Session 3: Being His People (1/4)

So yesterday we walked through where God is with us today, and hopefully many of you joined me on that journey; that many of you encountered Him, were affirmed by Him, were touched by Him. This morning I want us to deal with the question of, well, what now? This weekend was great, but where do I go from here?

“What now?” isn't just a question about this retreat time, or even your time at CCF. Some of you might be graduating, in 4 months time you might be in a different town, for school, for home, for work. You're thinking about how much you've grown in your walk with God these past years and wondering, well how am I going to keep that going when I no longer have this wonderful community around?

Others of you would've noticed that CCF has no staff workers that will hold you by the hand and feed you, so when you become seniors and end up being the ones being looked up to, how do you grow? We're not called just to be disciples, but also to be disciple makers, so how do we help others walk with God when we often times feel so inadequate?

Me and the bunch of us alumni wrestled with these questions a few years ago, and it was out of that struggle that we discovered discipleship groups, that it is actually a tremendously powerful thing to gather with a few brothers, or a few sisters, and walk, grow and encounter God intimately together. That we didn't need someone with a seminary degree, or get a well-published curriculum to grow, heck the first people to do this were noted to be uneducated fishermen and the outcasts of the Jewish community.

I know CCF already has DGs, and from what I hear that things are going pretty good. But what I realized being here last semester is that no one has laid out to everyone what DGs actually are. So what I want to do this morning is talk what a DG is and does, bring together into one message what doing life together is all about. I hope that this encourages and empowers those of you who want to grow to come together and go after it together this next semester and onward, because DGs, and growing for that matter, really isn't rocket science.

In Acts 2 we saw the lives of people who repented, believed, got baptised, received the Holy Spirit, and began this life filled with awe and wonder with God. In that passage we will find the roots of walking with God together as family, the roots of biblical community:

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47)

I know that most of you are probably half asleep, so I've really shortened this message, which is the one I normally do at the DG workshop at Campus Challenge. This term I'm hoping to run a couple DG leaders training session and share the whole thing with you, but here are the 5 root values of a DG, in increasing order of difficulty: