1000 Hours of Prayer…a discipleship opportunity

As I’ve mentioned over the past couple of weeks, the Summit is in the midst of a Mission Expansion Project we are calling “Believe.” Now, what we are calling ourselves to “believe” is very important. We are calling one another to Believe that God is able to do great things for his glory through us as a church. And we are recognizing that Belief unlocks the power of God. I can think of two tangible ways belief is expressed.

1) We give radically of our resources to this cause because we believe God gave those resources to us for the purpose of making disciples of all nations (Matt 28:20)
2) We pray to God as an act of belief in the reality that it is not our own efforts that change peoples lives, but God’s power that does so. When we pray, we get ourselves out of the way and in effect begin to unlock the power of God in our lives.

In 1 Kings 18:20-40 the account of Elijah confronting the prophets of Baal is told. This account is a good depiction of the two claims I just made above. I wont tell you the whole story here because Id rather you go read it for yourself. But Elijah does two things to show the power of the LORD and his existence as the only true God.
1) he builds a pretty elaborate altar. I know, this is not a direct correlation. stop being cynical and hear me out. He creates a scenario where no one but God can be given credit for what will happen. He does something radical, fully convinced that God will use it for his glory. Jesus does the same thing in Matthew 14 where he uses 5 loaves and 2 fish to feed a crowd of several thousand. Do you think Jesus, the God of the universe, was surprised by the shortage of food? No, he was using a circumstance to create a scenario where no one but God could be given credit for what would happen. Just like Elijah, when we believe we will as William Carey said “attempt great things for God, expect great things from God.”

2) He Prays for God to do something. He calls out to God to and says “let it be known that you are God in Israel…Answer me that this people may know that you, O LORD, are God and that you have turned their hearts back.” What a model for prayer for us! Elijah has an understanding that this scenario is not about the cool altar he built, but about PEOPLE TURNING THEIR HEARTS BACK TO GOD! Sorry for the caps but that is what our entire BELIEVE project is about: people.

Over the next two weeks if you are a part of the Summit Church you have the very sacred privelege of participating in our corporate cry of belief to God as we ask him to make himself known in Raleigh-Durham and the rest of the triangle area. Pray with us. we have 1000 slots, 1 hr each, and you get to take one. So do I. For one hour you get to intercede for the people of RDU just as Elijah did. You get to participate in God’s ongoing grand salvation mission. Wow. my heart is actually racing faster as I type this. partly due to the early AM java.

If you are a small group leader, I mean, does a discipleship opportunity get much better or easier? Wow. Sign up here

lead to serve

Our small groups are working their way through the book of Philippians right now as our pastor teaches through it on Sundays. During our staff meeting yesterday Pastor J.D. led a discussion through the first part of Chapter 2. I had read that passage earlier in the morning and something stuck out to me both early that morning and again at staff meeting. That is, in probably one of the most theologically rich portions of scripture in the bible Paul is talking about Christ’s humility.

V.7-8 – but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Those words in bold acknowledge that 4 times in 2 verses (and really 6 if you include death ) Paul mentions christ’s humility. Good bible study tells us that should send up a flare that he is trying to communicate something loud & clear. I think he communicates it in verses 1- 3 where he says

V1: So if there is any encouragement in Christ….V3do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Basically Paul is laying out that one of the key characteristics of a church who believes the gospel is that they will willingly and lovingly serve one another and hold one another above their own self-interests. This is not religious humility forced onto a group of people through obligation to God, but reactive humility stemming from an encounter with the grace of God.

As we looked at this in staff meeting we were talking about how we identify and develop leaders in our church. For our small groups, the discussion was how do I “identify” leader talent? This message from Paul was incredibly important to help guide me in understanding leader development from a biblical standpoint.

The sign of a “leader” is that he or she is a servant to those around him/her. That sounds simple, but should be deeply challenging to you as it is to me. How are you as a small group “leader” serving your group members? Are you caring for them or are you caring that they show up and participate so you can feel like you lead a good small group? Do you know what is going on in their lives? do you pray for them? Do you sacrifice yourself for them in some fashion?

bottom line, lead a small group to get the chance to serve people. Not to get the chance to lead people.

