Reading: Video Transcript - Meeting Needs In and Beyond the Group (Carl George)

The more we work with training small group leaders, the more we become aware of the fact that the small group leader can become the key to the health of a church. Not only the key to the health of the church because they help produce attendance for the worship services, not only because they are persons out in contact with the daily life of people, caring for those people but also because they are able to train the members of their group one-on-one and as a group to become increasingly unselfish.

Most of us tend - because of the batterings we receive in life - at one time or another to kind of draw into ourselves and become just a little defensive and a little guarded. And we have to be helped to reach out beyond ourselves to begin to touch, in a sensitive and helpful way, the lives of others.

And this is where the act of serving becomes a critically important component of Christian growth. Now from an organizational point of view, it's important that small groups and ministry teams throughout the church make their volunteer work available to help the church run its programs. That's a very organizational approach to things. 

But from the standpoint of Christian spiritual growth, it's important that you, as a group leader, know how to take your individual people and put them in an environment where they see that it makes sense to give themselves away to other people. Some of that work, of course, will come out to the benefit of the church as an organized, religious body. But some of that work will also be focused far beyond the programs of the church on its own premises. Some of that work will just be focused just on people wherever they're hurting out in life. 

And so what can happen in the act of serving is that we can become more kind and more gracious people to each other, on premises, out in the community. Now we want to consider for a few minutes how it is that you are going to lead your people to service. Because the benefits of them are going to be enormous. And the benefits of the church are going to be enormous.

Now we have to consider the fact that much service - serving one another in love - is actually going to start between members of the group. We have learned to caution group leaders about some problems that will emerge in their ministries. One of them is this. We have learned to caution group leaders not to encourage the lending of money back and forth between members of a group. Now the giving of money is fine. But the lending of money is a trap. We've encouraged group leaders not to encourage the formation of personal businesses and investments among members of their group, to leave that kind of activity in an area that's disciplined by law. Because almost always, misunderstandings and griefs arise around the lending of money or the investing of money. Because if an investment goes sour, there tends to be a souring of the relationship that led to the confidence for the investment.

And so what we caution group leaders to do is do not let the group be a place of commercial brokerage at the level of lending and at the level of investing, because there are such enormous, unforeseen consequences that we have encountered in counseling various churches.

But giving to one another can be one of the most precious things that a person can do for their own growth and for the growth of another. A friend of mine who has a small group told of in his group a woman who was a single parent. She was facing the trauma of managing her family through Christmas. But in that group were a number of bread-winners and they too had problems. It turns out that several of them were unemployed at that particular time. They were between jobs. But they got their heads together, and they said, "This woman is really going to have a terrible time this Christmas with her children because she has no resources to face the holiday season. Her spouse has reneged on support, she doesn't have a job that's holding for her. It's going to be a very bleak Christmas." And so they took up an offering. They took up a $400 cash offering among themselves, which they handed to her as she left the meeting. A half an hour later, the small group leader happened to notice that her car was still parked out at the curb. And he went out to see how she was doing. 

She was so moved by the discovery of what happened that 30 minutes after the meeting, she was still crying behind the wheel of the car because somebody cared that much to show. And you can't imagine the change in those children's Christmas. But more permanently, you can't imagine the change in her life when she realized that being a part of the body of Christ has a tangible benefit, not to people who are scheming and manipulating but simply to people whose needs are obvious and where others reach out to them in love. The money was not loaned to her; it was given to her. And I suppose it was a far more precious gift because she knew that the money was raised by people who didn't have jobs themselves. They dug into their substance in order to make it possible for her to have that help.

Now that's a tangible act of love. And when we go to the scriptures and we look at how Christians treated one another in the first generation of the Christian era, do you know what we discover? We discover that there were Christians in that time who actually sold houses and farms and had sold vacation homes and what-have-you, had reduced some of their holdings to cash in order to be able to help others who were under persecution. Because they so much wanted to see them helped.

And Jesus had warned us. He said, "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples if you have loved one unto another." And so it's when we serve each other in Jesus' name that the world has the best chance to see that what we have is for real. And not only that, but we have a chance to grow that much.

Looking back on history, the time that that was occurring was probably about the middle of the fourth decade of the Christian era. That was somewhere between the death of Christ in 30 or 33 and within just a matter of months after that or years after that. And those people who went out under the impulse of the Spirit, under the impulse of a generous way and liquidated their findings, their holdings and brought them and placed them into the hands of the church, you'd say, "Boy. That was really short-sighted stuff, wasn't it?" But you know how history went? From 35 AD or whenever that occurred until the time that the Roman armies besieged Jerusalem and literally dismantled it was only 35 years. All those people who thought they owned something, only had a 35-year leasehold. All those assets were valueless, completely valueless in just 35 years when Jerusalem was basically desolated by the conquering hoards.

The only benefit any property holder who was a Christian in Jerusalem had was if they had sold out while it was still salable and they had given the money to God to help people. You see, when you help people, you're helping the only permanent thing there is under heaven. It's the only thing that's going to last this whole world. It's the help and the service of the people. 

This is why when well-to-do people look around in their community and they see struggling young people and they offer them scholarships in order for them to go to college and to better themselves, those people are taking their money and they're taking money that's going to come apart and disappear on them and they're turning it into something that is of concrete, tangible worth to a human soul that will last for eternity. The only way we can take temporal wealth and turn it into something of durable contribution to the well-being of mankind is by lavishing it on people. 

You can't take it with you. So this one fellow said, "I want to send it on ahead in terms of giving it away to everybody that I know." And so there's a wisdom involved in learning to give your time, your wisdom, your love, even your money to people. And this service idea is a critically important idea. Because you want your people to see what it means to be on the giving end and what it means to be on the receiving end of acts of charity that are done within the context of the group. It's a very important validation of the Christian gospel. After all, didn't our Lord Jesus Christ indeed give everything, including his own life, for us? And did he not set a pattern for us? 

But not only in the big matter of the death of Jesus Christ, we also have the small matters of the sacrifices that he made all along the way. A person would come to him and say, "I'll follow you."

And he'd say, "I don't have a room for tonight. I'm going to be sleeping out with a rock for a pillow. Is that really what you're looking for?" Jesus was regularly in the process of sacrifice. He deprived himself of sleep or was up well before day. He went up to a solitary place and there, spent time with God. He was under the disciplines of a spiritual life. And this was not always personally physically comfortable for him. He was willing to make those sacrifices for the benefit of the other people that were involved. 

And so what we're facing here is this. To be like Jesus Christ, to model his behaviors means that we're going to be more giving of ourselves than ever before. You recall that the Lord the night before he was arrested on that night as they celebrated the Last Supper together that the act of serving that was done in that room beside the food service that night was him washing the feet of his disciples. An act of common courtesy usually done by a slave was done by the master of the meeting because none of them were willing to accept that position of servitude. And Jesus rose up and did that act for each of them. And they were offended by it. "Don't do that. This is not appropriate." 

And Jesus said, "It's an upside-down world that we're coming into. And if you want to be great, you better be humble. And serving is appropriate to this whole thing." And he left us a model. And so service is a God-blessed thing to do. 

Well, there's great power in this business of serving. The serving starts and it is most spontaneous within the context of the of the needs that are disclosed in the group. I'm amazed by something that I saw that was just suddenly hadn't occurred to me before. I was sitting in a small group, and a young medical student was there, and my wife was there. And we have in our house a rule that says that when we entertain, we give appropriate notice because-- I grew up in a home where my mother had a gift of hospitality was such that she thrilled the stories of feeding two dozen people in an hour's notice. And then I married into a family that entertained formally. And so we had to change the rules a little bit. We don't just do things on a drop-in basis. We prepare for these things because there are some hospitality standards that don't just say, "Y'all come." Because if y'all come, you don't always get what you think you're going to get and so we want to prepare properly for it. And I had to learn to respect that - that that's an important element of my wife's culture is that there be proper preparation made for guests. I can bring guests, but I have to assure that all the proper preparations are in order; otherwise, I'm just dumping my responsibility onto other people. And I had to learn not to be irresponsible as an inviter so that our home could have the integrity that it needed to have. 

And so my wife, who normally is a carefully planned person-- she needs about one hour from the time she knows there's an opportunity until she has to speak to that to line up the various pieces. There's childcare, there's procurement, there's preparation, there's cleanup, there's what else is going on in the family. She's one of the people that has a perspective on life, and I'm one of these people that avoid that whenever possible. And we have many growth challenges between us. And she's finally taught me that there is a propriety associated with this hospitality. And we're sitting in this group. And next to me, this young doctor – a medical student - confesses that his wife, pregnant has gone back to her family to have the baby as the custom in their particular culture was and that he's here caring for his teenage daughter. And he has a 72-hour shift coming up for the weekend. No childcare arrangements made and he's rather concerned for her being home alone for that whole long weekend without her mother being present. 

And so he's confessing this as one of the challenges of his life. And he doesn't get this out of his mouth before my wife reaches over and touches him and said, "We'll take her." Now I said, "This is something of a miracle taking place here," because there was not a time for her to think through all the things you have to think through to bring a young teenager into your home for a weekend." This is not a normal situation that I'm watching here because-- 

And he said, "You would?"

She said, "Yeah."

"Oh," he said. "Whew! Thank you." 

