Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Prayer and smallgroups

Last week Josh and I chewed over some of Col Marshall's ideas for prayer in small groups from his book 'Growth Groups' (which is a great book, btw). Here are some things we either liked, or came up with ourselves...


  • Beyond the Minimum. Often prayer in a small group setting is little more than a quick note of thanks. Quick notes of thanks are good. But we can do more…
  • Warriors / Wimps. Small groups are a great training ground for prayer, whether we utilise it or not. Col Marshall talks about training people to be prayer warriors or prayer wimps.
  • Spontaneous, but when? When would you do spontaneous prayer in a small group setting? Perhaps when you've been discussing something heavy, and want to both honour the weightiness of the conversation *and* move things along to new territory. Pray there and then. Then move on.
  • Focus. Work at setting the focus of prayer on God's kingdom, word, mission. Watch the balance of your prayers… is it all about your personal growth in godliness?
  • Keep it Normal: normal voice, normal posture, simple, short.
  • Partnerships. Find ways to encourage people to pray with one another outside the group, too. Prayer partnerships don't have to be just a 'while we're at smallgroup' thing.

Monday, March 4, 2013

Deftly Moving to Jesus-talk

The other week at smallgroup we talked about John Dickson's Q&A appearance, specifically, his deft movement from talk about creation to talk about Jesus.

Often the whole science/creation/cosmology discussion comes up. It's not like we haven't thought about it, not like we haven't got some kind of opinion on it. But how to actually connect that conversation with talk of Jesus--the core of our faith? That's a tough one.

Dickson's example seems a good one to follow. He spoke (if I may risk a summary) of the order, beauty, etc. of the world around us and suggested that observing the world leaves him with a sense that there's a Designer/Creator. (Now the important bit). Then he asked whether we've seen evidence that such a Creator has touched the earth in some tangible way. For him, the person of Jesus (life, teaching, miracles, death, resurrection) is just such.

I agree