Bible Drill

I grew up in church…bla bla bla…insert a bunch of stuff pastors say about how religious and rule-based their lives were in the pews of yesteryear. One thing churches who are “relevant” today have a danger of tossing aside with the rest of suit & tie Sundays is the habit of studying the scriptures. Dont get me wrong, we have done great strides to contextualize the gospel message to a 21st century context and I am very grateful to be at a church seeking to do just that without watering it (the gospel) down one ounce.

What I am talking about is the noticeable increase in materials (most noticeable to me in the form of small group studies) that deal with life circumstance topics such as marriage and kids, as well as spiritual topics. What concerns me is that at the same time I am noticing a huge derth in the publication of expositional materials. That is, materials or studies that walk a small group through a book of the bible. Im not saying that these two are directly connected though I do suspect if good authors are writing about one thing they are not at the same time writing about another.

I think there is a good place for some of the material being printed and I dont want to get off on a “publisher” rant. Instead, Im going to use my remaining words to exhort our generation to continue studying the scriptures above all else. The scriptures are the only “materials” in the Christian world that we believe have truly life-changing power because they are the only materials “breathed out by God” (2 Tim 3:16). They are fully sufficient for sustaining and growing a christian towards spiritual maturity.

So to you who may be a small group leader I challenge you in your “curriculum” search to start with the scriptures and when you get tired of the studying the bible, talk to your pastor. I look forward to reading in the years to come the insight God is giving the “relevant” pastor-theologians of our day in their study of the scriptures. Here is my plea: Take us through the Psalms! Through the Prophets! Through Paul’s Letters! THROUGH THE GOSPELS!

The greatest small group study ever is recorded in Luke 24. Jesus reveals himself to his disciples and tells them how all of the OT scriptures are written about HIM. He explains the scriptures to them.

So from one small group pastor: Thank you to the many authors writing studies outside the box that are finally tackling issues from a biblical perspective. Your work has been long overdue. Let us now call those same great minds to the challenge of creating book-based bible studies with the same excellence they have displayed so far!

A Caveat: we have a good supply of academics who are writing bible commentaries. We do not need more of these. What we need are teaching materials that help people learn to study the bible for themselves. I am afraid this is a task specific to the pastor-theologian who God has gifted to “teach” the scriptures.

Accountability in fellowship

Probably the thing people love most about the small group model is that it is a disarming environment to get to know other people in the local church. “hang out time” is very natural when done someone’s home, the study time is more discussion than it is lecture, and there is almost always food of some sort. A trend I’ve noticed in small groups is that after about 4 to 6 months together, the friendships have been made and the allure of the small group meeting as the place to just go hang out with friends starts to lose its luster. What happens here is nothing unlike a dating relationship. After that initial period of just staring at each other and giggling, you both realize you need some substance in the relationship. You need a “why are we still together” motivation.

For the small group, one way to avoid this 4 – 6 month DTR (define-the-relationship for you who weren’t college campus ministry kids) encounter is to build deeper spiritual fellowship into your group in the early stages. Now, this should not be done in week 1 ok? If you try it, you will be having small… at your house next week, no group. They will bail. But after about a 6 to 8 week period you can start to build what is commonly called accountability into your group. That is, you break the group down into pairs or groups of 3 and in those smaller groups you challenge one another to grow in your faith. Hebrews 3:13 actually warns us towards this action “but encourage one another daily, as long as it is still called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” Regardless of how spiritual you think you are, God created you to grow in your faith through the encouragement and accountability of other believers. side note: often called accountability it really should be called encouragement, but that sounds to cheesy so we end up giving it a negative connotation through a word like accountability. sometimes we should deal with cheesiness if its a better word.

So, once your small group breaks into pairs or 3s, what do they do? Well that can and should look different from time to time. Below I am offering you a couple of well known lists of accountability questions they could ask one another. By the way, this can be done outside of group time because it should take an hour or two. Maybe you can start this by you as the leader asking one other guy (if you are a guy) or girl (if you are a girl) to start meeting together regularly to go through this stuff. regularly can be twice a month, once a week, daily, or monthly depending on your situation. John Wesley who was more spiritual than you or I met daily with guys to ask his list below. So dont meet monthly because your pride wont let you meet more often. See Hebrews 3:13 cited above.

These are 22 questions the members of John Wesley’s Holy Club asked themselves every day in their private devotions over 200 years ago.

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I relly am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?
2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?
3. Do I confidentially pass on to another what was told to me in confidence?
4. Can I be trusted?
5. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work, or habits?
6. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?
7. Did the Bible live in me today?
8. Do I give it time to speak to me everyday?
9. Am I enjoying prayer?
10. When did I last speak to someone else about my faith?
11. Do I pray about the money I spend?
12. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
13. Do I disobey God in anything?
14. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?
15. Am I defeated in any part of my life?
16. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?
17. How do I spend my spare time?
18. Am I proud?
19. Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the publican?
20. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment toward or disregard? If so, what am I doing about it?
21. Do I grumble or complain constantly?
22. Is Christ real to me

Chuck Swindoll’s Pastoral Accountability list – for pastors. warning: every area of your life is game.
cited by Chuck Colson in his book, The Body

1. Have you been with a woman anywhere this past week that might be seen as compromising?

2. Have any of your financial dealings lacked integrity?

3. Have you exposed yourself to any sexually explicit material?

4. Have you spent adequate time in Bible study and prayer?

5. Have you given priority time to your family?

6. Have you fulfilled the mandates of your calling?

7. Have you just lied to me?

If you are still reading this absurdly long post at this point, I hope these help. what else have you used that has been valuable in creating accountability relationships with others?

Suburbia Church

I live in a suburb. I mean the real deal where kids play in the street, houses are like 20 yards from one another, families have cookouts in their backyards, everybody has a dog and walks that dog sometime between 5 – 7pm each day, and oh yes…there is a homeowners association. You should see it, its straight out of “lower – middle class America” magazine. We even have the appropriate amount of racial and cultural diversity (no discernible majority, its pretty cool.) to make us the poster-child for 21st century suburbia. But i gotta tell you the move I made from Seminaria to Suburbia this past winter has opened my eyes to alot of things.

One thing I have started making connections between is how a lot of times we treat church like our own lil suburbia neighborhood. If we are honest with ourselves, all we often really want to do when we come home is park the car, go inside, and be with our family. We hope the neighbor isnt pulling in at the same time because then we will have to exchange that awkward pleasantry with them we’ve been doing for 4 years now. (My neighbor says “Hey Scott”, I’ve stopped trying to correct him. If you come over & he is out there, just go with it.) We like the neighborhood, certainly don’t want it to change, and would prefer to be left alone for the most part. And the homeowner’s association? Well, its just one of those necessary evils you have to deal with. You pay your dues and hope that buys you enough clout to plant a shrub without causing a community meltdown. As long as they dont raise the dues too much, or come up with any new ideas, we can peacefully co-exist.

I gotta tell you, this sounds alot like how I used to view being a part of a church. I wanted to go on Sunday, sit where I normally sat with the people I came with & HOPE the greeters and people around me didnt notice me because I really didnt want to do the handshake + greeting thing. I liked the music and preaching so I would come back each week. And yes, I even put money in when they collected the offering, you know, paying my dues to keep the church going so the pastors (re: HOA) would be happy. That way we could peacefully co-exist and ultimately God would be happy because I was in church. Pretty good investment if you asked me.

Does this sound in any way familiar to you? So many churches are filled with people who bring this suburbian mindset into the church. So what happens? WE, not everybody else, YOU AND ME help foster an attitude and atmosphere of fake friendship, obligatory tithing, and an isolationist “dont go changing anything” mentality. Check that against what the church originally looked like:

“And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayers…all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” Acts 2:42-47

The original church had no concept of isolation or fake friendship, they had genuine fellowship that came from sharing life together. They didnt pay their dues, they looked for any way they could find to give everything they had to help out one another. And they grew in number and were ok with it. They probably had to change to accomodate that growth, but they were so pumped about seeing people come to love Jesus, they didnt really care about the change. Friendship, radical generosity, and a communally entrenched passion for people characterized the early church.

This passage re-shaped me drastically in how I view church. Where do you sit right now? Is church another HOA for you? Are you honestly willing to share life with others the way the original church did? What is keeping you from taking the next step to connecting to a church community maybe in a way you never have before?