And I knew that something else was a miracle going on. I mean, there was obviously a shudder of acceptance in this guy. And so Grace went over and got the girl and brought her home. And that was Friday about 4:30 as I recall. Well they got to doing things around the kitchen together and they were just having a great old mom and daughter kind of a time. And at 11:00, I went to bed. At 4:30, Grace crawled into the sack, and I said, "What time is it?" 

She said, "It's 4:30."

And I said, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

I said, "Where have you been?"

She says, "That girl needed a mom worse tonight than anybody I've ever talked to or listened to.  She has talked non-stop until just now."

And I said, "Wow." Because I saw several things happen. I saw the deep need of a man met who was worried. I saw the needs of a little teenager met. I saw my wife operating under what is obviously the impulse of the Spirit. Because she had to know in her heart this is something God wanted done. And it happened-- the deal was struck just that fast. Now how could you arrange something that's as intimate to a family's well-being as the care of one of their children on an overnighter under any other imagined circumstance? I mean, can you imagine a medical student coming into the church and saying in the middle of the morning, "Sir. Excuse me. My wife's out of town. I've got a teenager at home. Will somebody please pray for me?" 

This doesn't work. You need the intimacy of those kinds of surroundings to disclose that level of need and you need to be close enough to reach out and touch them and say, "Let's make it happen." And the Holy Spirit is so present there, it becomes a sacred moment. And ever afterward, you look at that and you say, "Boy. God sure was real that night, wasn't he? Wow."

It's a precious thing. And we're all heart-warmed every time we think about it. Because it's such a simple act of kindness. Now if we establish that kind of a pattern of serving one another as a group, then extending love and care to other people is a fairly natural next step. So someone struggling with house repair, or they're struggling with finances with their kids in school, or they're struggling-- and you hear about those struggles. And what happens next? You say, "Golly, I had a good experience in that situation. I wonder what it would be like to do some act of kindness in this situation?" And you begin to look for ways, individually, as you leave the group to do random acts of kindness.

I saw some friends who began to experiment with this. They did things like paying for the next guy's order at the drive-in, all kinds of fun stuff. And what they found was, it was more fun to throw money at people than to throw money away on self-serving. Who knows what good is going to come out of it. And there are times when God clearly leads to do these kinds of things.

So we establish a climate of giving, and it extends to the church missions program, it extends to care and relief programs overseas, it involves us in being willing to go. But then think about this. Not only do you want to have your people modeling giving to one another and beyond each other individually. How about taking your whole group into a service mode? How about taking your whole group, on occasion, and letting that group relieve the babysitting crew for another place, to offer their services beyond themselves, to work together as a team and take a caring and bible study type group and turn it into a task group for a temporary service? 

I know an occasion where two churches were in the same town together, and one church needed to have a plenary meeting because they were going through a very important decision. And the decision had to do with their whole future as a church related to their denomination. And they didn't want to do it in a piecemeal fashion. They wanted to all meet together, but they had a dilemma. How could everybody be in here? And another church down the street, hearing of their dilemma and their intention, called up and said, "Our people would like to volunteer childcare for your plenary service. And so what we will do is that Sunday afternoon when you're all meeting together, is all of our Christian education workers will be available here at our church facility. You drop your children off and we provide a complete care for everybody in your church during that period of time." 

These churches weren't even in the same denomination. But 10 years later, the pastors are still telling the story. They are so moved by this because people actually went out of their way to help each other. Oh, wow. You could never have asked it, but it was volunteered. You see? Saw the need and came forward. Well, that was a case where an entire church could be mobilized. But you see, any particular group in the church can be mobilized as well and so you can take your care group and you could say, "All right. What is there?" And you can use your connections with staff to figure this out sometimes. Sometimes you can figure it out all by yourself. "What is there that we can do on occasion that would be helpful? Could we relieve the ushers? Could we help in preparation for the communion? Could we do something special for the costuming for the choir?" And you begin to look for places where you can apply your entire group's effort for a short burst. And then fall back into your normal care routines.

There are some groups that are actually organized to be ministry team task groups that are going to serve all the time. And in those teams, what we have to teach them is, "Okay, so you're going to task. You're going to do the wardrobes for the advent play." That's great. Okay, but you also need some withdrawal time just to love each other. And so you should provide some refreshment times, you should provide some fellowship times, you should mix some bible studies in with it. See, even sports teams can be looked upon, which are active, can be looked upon places where care can occur. And you can even have the verse for the day. And every time the sports team gets together, pass out little navigators-type cards with a memory verse on them and say, "While we're here playing today, let's see if we can all get this verse memorized because we're trying to increase our spiritual armament and our acquaintance with the Lord." And our goal is that if we play 12 games, we've memorized 12 verses.

