Galatians 6:1-10 

I’ve already mentioned to you a few times that I started running again – been going for about 14 months now. I still am at the point where I (kind of) enjoy it, and I’m at peace with knowing that I’m not ever going to be setting speed or endurance records any time soon.  Now, we have a couple of folks in our congregation who have done much more in this than I ever will –  they run marathons! In fact, within the past year, one of our FUMC family members has not only qualified for, but completed the Boston Marathon: Ed Henry! 

This is a great accomplishment and we’re really proud of him. I bring Ed up to make a point. In one sense of our language one might say that both Ed Henry and I are ‘runners’. But with 5 seconds of thought you’d realize that in actuality, we’re talking about two totally different creatures!  I struggle to churn out my two or three miles a few times a week, and here’s a guy who can run 26 miles, and every one of them is faster than any mile I’ve ever run. OK – my point isn’t to imply that my running is totally worthless, because, obviously it isn’t, to me. 

But… if I ever had the urge to run in a marathon, the second call I would make (right after contacting a mental health professional) would be to someone like Ed. And I would ask him, “How can I make the jump from a very casual jogger, to a serious runner?”  Right?  He would be the perfect resource – he knows what he’s talking about, he has experienced it (it’s not just theory for him), and I know (because he’s a good guy and a brother in the Lord) that any advice, or training schedule that he would put me on would be totally for my benefit. I could trust his wisdom. Because he would want me to succeed. 

Now, what if in this church we wanted to get to ‘the next level’?  Not in size, or budget, or prestige, but the next level in being healthy?  Jesus talked a lot about the Kingdom of God as something that grows. Telling us that Kingdom growth is very much like the natural process of things that grow. In nature, we know, growth can’t be forced  - we can’t make something grow, but we can do a lot of different things to provide a healthy environment where growth can take place. And that’s how the Kingdom grows, that’s how you ‘grow’ a church.  You provide a healthy environment, and God does something within that; God causes the growth. Spiritual growth, numerical growth, ministry growth.

As many of you know, that is the foundation of Natural Church Development theology. This organization, under the leadership of Christian Swartz, has come up with a tool (a process) through which we can evaluate the health of a church in eight essential areas. And their research has proven that systematically working on your ‘minimum factor’ (i.e., your ‘weakest area’) will significantly affect the health of the total church, by optimizing the conditions in which God can and likely will bring about growth. 

When we go through the NCD process: taking an inventory, putting together a Church Health Team to do some serious digging, (asking ‘why are we like this?’), making a plan tailored to our specific church to address our minimum factor, evaluate our progress – what we’re doing is something very similar (analogous) to me going to Ed Henry and asking how I could become a better runner.  Natural Church Development is a proven process, based not only on good research, but on good theology, it is Scripturally grounded, and exists because of love for the church and a real passion to see churches become healthy (or healthier). And it is making a difference in churches all over the world! It is, I think, the best hope for turning around our denomination, and there is evidence that this has already begun (But that’s a story for another day!) 

The story for today is this: as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we’ve taken two NCD surveys now, with some very interesting results. The surveys were taken by two completely different groups of 30 persons each. And both times, our ‘maximum factor’ (i.e., our highest score) and our ‘minimum factor’ (i.e., our lowest category) has been the same. The maximum factor (Inspiring Worship) even had the exact same score both times. The Minimum factor (Holistic Small Groups) went down a few points from the first survey to the second. 

So what are ‘Holistic Small Groups’ and why did our score go down?  And what can we do to make this area healthier – knowing that this will impact our church as a whole for good? 

After our first inventory, we put a lot of effort into our small group ministries. Our Wednesday Soup and Study – which has become a really important part of our discipleship ministry for the past three years, with fellowship around the tables and up to 12 – 13 different classes going for each of the three sessions/ year that we do this, was a direct response to our first NCD inventory. 

The Epiphany and the Lenten home groups that we coordinated in ’07 and ’08 were initiated because of that first survey. Starting helping ministries such as ‘Grief Share’ and ‘Divorce Care’ – which I think are two of the best things we’ve ever done, with wonderful leadership, making a real impact in the larger community around us – also were a result of that first NCD survey.  So there’s been a good return already on our efforts at becoming healthier. 

But what we learned is that all of those things that we tried (and a few others – like putting up the communication boards in the Narthex) fall under the NCD category of “Need Oriented Evangelism”. [Connecting people to the Lord based on the basis of their felt needs.] And in our second survey, Need Oriented Evangelism went up 6 – 7 points – a significant improvement! Worth every effort without a doubt. But still, Holistic Small Groups went down the second time. We knew then, that there was something we were missing. 