If you are at the Summit, an easy step for you could be starting point this Sunday. If you are already a part of the Summit family, maybe its time to step into a SummitLIFE small group where this fellowship im talking about can take place.

Perspective

My first child was born 2 weeks ago. This will not be a long blog because the sleep deprivation keeps my brain from focusing for more than13 minutes on anything but, well, sleep. People always told me having a kid changes you forever. I assumed they were referring to that “lack of sleep” as the change, but there is something much more profound that is taking place. This change started 4 years ago when I got married and is now being amplified by the arrival of my son. That change I am speaking of is the shifting of focus in every area of my life off of myself and onto other people, specifically my wife and my son. I’m not just talking about the big things like their health and general well-being. I’m also talking about little things like surprising my wife with ice-cream or making sure my son doesn’t sit in his own poop for too long. And its not like I think about them first and then me second. Contrarily, I find the most joy in my life in their joy. When they are happy, im not relieved, I am joyful. Just this morning my son smiled at me (im sure it was just gas but still) and I was absolutely elated. His happiness made me happy and it was awesome. If I saw his happiness as a task I had to achieve and once I achieve it I could exhale and start worrying about myself, I would be miserable.

This has really helped me consider how I approach God. See, often I will look at God like a kid or spouse that I need to make happy. So I will do whatever it is He wants (read my bible, pray, go to church) so he will be happy and leave me alone so I can go do what makes me happy. So my interaction with God becomes a to do list of sorts. When I don’t do those things, I feel guilty because God probably isn’t happy and im gonna hear about it. But that isn’t the kind of relationship God designed me to have with him. God created me in a way so that the most joy I can find in life is living as he designed me to live. And guess what, when I live this way it is pleasing to Him, which pleases me all the more! As I find joy worshipping God, he finds joy in my worship of Him. Just like I find joy in serving my spouse because of the joy she finds in how I serve her. So I don’t serve God out of obligation but out of a love for His love.

Here comes the best part: Spouses and children may not reciprocate love and joy. Ultimately they will never reciprocate at all times. That’s because they weren’t created to be the SOURCE of my joy, God was. And God will never fail to love me back. In fact, the gospel message reminds me that God loves me infinitely more than I could love him and NOT BECAUSE I love him. He loves me, and you, regardless of our efforts to love him. There is nothing I can do to make God love me more or less. (ok follow this…) So I have confidence in his faithfulness to love me and that confidence in his love brings me JOY, which is expressed as TRUST, which is lived out as OBEDIENCE to his design for me, which subsequently brings me JOY. Follow that? With joy comes trust with trust comes obedience & with obedience comes joy.

Bottom line, Im being reminded to love God like I love my wife and son: I find my joy in their joy .

Would love your thoughts and feedback on this idea. post them in the comment section below.

Go Walk Your Dog

I’m almost 26 now. I’ve officially been out of college longer than I was in it (yes I made it all 4 years). I find myself occasionally longing for the schedule and routine I had at 21 where I could go work out for a couple of hours, play basketball with the guys for two more, and then eat anything I wanted because my metabolism was at its peak. Recently however I am in a stage in life where words like “portion,” “bottled water,” and “diet Dr. Pepper” are regulars in my vocabulary. Probably the biggest change from then to now, is that life is simply busier. In college my Wednesday consisted of class, call my girlfriend, and hangout with friends. Maybe study depending on the month. It was easy! There were no real time demands most of the time. So as a believer, I could pretty much pick whenever to sit down and study my bible and pray. But, those days are over. Today I have a wife I love spending time with, a job as a pastor that I love pouring into, an emotionally needy and mentally lacking chocolate lab, a washing machine that needs repairing, and a 2 month deadline to get my first son’s bedroom ready before his arrival in august. I get up at 6 am, go to bed at 11pm and could rattle you off another 20 things each night that I wanted to get done that day but just didn’t have the time.

The point is, I have to be disciplined now to carve out time in my life to meet with God. I cant just wait until that moment in my day when I have nothing to do. That moment is called college and it is only a memory to me. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells me that all of the scriptures are the very words of God and are useful in all aspects of my life. They are like food to my soul that I should hunger for. And the truth is that I do hunger for them. But If im not careful to make time to feed myself, the barking of the dog and the clanging of the washing machine will suffocate that hunger. And remember, my child isn’t even here yet!

So, after recognizing the pattern of immediate needs killing my spiritual growth, I decided to go on the offensive and re-schedule a daily time to meet with God. I looked for a time in my day that was calmest, and started there. For me, that was the morning. I wake up at 6am everyday. (If you don’t like keeping a schedule this part will frustrate you. But you need to grow up and realize somebody else will decide your schedule for you if you don’t.) By 6:20 I am out the door with my dog for a walk around the neighborhood. Its only about a 20 minute walk, but has turned from an obligatory part of my schedule into a 20 minute daily prayer walk. That is, as I walk by the homes of the neighbors I see regularly, I pray for them, for their marriages and ultimately for their salvation. I pray for opportunities to share the gospel with them. Its awesome! That is also my time to just praise God for his creation or pray for things really weighing on my mind. Warning: Im not saying this is the only time I pray. I find the most growth in my prayer life when I am in solitude, speaking to and listening to God with the scriptures sitting open in front of me. What I AM saying is that I reclaimed a time in my day as an opportunity to meet with God instead of letting it be another task on my honey-do list.

At 6:40 I start reading my bible and usually eat a pop-tart (with Cold Skim Milk. Mmmm). Sometimes that bible reading lasts 40 or 50 minutes, sometimes it lasts 15. Sometimes I read 3 verses, sometimes I read 3 chapters. Today I read chapter 2 of Galatians. I read it over about 4 times and just meditated on what the author was saying. I think I sat there at the island in my kitchen for about 30 minutes or so really trying to think on v.20 that says “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now life in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” This is the gospel message. So I tried honestly evaluating where I want to see Christ’s love lived out in my life more than it is right now. Nothing earth shattering hit me at that moment, but things I’ve been praying for like my marriage and my relationship with my co-pastors came to mind. That is how God often speaks to us though. He gives us (via the holy spirit) recall of his word (meaning we’ve been reading it) into our life situations that we are coming before him in prayer about. Its pretty awesome. Sometimes he will use the recall of his word in a fellow believer to speak into our life situation / prayer request. That is even awesomer and it’s why we always have to be in relationships (re: small groups) where that can happen.

So my question to you is really twofold:
1. Are the immediate needs of your life killing your walk with Christ?
2. What is the calmest part of your day & how could you start there in reclaiming a regular time to meet with God? Commute in your car? Your workout hour? Grey’s Anatomy hour?

I would love to hear suggestions that have worked for you to this end. Also, if you are struggling through this battle as I did recently and want a hand in figuring it out, feel free to contact me: sshelton@summitchurch.cc .

A few of the things im learning about small groups

1. 1. Growth takes time – This is critical for me as a “I want results now” kinda person. Spiritual growth takes time. It takes time for individuals and for churches. As small group leaders, we must be willing to live in relationships with people for a significant amount of time. We cannot see them as a “project” but as family members we are investing our lives into. This also means that we as group leaders may never fully see the fruit of our efforts. That should never dissuade us from our great task of helping people grow deeper in love with Jesus.

2. 2. Growth comes through the pursuit – We tend to think we will arrive one day at this great land called “spiritual maturity.” Here is the problem with that: when we do things in hopes of arriving at a level of maturity, we become legalists. We become Pharisees. We grow spiritually through pursuing Christ. Spiritual maturity is simply consistently pursuing Christ & the application of the gospel to your life a little longer than the guy or girl beside you.

3. 3. Growth is messy – Ok this one is for both numerical and spiritual. First off, growing a small group ministry is messy. Once a group gets comfortable it tends to take on a character of its own which is good, but can result in loosing contact with the church at large. As a pastor, I have to be comfortable with a certain level of that happening. That’s called putting trust in my leaders. When leaders launch new groups, it is never perfectly neat and clean. Group members stepping out of old groups to lead new ones isn’t easy, it can be quite hard. But spiritual growth is messy too. People don’t usually just gradually grow up in their faith on some mythical scale from 0 to 10 over the course of their life. The truth is, they grow in spurts and in different spurts in different areas of their lives. You may have a couple who really becomes solid prayer warriors in your group, who you discover is in financial ruin because they have never sought to apply the gospel to their finances. Guess what, you as a group leader probably have areas of your life where you are not sure how to live out a gospel-centered mindset. I will be the first to tell you that I am about to enter parenthood and I have a TON to learn about what gospel-centered parenting looks like. Thankfully my small group has parents in it!

4. 4. We gotta buy in – Not sure how this became a “growth…” blog anyways. One thing im convinced of, by seeing it in our small groups, is that a leader must be fully bought in to the idea that small groups work if they are going to have a successful group. If we aren’t convinced we can see life change happen, our people will see right through our façade and we are wasting time. I implore you, if you are leading a small group and you are not convinced God is going to change the lives of your small group members through their time in your group, get on your knees immediately, repent, and ask God for faith. Im really not exaggerating or kidding. We are not just going through the motions in small groups. We are literally being the church. Please don’t treat the church, the bride of Christ, lightly.

5. 5. Small Groups are Awesome – I love small groups. Im convinced growth happens here better than in any other context. That gets me all excited and I hope you are excited with me.

Measuring Growth

As a small group leader, and now a leader of small group leaders, I am often asking and being asked this question “How is your group doing?” I often ask myself that question of the group I lead. The question is vague and can come off as nothing more than a conversational pleasantry. It assumes your reply will be “great, and yours?” That exchange of words is completely useless to a small group leader and to a leader of small group leaders. BUT, evaluating the spiritual maturity of your small group remains an absolutely essential task. The first step in effectively evaluating your group is realizing it is made up of individuals. And unless you know where your individual group members are spiritually, you will make vague & usually incorrect generalizations about where your group “is.” And by the way, the “where” is not as much gauged on a numerical scale (eg. 1-10) as much as it is observing what areas of their lives they are following Christ in. So let me give you some hopefully helpful identifiers for measuring spiritual growth in the lives of your group members (and also your own life). These are neither exhaustive nor foolproof. By the way, I am not where I want to be on any of these so if you go on a judgmental tirade in your group with these, im gonna find you and pound you. But, hopefully these will help you begin to see where you can encourage and challenge your group as they follow Jesus. The way I use these is this: look first for ways to encourage your group members in these. Usually that works best.

 ·        Their prayer lives – First, do they pray? Is prayer a 15 second dinner ritual or an intrinsic part of their daily lives? Do they pray in your small group gatherings? Do they ask you to pray for them or if they can pray for you? Basically, do they actually believe prayer to be the powerful, necessary means of communing with God or is it a unfamiliar religious practice? If they do pray, do they pray only in the form of requests for the needs of the immediate (ie, family illness or final exam) or do you hear them seeking the glory of God in their prayers? Do they praise God in their prayers? Use scripture in their prayers? For a great message from our pastor on this topic, click here.

·        Their Bible lives – The scriptures are the inspired word of God. Not you, a pastor, or anyone else can claim that. Do they love the bible? Are they regularly contributing to your group’s bible study? Do they see reading the bible as a checklist task or a life necessity equal to breathing (recognize that people go through times where it may feel like a task, but do they know and believe it to be more than that)? Are they familiar with their bibles (ex: what is in the OT & NT)? Is the bible a well-worn in tool on their belt or decorative bookshelf art? *Helping people grow to love their bibles will be the single greatest thing you do for anyone in your small group.*

·        Their ministry lives – Are they involved in service in the local church? Do they believe that to be a necessary part of their Christian life or a guilt-motivated job assignment? Do they like people? Seriously. I’m not asking if they are extroverted, but if they have a general care for the welfare of fellow Christians as well as non Christians. Do others around them in their lives know they are Christians? Not “do they wave big red Jesus signs in their office” but does the gospel influence their work ethic and the way they interact with those around them?

·        Their financial lives – UH OH! The big scary one right? Listen, this one is easy, but must be approached with grace and humility (and don’t single out an individual on this during group time). Jesus very shrewdly pointed out (Matt 6 & Luke 12) that what you do with your money is an indicator of what you value. Do the people in your group value Jesus and therefore give of their money to the local church as an expression of that? Do they enjoy it if they do? For a great recent message on this here at the Summit, click here.

Again, these are not exhaustive and can be used wrongly if not done with humility and grace. For a full treatise on these and other spiritual disciplines, check out Donald Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines. It’s a great book for small groups to work through.