-unaligned-small-groups/ 

Fathers, as designed by the Heavenly Father

Have you ever noticed on the back of certain products, they label proudly where they were designed. Did you catch that? Not where the product was manufactured but in whose mind it was conceived. Pretty interesting concept as we near a Father’s Day holiday here in America. 

You see the pattern in Genesis, (the book of beginnings), God created things in order, with a sense of order, not in a haphazard manner. After God created the Earth and everything in it, then created man and woman, who with their offspring became the first family. He gave us, in this simple creative act, the ultimate illustration of how we can relate to an Almighty, Amazing, Holy God. The concept of a father was designed by God.

God showed us a father that had the responsibility to not only provide through the sweat of his brow, but also the direction of his worship, to lead them spiritually. God is not a god of chance, luck or circumstance, He is the God of Intentionality. He had a purpose when He created this father figure in a family setting. It is something that we can see, experience, and for the male portion of humanity, it is something we have the potential of being. 

This responsibility was not only shown by God but also lived out, fulfilled by the Heavenly Father, when He by the sending of His Son showed us how to live, love, and pass on to the next generation how to do the same. It ultimately cost God his only son to save us. John 3:16, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (NLT) You can’t say that our Heavenly Father doesn’t know the cost of being a parent to His children.

As for us, the Bible is overflowing with people coming to know the Lord through the Holy Spirit, through the preaching and teaching of the Word, but it is also full of Deut. 6’s and Psalm 78‘s, where it talks about the faith of a father being passed down to his children. For example in Acts 16:33-34 where it says, “And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. 34 Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God.” (ESV) Along with countless other examples.

Here at Faith, we want to strengthen fathers and their ability to lead in love, not oppressive force. We want to strengthen mothers and their ability to teach, lead and guide their children by loving their husbands and supporting them as spiritual leaders of the family. We want to show children how not just to obey their parents like a boss at work, but as people who have a vested interest in them, not just their career, but in their eternal welfare. We want to lift up the family structure here at Faith so those from broken homes or who have no family structure to model can see how to break the mold, get out of the cycle, and ultimately see the Heavenly Father for who He is, how He loves,  how He leads His children, and how He sets the example for His original design.