So, our Church Health Team spend a lot of time (almost a year) holding focus groups, asking questions, sifting through pages of information that we gathered from people in this congregation. Our goal was to (1) understand what Holistic Small groups are, and (2) why we are weak in this area.  Because we have a lot of small groups here. Maybe not enough, but quite a few. And they are forming all the time. Yet still, our score went down. So what was going on? 

I’m going to skip a lot of steps and jump right to our conclusion. As in every one of the health categories in NCD, the distinctive is in the adjective. So, it wasn’t just small groups in which we were lacking, but holistic small groups. The key is ‘holistic’.  The definition of holistic gives a clue: ‘including or involving all of something.’  All of ‘what?’  It dawned on us: all of our church’s identity. 

We came to a couple of discoveries.  The first discovery was that we needed to widen our understanding of what a small group ‘is’.  We were thinking too small – we were thinking of structured Bible Study groups, of carefully organized sharing groups, etc. (And that is part of this picture, for sure!) But we’ve come to define a small group as “any regular gathering of people under the ‘banner’ of First United Methodist Church.”  Any group of people in this church who get together more than once is a small group.

Jesus said that whenever two or three people gather in his name, that he would be there with us. We came to see that any gathering of people in Christ’s name is a representation of the Body of Christ. 

See if you can follow this with me: churches represent the Body of Jesus Christ on earth. And by ‘represent’ I mean, are, we are the body of Christ. This is a major way that God ‘interacts’ with the earth - through the church (by which, again, I mean ‘the churches’ – all types, all denominations, not just this one.) But just as two human beings can be from the same ‘family’ and yet look quite different from each other, and have different interests, etc. individual churches take on certain characteristics, too. 

All true churches hold some basic things in common, and yet you rarely find two churches that are exactly the same, right? Our church, too, has a distinctive emphasis – and it is pretty much spelled out in our mission statement. That statement defines who we are, what we ‘look like’.  What we want to be. 

If I were to take an apple, and slice it up, no matter how small I would slice it, it would still be – what? Of course, an apple. There would be seeds and skin, and pulp, and stems, etc., but still: APPLE. That’s what we came to understand about small groups in FUMC. This congregation has a distinctive mission, a distinct identity – this is how we define ourselves: as a community of faith committed to sharing the love of Jesus Christ with a hurting world through words and actions.” Here’s what we realized: no matter how we slice this apple, that mission should still be evident.  Everywhere! In everything we do as a church. 

So, we realized that any regular gathering of people under the auspices of First UMC should in some way represent who we are as a church. Whether we’re talking about a group of people who are gathering for an Administrative function (Trustees, Property, Finance, Missions, Education, etc.) or for spiritual growth (Bible studies, Discipleship, prayer groups) or for service (mission teams, work groups, service projects, music groups) or emotional health and support (divorce care, grief share) whatever the main purpose of our gathering, there should be some commonality among us. Some thread that unites us, something that makes us recognizable as Christians from First United Methodist Church in Moorestown. 

And we described that thread in a very simple way: the commonality, we think, can be expressed in three ways. Three movements that should be part of each of those gatherings of people from the First UMC community.  Three words, three directions…

Prayer: Going Up

Share: Reaching Out

Care: Looking In

These are simple, general categories: Prayer…Share…Care. 

Prayer (going up) is all about focusing on God. It’s about taking time to acknowledge that our life is in Christ, on inviting God into our gatherings in a specific and intentional way.  This will look different in every group setting. It could be as simple as having a special prayer that the group recites together as they gather… or a time of Bible reading and meditation as a group to start or end the gathering.  When there are obstacles that the group faces, it could mean taking a ‘prayer break’ to lift this before God. [Someone saying, “How about we stop and pray about this right now?”] It could involve commissioning prayers (similar to what we do with all our mission teams) as a group sends someone out into a special work. Prayer: going up is taking the time to recognize God’s presence among us.  It should be part of every group meeting. 

Share (reaching out) is intentionally finding ways to ‘expand the circle’ of God’s love as it emanates from this place. It focuses specifically on acts of service that are done as a group, in looking beyond the small group’s own members and needs. This could be as big as going on a mission trip together as a group, or raising money for a special project (both of which have already been done here). It could be sponsoring a dinnertime for a night of our Interfaith Hospitality Network hosting. One of our groups went together to ‘ring the bells’ for the Salvation Army Kettles last December. Things like that. 

But it doesn’t have to be even that involved. It could be as simple as inviting a new person to join your group. Developing that intentionality of looking out into the congregation, seeing the new members, the new attenders, welcoming them and inviting them to participate in your group. Expanding the circle. Reaching out is the opposite of waiting for someone to contact us! You with me? 

Prayer…Share… and

Care (looking in) is turning the spotlight that searches for a hurting world inward. Care is checking in with each other, it is giving an opportunity within an appropriate context in your meeting, for someone who is hurting to ask for (and receive) prayer, a hug, a word of encouragement, support, maybe some direction on where to go for resources.  And it’s remembering that person after the meeting is over. Now, these are all important movements, but in some ways this one might be the most important for us right now. 

The Bible teaches us that we have a responsibility to care for each other.  There is an interesting balance – a tension – in the Scripture that we read this morning from Galatians 6.  In verse 2 Paul writes, “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the Law of Christ.” But just three verses after that he says, “For each of you should carry your own load.” 

The second use of the word translated ‘burden’ or ‘load’ is the same word as the first time, but it is in a diminutive form. (Like in English, we can have a ‘towel’ or a ‘towelette’, a ‘little towel.’) So more literally the second use means something like this: “Each one of you should carry their own little load.” This is kind of a summary of what every mature believer in Christ understands: we have a responsibility to nurture ourselves, and to grow in Christ. Nobody can totally do that for us. It’s up to us – we have to take responsibility for our own spiritual health – we have to bear the burdens of life. 

But Paul also recognizes that there are going to be times when we just can’t do that alone. At times, the burden will be too heavy. And in those times, it is the responsibility of the church – you and me – to walk with our brothers and sisters who are struggling. To help each other bear those burdens – those big burdens - that are simply too heavy for one person to carry. 

That doesn’t mean that we need to be in everybody else’s business(!), and it doesn’t mean that we all need to know ‘everything’ there is to know about each other. It’s not the same thing as building friendships – that is something important, but a different thing than caring for each other. I think we have a lot of room to grow here in our willingness to share our needs with each other, to better distinguish between the ‘burdens’ and the ‘little loads’, to learn to ask for help, and to allow ministry to one another to take place in our times of need.

We have a number of levels of organized caring ministries in this church – from the Pastors and other staff members, to our Stephen Ministry, to our Parish Nurse and the wonderful work of our Heart to Heart volunteers – so there is an overlapping network of organized caring. It’s not perfect, but we’re doing the best we can. 

But the most effective work in caring, I believe, is that which is done by our congregation members for each other. As we carry one another’s burdens. That is the biblical model for nurture and care.  And I’m suggesting today that we might unlock some doors, and open some windows to better self care in our church by simply providing regular opportunities in our small group gatherings for someone to say: ‘I need help’. ‘I had a bad day/week’. ‘I would really appreciate prayer for ________________.’  ‘I’m sad this week.’ It may be a person’s only opportunity to share something like that with someone who is actually interested. It will make a difference. 

I remember a couple of years ago, a time when I was carrying a very heavy load in my own heart. I went to one of our Soup and Study dinners, and I was sitting with a group that I didn’t typically sit with. One of them there was Georgie Jenkins.  We were all talking, and she asked me “So, Steve, how are you?” And I gave her some innocuous answer. (“Oh, I’m fine.”) But Georgie wasn’t buying it. She asked again, “So how are you really doing?” 

And I said, “I’m really discouraged right now.”

And she said, “Could I pray for you?” And I realized that she meant – right then and there!

“Sure”. And she took my hand, across the table, and prayed for the situation that she understood a little about. 

Was that the end of it? No, not immediately; but here it is more than two years later and I still remember that act of kindness. That caring. I know that that was not an isolated event in this congregation! Thank God for that!  That kind of thing happens a lot. Yet still I wonder: what would this church be like, if we multiplied that kind of listening, that kind of caring for each other, ten times, fifty times over what we are doing now? Would it make a difference? Would it have an impact on our church as a whole? I think it would. 

To be ‘holistic’ in our small groups we need to intentionally incorporate all three of these aspects in every one of our gatherings. We’re not talking about turning Finance Meetings into Bible studies, or a Choir Rehearsals into self-help groups! The proportion of time spent on each of these three areas will vary according to the main purpose of that particular group. 

And the nature of each group will naturally determine which of the three we spend most of our energy and time on. But by doing all three, we will become a healthier congregation. Now obviously, we can’t force anyone to do this. But we can encourage you – so I’m asking: will you try this? Will you help create a new climate in our regular small group gatherings? 

Prayer/ Share/ Care…let us truly bear one another’s burdens and therefore fulfill the Law of Christ. 

Amen?