Community Groups
Finding your place in a community can be tricky.
Community Groups are the best way we have for you to truly feel you belong!
What’s a Community Group?
CGs are a mini-community within the church where you can truly belong.
Lots of good things happen in Community Groups, but the main idea is simple: creating the relationships that make church more than a Sunday meeting.
Some meet on Wednesdays, some on Thursdays.
All of them a pretty small (five or six households).
There’s room for you :-)
Community Groups prioritise five simple habits of GRACE
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Friendship and belonging can’t happen via Whatsapp or sending good vibes! We have to be together. We prioritise getting in a room together, usually in a home in Shenley.
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Anything else good in our groups flows from the primary aim - to build relationships of substance and strength. It’s not wasted time if it’s building relationship.
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We ask questions of each other, each taking responsibility for the “one-anothering” life of the group! We check in on past conversations. We long to know each other more.
And we ask our needs of God in prayer. Groups are the main space where those personal prayer needs can be lifted up to God among supportive friends.
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Jesus left a simple meal as a key habit of his followers - bread and wine (we tend to use squash so no-one need be excluded, whatever their alcohol relationship).
Communion seems pointless, but Jesus told us this was a key way we remember Him together. This is one aspect of our gatherings we reserve only for those who want Jesus at the centre of their lives - it’s for ANYONE who wants to follow Jesus, but it’s not for EVERYONE. Only those who trust Jesus and want to follow him.
That belief shapes why we don’t do it on Sunday mornings right now. We have such a mixed group gathering that we have chosen to prioritise it in the smaller setting of Community Groups. -
The gathering isn’t the whole story! The rest of our week, we love to check in, visit, support, wave on the school run, and more! The gathering is the starting point for genuine relationships that spill into our whole lives. That’s what family means!