Oh Lord!

On Sunday our small group ministry team met to talk about small group  ministry. A couple of items stuck in my mind:

Someone prayed that those "who led" would be blessed...I would have thought that Christians don't 'lead' they 'serve'.

Then we discussed how the small groups might do (a) service, and (b) outreach. Well I'm glad 'service' got a look in, but still not happy: it was 'service' in terms of the Baptist deficit view of relationships, as though the gospel can only make sense, or we can only have a mission to those who are in serviceable need.

One reason for this is that we don't have a culture of reasonable, rational Christian faith, we are lurching to a paganised faith of 'leaps', I fear.

Discipleship should start not with the hit and miss of a small group, but with education in Christian faith, and that should start in Sunday School, properly teaching children about the Bible, the creeds, Christian history and what and why we believe, so that they can reason from their faith to its outworking in all sorts of contexts.