What Are Community Groups?

Community Groups are informal, family-like gatherings that provide support at a variety of levels: emotional, physical, financial and spiritual. They provide consolation in times of trouble; they rally, for instance, to help out a group member moving from one home to another; they might help a group member who's in a financial pinch; they pray for one another; they learn together. Essentially, they do the things that are essential parts of healthy family life - in a day and age when good family is hard to come by.

Community Groups are task-oriented groups that look for opportunities to serve others. A healthy life is one that sees the needs of others less fortunate and works to address them. Together we serve people more effectively (and with more fun!) than when apart.

Each Community Group gathers once a week for a couple hours in someone's home. They're simple, informal, open to newcomers, and fundamental to the way we "do church." It's in this setting that we mature, learn to love, and experience a richer life. It's among our sisters and brothers that we see, in very concrete ways, God in action. As followers of Jesus, we see Community Groups as a natural and necessary way of being the family of God.

Do I Need a Community Group?
Almost certainly - but not because you're an oddball or special. You need a Community Group (or something like it) simply because you're human. The truth is, we humans need one another desperately in order to live well. For millennia, people have lived together in very tight bonds, yet in our day, in our place, we've been fed a silly little fairy tale: the one that says the good life consists of independence, not interdependence, that material possessions matter more than people, that privacy matters more than community and sharing, that having our own way is better than putting others first, that we can actually live without God.
Our Community Groups pull the mask off that lie. At the end of the day, it will always be the people you've loved and who have loved you that matter most - not the size of your house, not your position at the office, not the clothes you've worn or the markings on your body. In an effort to dismantle the shallow thinking of our present culture, we intentionally gather with others to give and receive the things we need in order to love God and people. And this, after all, is all that matters.
Our Community Groups aren't perfect. They're a long ways from perfection. And we certainly don't believe that if you join one all your problems will be solved. But we're absolutely certain that if you're going to make headway in life, you stand a better chance of doing that with others than you do in isolation.

Assessing Your Need:

* Where has my current way of life gotten me? Am I happy with the way things are?
* Do I have others whom I can count on to discuss the things that really matter to me?
* When I'm struggling with my situation in life (e.g., being single, marriage, divorce, work, child-rearing, addiction, depression, debt, bitterness, fear, etc.), are there others I can turn to?
* Do my friends encourage me to live a noble, selfless, God-centered life?
* Am I, with the passage of time, becoming more joyful, thankful, forgiving, content?