Transcript: April 9th, 2008« Back

Small Groups Part 2

Various Texts

Jeff Noblit

    I want to conclude my exhortations to you this morning on small groups within the church
The Small Group strategy statement for First Baptist Church of Muscle Shoals is: the church organized into small groups to the end of evangelizing the lost, equipping the saved, and providing fellowship to meet individual needs.  An effectively structured small group ministry means that every single church member can be a part of a small group team, to be about the task of helping others come to Christ, equipping, maturing, nurturing, discipling others, and being there to minister to each other when those individual needs arise in our lives.
The third phrase in our strategy statement is “to evangelize the lost.”  Small groups enable every single church member to be on the team, if you will, of reaching lost souls with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  In Acts 5, we see an interesting phrase.  As the early church is growing and God is blessing in a great way, it says, “And every day in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.”   Every day, now in this case the church is meeting daily.  God’s just blessed the initiation of the New Testament church.  The power of God is on the church.  They’re meeting daily. They’re meeting in two different ways: in Solomon’s portico as a whole group, but also house to house.  They’re breaking up into smaller groups, and in those household settings, church leaders are coming by and preaching and teaching Jesus as the Christ.  That’s evangelism.  Evangelism is happening in these small group settings.  
And if you look back up to verse 14 of Acts 5, it says, “And all the more believers in the Lord, multitudes of men and women were constantly added to their number.”  People were coming to both the large congregational settings and the small group, or household, settings.  They didn’t build an education building with Sunday School classes, but they were meeting.  
Through the dynamics of small groups, every single church member can be a part of a team to win lost souls to Christ.  Your small group is meeting week by week and praying together.  First as God gives you the freedom, you bring before your small group the names of the people in your family who are not yet converted.  This may be a husband.  This may be a wife.  This may be a child.  It may be a father.  Can you imagine the power of that, having a group of four, eight, twelve, fifteen, however many is in your small group, coveting with you in prayer that God would save those in your family who are lost?  That in itself is worth going to a small group.
Now, if you put me in a church of seventy-five or a hundred, I’m not very likely to share my heart about all my lost family members.  But if you put me in a smaller setting, we get to know each other, we begin to trust each other.  Then the whole class as a team rejoices in getting in on God’s miraculous work of saving a lost soul.  That’s what we see.  This is nothing new.  This is not a Jeff Noblit or a modern Sunday School issue.  This is an old, 2000-year-old, biblical principle, house to house, in smaller settings.  Lost souls were present.  Family members came and met with them.  Work associates, slaves, and others would come to these household settings and be exposed to the gospel, be touched, loved, encouraged, and ministered to. The Bible says, in this case, revival hit in a powerful way and multitudes of those people were continually being saved.
  Secondly, church members who are lost.  In the Great Awakening of the early part of the 18th Century, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, John Wesley, and many other godly associates were preaching the gospel powerfully and boldly, particularly in the context of the Anglican Church.  They were seeing thousands and thousands of devout Church of England parishioners or Anglicans come to Christ.  So many so that a whole new denomination started called Methodism or the Methodist Church.  It’s the same way today.  Be praying and seeking God in your small group, “Lord, show us church members.”  They may be good friends, and we may enjoy them, but they’re not yet truly converted.  We’ve seen God do that over and over and over again.  
Thirdly, when you meet in your classes, pray for prospects.  These are people who are not on the church membership roll.  Now they may be on your small group roll.  You know we believe in open enrollment.  That means we’ll enroll anybody, anytime, anywhere to be a part of our small groups, just like the book of Acts teaches.  A lot of these people who were meeting in these household settings, these small groups, were not yet church members.  They were not yet saved.  They were just friends, acquaintances, and work associates who were interested and willing to start coming.  That’s the way our small groups are.  Oh, do you pray for lost souls?  Do you pore over those names and say, “Oh, God, save some of these this year.”  
Romans 12 is a chapter on spiritual gifts.  I’m just going to run through this and hopefully illustrate to you how in your small group, all of these gifts are present in one dimension or another and how everyone in your small group can all bring their gifts together.  Now first of all, we’ll begin in verse 6, and he says, “And since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.”  You have giftedness that grace gave you.  It’s not in the natural man.  You get no credit for it, and you are not free to use it as you choose.  
Now he says, “Let each exercise them accordingly.”  Now he says, “If prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith.”  Some may have the gift of prophecy.  You do not have the office of prophet.  That’s no longer in force.  But you may have something of the gift of prophecy.  Most preachers have a strong gift of prophecy.  And literally it says there, but according to the faith.  In other words, you should prophesy according to the once-for-all delivered, established doctrines or truth which we have as the Holy Scriptures.  Just because I have something of a gift of prophecy, I am not free to prophesy to you what I feel or I think God is saying.  I must give you, “Thus saith the Scriptures.”  
So how can a person with the gift of prophecy be a part of the team effort to win lost souls?  Well, first of all, he or she likely to be the small group Bible study leader.  That person with a gift of prophecy is usually good at teaching the Bible.  They’re usually a little bolder than others about confronting lost souls about their sins and needing to come to Christ.  He or she have their role in the class.  
Then he says, “If service, in his serving.”   Praise God for the number of people in this body who have the gift of service.  What would the body be like if we all had the gift of prophecy and nobody had the gift of service?  We’d just run around shouting at each other’s face all the time, “Repent!  Trust God!  Believe the Word of God!  You’re not right!  You better get right with God!”  We need somebody that just keeps his mouth shut and says, “I’ll do that job.”  When you have a small group with three or four that have the gift of service,  think of the things they can do.
“He who teaches in his teaching.”  Now again, maybe the small group Bible study leader would be using the gift of teaching to teach the gospel and the things of Christ, that God uses to bring people to Christ.  Then, “He who exhorts in his exhortation.”  I’m interpreting all this in view of winning lost souls.  This person is probably good at visitation.  An exhorter is probably good at going to doors or contacting, phone calls, that kind of thing, and reaching out in a verbal way.
Then, “He who shows mercy with cheerfulness.”  You folks with the gift of mercy are so powerfully used when you’re reaching out to those lost prospects on your small group role.  I can’t tell you the hundreds of times I’ve heard this testimony.  “I don’t even know those people.  But when my father was in the hospital, they brought us meals.  I got cards.  They came by and prayed.”  Just mercy ministering.   Then God uses that to open them to the Gospel.  They begin to come.  Somebody with the gift of teaching or the gift of exhortation shares more of the gospel with them.  They sit under the preaching of the Word of God and the preaching of the Gospel.  More people love them and show mercy and tenderness, and God saves many of them.  
I’m talking about the team effort to reach the lost.  One of the things I would encourage you to do is make sure to include your children.  As you do your adult ministries, bring your children along.  Children need to see moms trying to reach out to lost moms.  Children need to see dads trying to reach out with the Gospel to lost dads.  We purposely structured small groups to encourage and enable that to work better.  
Roman numeral four, to equip the saved.  The entire church family organized into small groups to the end that as a team you can evangelize the lost, and you can be a part of God’s means of equipping the saved.  
Jesus used small groups in this way.  Remember Luke 6?  The Bible says Jesus prayed all night, then He chose the men that would form the small group.  What did He do with those twelve men?  They were the twelve apostles.  He discipled them.  He equipped them to serve the Lord and minister to the Lord.  Now we’re not equipping apostles today.  Jesus is not here walking the earth in incarnate form.  But an essential part of equipping happens in a small group setting.  The preaching of the Word is foundational to equipping, but He also uses small groups.
The apostles used small groups.  In Acts 2 we have again them meeting in house to house settings.  They were taking their meals together and fellowshipping together, the Bible says.  Incorporated into all of that was the encouragement, exhortation, and when necessary, reproofs and rebukes to stay on track.  Every day when you come to small groups, in varying degrees, every class member in there is wandering a little bit on their faithfulness, and we need that small group time to challenge each other to get our thinking back right, to get out of our emotions.  Small groups is a good way to get together and equip each other in all these areas, including the area of not letting our emotions serve as the idol of our lives.
The apostle Paul used small groups.  In Colossians 1:28 and 29, Paul says, “And we proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom that we may present every man complete in Christ.  For this purpose also I labor striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.”  How did Paul equip every man?  How did he teach every man?  Certainly he was a preacher.  That was foundational.  But 2 Timothy 2:2 tells us, “These things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men,” that’s a small group, “who will be able to teach others also.”  We have the Old and New Testament examples of smaller groups of men with men.  Iron sharpening iron, one man sharpening another, and women with women.  Women teaching other women about the biblical duties of womanhood and the Word of God.  
A key aspect of equipping in small groups is the biblical principle of modeling.  Much of discipleship is more caught than it is taught.  I can preach to you about prayer for hours and hours, and God would use that to edify you.  But, if one person prays before you two or three or four times a biblical, glory of God focused, Christ-honoring biblical prayer, that model before you teaches you more.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus said, “When you pray, pray this way,” and then He prays verbally and out loud?  “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.  Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  He gives us the whole Lord’s prayer, which is really the model prayer.  Why did Jesus pray it out loud in front of His disciples and we have it recorded in Scripture?  The model is essential.    
The principle of modeling comes out very strongly in Acts 1:1 when composing the book of Acts he says, “The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus begins to do and teach.”  “First of all, I want you to know, I’m recording what I saw in His life, what He began to do, but also what He taught.”  Small groups enables a church to do spiritual ministry before one another, to challenge, encourage, train, edify each other in those things.
