“Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts.” Acts 2:46

When you get a snapshot of the early church, it’s really obvious they enjoyed a deep friendship. This wasn’t some kind of religious duty, they genuinely really liked each other and loved being together. The way God worked among them wasn’t mainly in them climbing up a mountain, with one of Peter or Paul’s letters to spend the week alone and feed themselves. They were not just downloading the podcasts of the 12 apostles, listening while they worked. They couldn’t stream services online on a Sunday morning in their sweatpants.

They met together all the time, in the temple and in each other’s homes. This was not unique only to the first century. For much of the Church age, farmers would start their day and end their day at church as the bells rang for morning and evening vespers. In college, I met some Korean brothers and I learned that in many of their churches, they pray every single morning together. The church where I met Jesus was similar, there were multiple prayer opportunities every morning and places to break bread, every night of the week.

What is the point of all this?

Lasting change happens in community. When my wife and I went through the arduous classes to be certified as foster parents one of the sayings they had was that, “Just as hurt has come from people, healing also comes from people.” Reminding us that the kids we bring into our homes, who suffered all kinds of abuse and neglect are only going to heal and experience something different. Some will hear this and react in their heart, but I’m different, I don’t need people like that, I just need God.

But you can not divorce or divide the great command. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:36-40

For years we used to have this text written on our living room wall

“We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.” 1 John 4:19-21

There may be seasons on the mountain alone. Paul mysteriously spent 3 years on Mt Sinai before starting his missionary journey but he also spent 9 years being mentored and discipled in Antioch. It is impossible to obey the over 50 “one-another” commands in the New Testament, by just studying and praising God on your own. Sunday morning celebrations together of the resurrection are awesome, but it really is only the beginning of our life together.

At Epiphany, we have two kinds of small groups.

The first is our shepherding groups, and these are meant to be like eating soul food with your family. Meeting once a month we pack a few homes with people. The focus of our shepherding groups is definitely soul care. When you come to Shepherding Group you can expect a lot of informal catching up, laughing, crying, praying and of course eating really well as everyone brings something to share. There will be some worship and a short teaching. There also may even be some words shared from the Lord to each other as you exercise the spiritual gifts. At the end we profess what it is we believe and confess our sins before we come before the Lord in Holy communion and rededicate our lives to Him. That is why we are insistent that every member come to group, how else will we know how you are doing? This minimal commitment is essential to being a true part of our church family.

We now have a second kind of small group, which we are calling discipleship groups which meet every other week. These are broken up by gender and the purpose behind that is to allow people to go much deeper. We believe we are only as sick as our secrets. As we confess our sins and share the secrets of our life where we’ve been sinned against, we begin to gain victory in our life. Discipleship groups are more like going to the gym with some friends you want to get healthy with. So a big part of these groups is to learn to study God’s word together, not just to add some bible facts into our head, but to really live it out. There are times we may have some special teaching on people hearts, but typically we slowly work our way through a book of the Bible using the H.O.P.E. method.

H. is for ‘Hearing’ as we practice the discipline of listening to God’s word. We may have 2-3 people read the passage, sometimes in different translations.

O. is for observation, this is where we take time to share what the Spirit of God is highlighting for us in the text. What do we see in? We might ask questions like, the who, what, when, why and how that is going on in our text or many other questions to immerse ourselves in it.

P. is for putting it into practice, where we break up into groups of 2-3 to talk about how we are going to live out this truth. This is where we share our ongoing battles with sin, struggles with our health, trauma, and false beliefs we may be getting over. I have seen it so many times over the years, when we confess, God heals us. (James 5:16). People are set free from pornography, addictions, crippling anxiety, anger, and so much more. As they take the truth of God’s word and apply it to their lives in community with the power of the Spirit.

E. is for encourage. At the end of every group all together, reminding ourselves the things we experience and learn from God are not just for ourselves. We want to share God’s love and truth and power with our coworkers, neighbors, friends, and family. Here we end with sharing who we are feeling called to encourage to help us keep accountable to do it the next week we gather.

I don’t know how to put this strongly enough, if you want to live in discouragement, defeat, and isolation just don’t make time for small groups.

It is one thousand percent worth re-arranging your whole life to make time to live out this life of Acts 2:42. If you are interested to know when groups are gathering please reach out, and if none are gathering when you are able to meet, maybe you can help us kick off a new time to gather.