A new year... a new focus... a new style for small groups at Washington Street

For more than thirteen years Washington Street has enjoyed the blessings of small group ministry.  Our Share Groups, as they were originally conceived, have helped us build community and increase fellowship within the church family.  On so many occasions our small groups have assured that folks were taken care of when there was a need or encouraged others in the community through outreach.  I brag all the time about how my small group has encouraged me and helped me through difficult times.

I am excited about the possibilities that this new year and our new focus for the year holds for us!  Our leadership is encouraging us to look for ways to grow spiritually for Him all throughout the year.  To that end, our preaching, our Bible classes, our youth and children’s ministries are all implementing different ways to encourage this kind of growth among us.  I believe our Sunday nights are a great opportunity for us to spur on these efforts and our small groups to be great places for this kind of growth to occur! 

To that end, beginning in February (as our January BREAKOUT month concludes) we will be transitioning into a new Sunday evening ministry that we are re-naming Spiritual Life Groups to help and highlight this new focus.  Once again most of these groups will meet on Sunday afternoon or evening and will be small groups of 12-15 individuals who will meet together for prayer, Bible study, fellowship and sharing life together.  Once again they will be great opportunities to invite friends and visitors to.  This year, however, we want to create a greater sense of community among all of our groups and include to a greater degree those who do not wish to be a part of a small group.  We will do this by asking every group to meet together for a brief period of devotion prior to breaking out into small groups, which will meet primarily in rooms throughout the building.  Our elders have asked us to take this approach to better accommodate visitors and to increase fellowship among our members.  Our goal is to have a greater number of small groups to choose from which would be smaller in size (12-15).  Also, instead of groups discussing the morning’s lesson (or preachin’), groups will study through different spiritual practices with new discussion guides written by our ministry staff.  This will give us all a new and unique experience on Sunday nights that will be quite different from Sunday morning’s lessons yet will still contribute to the overall theme. 

After our groups ‘breakout’ into their Spiritual Life Groups, I will continue to lead a session in the auditorium (for those preferring the style of a class instead of small group) that will still be based on that day’s topic.  Please join me in praying for the growth of this new ministry as we continue to look for ways to challenge one another spiritually towards greater maturity in Christ!  A very important (but short) meeting of all small group leaders will be this Sunday evening, Jan. 15, at 6pm.

—Jim