The apostle Paul, going back to prayer being modeled, gives us two prayers in the book of Ephesians.  Now why did Paul spell out the words to two particular prayers in the book of Ephesians?  He was modeling how to pray properly.  And praying properly doesn’t mean certain words or certain eloquence or using old Victorian English.  Proper prayer means praying with biblical truth and from a biblical perspective.  It needs to be modeled.
Evangelism needs to be modeled.  How effective it is to take someone with you when you’re trying to reach out.  When you’re trying to knock on doors, inviting somebody to come to an evangelistic outreach that we’re having here.  Or you’re just trying to get in the door, perhaps, and share the gospel.  I can’t tell you the times through the years I have had another man with me on a visit.  We’d go into a home and we’d be sharing the things of Christ with someone.  They would ask some question like, “Did Adam’s sons marry their sisters?”  You know what I say?  “I have no idea.  I do not know.  But I do know this.  I’m a wicked sinner, and I am under the wrath of God.  I do know the Lord Jesus Christ died for me.  When we’d leave that witnessing encounter, that person would come out and say, “Pastor, I can’t believe you just said you didn’t know the answer to a Bible question.”  Modeling before them.  It’s not a perfection.  It’s not a certain gimmick.  It’s not a certain way.  It’s genuineness.  Be real, and let those disciples in your class see some of that.  You don’t know how that might propel them to know that they can witness and share, and if they don’t have all the answers, it doesn’t matter.  
Then there is the model of home life, or family life.  When you get together with your small group, guys are watching you, and you’re not perfect, and that’s one thing they learn.  “He doesn’t treat his wife perfectly either, but he does love her.  He does honor her.  He does try to love her like Christ loves the church.”  Those men in that class learn how to love their wives better by watching your model.
Ladies who have that strength and security in Christ to honor their husbands and submit to them can model that in family fellowships.  And when you bring your sons and daughters along on projects, mom can model how she nurtures her daughters to be godly young women.  All of this modeling can so powerfully take place as an extension of small groups ministries.
The small group setting greatly enables modeling.  It’s essential in Christian discipleship.  Proverbs 27:17 says, “Iron sharpens iron, therefore one man sharpens another.”  If the church isn’t organized into structures, small groups, who are you going to sharpen, and who will be left out?
Lastly, is to provide fellowship to meet individual needs.  Let’s assume there are seven hundred active adults in our church.  There are ten elders, who will give an account at the judgment seat of Christ for how you were taken care of.  For true discipleship to happen in the church, you must have what I call spiritual bonding. Here’s what that requires.  First of all, you get in a small group, and if there’s going to be spiritual bonding, it takes time.  Have you ever worked with someone, been on a football team with someone, been in a club with someone and you just didn’t care for them at all, until you really spent some time with them, and then your heart changed?
Secondly, it takes trust.  If you spend time together and you really know the Lord, trust starts developing.  God wants you to move out of your comfort zone.  That’s why you’re in the small group you’re in so that you would learn to deny yourself.  You can always love, can’t you?  If everybody in there hates you and wants to destroy you, what can keep you from loving them?  Love gives.  It’s not worried about getting or taking.  
Most of those people like you and most of those people are real Christians and they really want to love you.  You can push out of your comfort zone and spend the time and determine, “I can love these people.”  By the way, the Lord told you to lay down your life for them.  Going to a small group and ministering there is not a big deal compared to dying for them.  
As trust develops it leads to transparency.  You beome willing to share things.  You’re willing to ask for prayer requests.  You’re willing to talk about a struggle in your life and in your walk with the Lord that you wouldn’t have talked about six months ago.  That’s Christian discipleship, folks.  I can’t go to heaven pastoring a large church built on the preaching of the Word and a dynamic song service only.  I must know that the Word has had an impact in you, that you have been so transformed that you are willing to begin functioning in these ministries one to another in true, reciprocal, interdependent Christian discipleship.  That’s the church.  I care deeply about that.  
Time leads to trust.  Trust leads to transparency, and transparency leads to heart communication.  I mean down in the heart of hearts, here’s where I am.  Here’s where I’m struggling.  Here’s where I need prayer.  Here’s my burden.  Deep personal needs can start to be met in the body of Christ.  When real Christians are really fellowshipping in real Christian discipleship because they’ve really spiritually bonded, we don’t need Freud, and we don’t need Skinner.  We don’t need psychology, and we don’t need psychiatry because we have God in real Christian fellowship.  Then the world looks and says, “How do you all get by without all these smart men? We have God, and we’re functioning in His power and strength in our small groups.  Not perfectly.  We do struggle.  God is real in these fellowships.  True Christian fellowship must have spiritual bonding so that there is a freedom to be open and meet individual needs.
