LeaderLines: Six Questions for Your Small Group

Many of the leaders who receive this e-newsletter lead a Sunday School class or a Common Ground group. I want to share six questions that you and your group can use to evaluate whether your group is a “beachhead” or a “bunker.”

You’ve heard me use these phrases before. A bunker is a defensive position while a beachhead is a position from which soldiers can take the offensive.

Some Christians prefer life in the bunker, hiding away from what they perceive as the overwhelming forces of unbelief in their culture. But faithful believers know they are called to influence, to persuade, to win hearts and minds. They know their own lives are to be kingdom beachheads in God’s gracious invasion of a fallen world.

Another word for the beachhead mentality is “missional.” It simply means to live with the keen awareness that you are supposed to be participating in God’s redemptive mission.

The following questions are adapted from an article by one of my favorite church leaders, Tim Keller. Take a moment to review them yourself, and try to build in some time in your next small-group meeting to help others reflect on them:

• Do your group’s members love and talk positively about the city and neighborhood? Ask your group to name ten things they love about Austin. Can they get to ten?

• Do they avoid language that is filled with pious tribal or technical religious terms and phrases? Do they use disdainful and embattled language when speaking of the surrounding culture?

• In their Bible study, do they apply the gospel to the core concerns and stories of the people of the culture?

• Are they interested in and engaged with the literature and art and music and thought of the surrounding culture and can they discuss it both appreciatively and yet critically?

• Do they exhibit deep concern for the poor and are they generous with their money? Do they approach the opposite sex with purity and respect? Do they show humility toward people of other races and cultures?

• Do they speak respectfully of other Christians and churches?

Keller says that if our church’s small groups bear these characteristics, “then seekers and non-believing people from the city (A) will be invited and (B) will come and will stay as they explore spiritual issues. If these marks are not there it will only be able to include believers or traditional, ‘Christianized’ people.”

Convicting stuff! So, how does your small group measure up? Is your group a beachhead for God’s gracious invasion of our neighborhoods, or is your group a bunker?

Tom

HT: Tim Chester

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Each Thursday I post my article from "LeaderLines," an e-newsletter for church leaders read by more than 300 subscribers. If you want to subscribe to "LeaderLines," sign up here.