And an effective leader can lead a team into seeing this is a worthwhile thing to do. While they're serving or while they're following their interests, they're also building in truth into their lives that can be readily applied.

So it becomes an excitement, it becomes an adventure that they’re on, a journey that they’re on. But what happens when you begin to think about the service? Not simply of keeping a program going but where are going to be your opportunities for leading your group to service? Are you going to lead them to support the ongoing services of the church? Now think about the opportunities here.

You have to produce worship services. That means the whole platform is opportunities. The preparation that leads up to the service - the flowers, all the things that are involved, the greeting. There are many places to get ready for services, or to support the services, or to show musical and artistic talent from the stage. Your whole group could work up something along that line. So you have a chance to support that, or you can go over and furnish Christian education help of various kinds, or childcare help of various kinds. So there's a lot of on-premises stuff. 

Or you could organize one of the mission booths, or you could support the young people's activity by providing profession. Anyone of the special interest areas at your church by age group - the juniors, the mid-week clubs like the Awana and things like this or even scouting. All of those places are constantly in search for volunteer help. What would it be like if the Scoutmaster or the Awana leader suddenly had a small group saying, "Hey, on next Wednesday night, we'll come, we'll provide the refreshments for you all. Give yourself, your workers a break." What kind of a boost in morale would that incur?

But let's take it beyond just organizational maintenance. Here's what we've been learning. We've been learning that as a leader of 50, captain of 50 does their work and they're working with various groups, some of the groups will be weaker than others. 

It's possible for them to have a zone event where several groups are brought together and where the weaker groups are benefitted by the presence of the stronger groups. Now in urban areas, where a lot of evangelism is attending the group formations, members of existing groups that are strong will actually go to the neighborhood where they're holding the meeting for the group that's weak and will meet the neighbors and friends and get acquainted with people and will try to find new prospects for that group to work with and visit on their behalf.

Now it's also possible for us to use your teams not only through zones but in cross-cultural ministry. Here's what we've been learning. We've been learning that your church can handle people of your culture, but we've also learned that there are people who are not in your culture living near your church. So what we've been discovering is this - that if you have a church and it houses your kind of people and the culture is comfortable for your kind of people, if your cell or if your cell groups are being managed and led properly, that you can send a cell of people out, and they can come alongside of people in another culture and assist, and serve, and minister to them until leaders can be defined in that culture. And your church can become a satellite organization where you sponsor additional groups and classes cross-culturally that would not be comfortable just walking into your church.

And when you can give them space in your church for other language meetings, other youth meetings, other bible study meetings, separate from your church's meetings but hosting those as those people come to faith in Christ. And the ability of your group to serve by providing refreshments or by attending meetings where there's encouragement going on - the members of that community and you're organizing this new area, this would allow you to have multiple satellite services. And so your church might wind up being a place where there could be language groups, there could be people of various cultures and sub-strata. They could be worshipping the Lord in ways that are appropriate to leadership to be raised up within them. And you're contributing to that missionary effort right at home. 

There used to be a time when we had to take a group and take them across the state line or take them out of the country in order to make them feel like missionaries. But the borders have been down so long now in the US that now we have hundreds of languages being spoken right here. We don't have to go there anymore to find a mission field. Although, that's not a bad thing to do. There are so many people right next door to us that just bridging into those other cultures becomes an opportunity. 

Now as you're searching for guidance about where to take your group in terms of their service, examine closely two special things they bring. One, the spiritual gifts of your people. If you have nobody in your group that has the gift of craftsmanship, it's going to be very difficult for you to do house repairs for people. So if you don't have the gifts for it, it's tough. So consider the gifts of the people that are in your group.

The second thing, consider the backgrounds of the people that are in your group. Maybe you have a Filipino family in your group. And maybe they have a huge contact within the Filipino community, but they're the lone Christian representative and they're in one particular group. What would happen if your group started serving them to help them develop a group within their own community? Not isolating them from you, but to create a whole new group that would touch many, many more lives. See, many times the opportunities that God guides us to undertake to emerge within the context of our group based on the background and the connections the people have within the group.

We don't usually have to go to some manual someplace and read about it and say, "Oh, yeah. Here's an idea. Let's put this one to work." Many times, if not most times, the Holy Spirit leads us to apply ourselves by the very background, and context, and networking that the people that are already present in one of our groups have so that we then follow their interests and follow their leading, and we say to them, “You have this connection. Are there people out there interested?"

"Yes. But they don't want to come over here because they don't like our cooking," or whatever. 

Say, "That's fine. What can we do to support you?"

"Well, we don't have a way to take care of the kids, and we don't have the strength to clean up the house, and we don't have a budget to provide the refreshments." You can provide all those things. And it becomes another point of light, another place of service that can enlarge the kingdom.