In your small groups, some need that individual help to repent.  They need help to repent of sin.  The Bible says in Matthew 18, “If your brother sins, you go and reprove him.”  God has not ordained just a committee in the church or the elders to be involved in discipline.  We’ve seen this over and over how our small groups carry the ball to lovingly, compassionately call another brother or sister to repentance.  We call them to repentance for unrepented of sin.  You should hope and pray that for the rest of your life you are in a church that has a small group structure so that if you begin to stray, a brother or a sister will love you enough to knock on your door.  Repentance is the way to life, freedom, victory, blessing.  Sin undealt with is the path of destruction.  The wages of sin is death.  And the great majority of times, church discipline cases are initiated and solved in the small group class as they lovingly help each other to repent of sin when needful.  If one person has unrepented of sin and, the elders are the only ones that do the discipline, when the elders go to contact that sister, they may not hardly even know each other.  But, when it comes from that small group where time has been invested, and trust has been developed, transparency is there, and deep heart communication has been established, it’s a lot easier to call one another to repentance.  Isn’t it neat the way God’s put the body of Christ together to function?
Also, some need help overcoming sin.  Matter of fact, that’s the testimony of all of us, is it not?  We are all on the pilgrimage of being repenters and purposing to overcome the sins and the strongholds that we find in our lives.  That’s the Christian pilgrimage.  That’s progressive sanctification.  You are saved to begin being a repenter, so that you might continue the pilgrimage of dealing with and overcoming sin in your life.  Galatians 6:1 – “Brethren, even if a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself lest you too be tempted.”  
Some need help with a physical crisis.  It’s been so wonderful through the years to see this ministry of the church.  James 2:15 and 16 – If a brother or a sister is without clothing and in need of daily food and one of them says to you, “Go in peace.  Be warmed and be filled,” and yet do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that?  Now we have physical crises that pop up in the church: groceries, a bill needs paid, or whatever it is.  It wasn’t too long ago we had a lady who really seemed that God had worked in her life, and she became active in our church, but her husband had been a drug dealer.  He was in prison.  Her house was in real disrepair.  The most critical need was a roof.  The men’s small group that he would have been in went to her house and put a new roof on it.  I heard of a class just recently that had a class member that didn’t complain, but they knew that that family would not have any Christmas this year.  They began giving five dollars at a time, ten dollars at a time, and took up a nice offering without that person ever knowing.  They gave it to them so that their children could have Christmas.  Isn’t that beautiful?  Praise the Lord for that kind of ministry.
Some need help in times of bereavement and sorrow.  I called a man just recently who had lost a child and just assured him that I was praying for him.  He kept interrupting me to tell me how his small group had ministered to him during his time of bereavement and sorrow.
I have heard of churches where only the pastor or the staff do most of that ministry.  When a pastor and a staff do not equip the saints to do that ministry with them, they are robbing the church of a great blessing.  There’s no way in the world a staff could even touch the hem of the garment of all the ministry you do in these ways.  I think it shows the great wisdom and glory of God.
Lastly, some need encouragement and consolation to get through a difficult time. In Hebrews 10:24-25. The writer commanded the Hebrew Christian church gives, “Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some.”  Two thousand years ago, some were already in the habit of saying they were Christians yet being quite inconsistent about meeting with the brothers and sisters in Christ.  “Stimulate” in its root means vinegar.  It means every Sunday when you come to church, you splash vinegar on each other.  Now don’t misunderstand this truth, but in a small group setting where there’s been time and a trust and transparency has developed, there’s an openness and a willingness to let that brother splash a little vinegar on you, or jolt you into reality.  You need each other for this.  Just to get each other back on track again.  
Now you might be assigned to a small group, and it isn’t very fun.  They’re just not what you need them be for you.  It’s just not very encouraging.  Don’t throw them out.  This is family, and you know what you’ll find?  If somebody will go to their small group and just love and serve, a year from now, two years from now, you’ll have this testimony, “You know what?  Boy, I didn’t like that small group.  It turned out to be one of the best things I was ever involved in.  I grew as a Christian.  I learned to love some of those folks.  They learned to love me.  I never saw that coming.”  
Isn’t that true in your family?  You look back at some of those difficult years and you think, “You know what?  Those were some of the best years we really had.  It caused us to love each other more.”
Let’s reenergize and recommit ourselves to let God get glory through this body.  Let people look at this body and say, “The way they minister, the way they care, the way they function in their small groups is not Jeff Noblit’s strategy.  That’s God.”  Let’s keep on that track in our small groups: evangelizing the lost, equipping the saved, and providing fellowship to meet individual needs, for the glory of God…