The Value of Connecting Small

This sermon introduces the importance of "connecting small" (joining small groups or "Packs") as an essential part of spiritual formation. Connecting small isn't just a church program; it's a vital environment for maturing in our faith, making disciples, and fulfilling the Great Commission.

Scripture References

• Matthew 28:19-20: The Great Commission—making disciples and teaching them to obey.
• 1 Corinthians 3:1-2: Paul addressing spiritual infants who need milk, not solid food.
• Philippians 2:3-4: A call to spiritual adolescence: looking to the interests of others.
• 1 Corinthians 4:15: "You have countless instructors in Christ, but you don't have many fathers."
• James 1:2-4: The testing of faith produces endurance, leading to maturity.
• Luke 24:13-35: The Road to Emmaus, where Jesus models different learning styles (Scripture, mentoring, and an immersive meal).
• 1 John 4:7-8: "Let us love one another, because love is from God."
• Luke 10:5-6: Jesus instructs His disciples to look for a "person of peace."

Key Points

1. The Goal is Maturity Jesus didn't just save us; He called us to grow up in Him. Using James Fowler’s "Stages of Faith," we can assess our maturity:
   • Spiritual Infancy: Fully dependent on others for spiritual nourishment ("feed me").
   • Spiritual Adolescence: Taking personal responsibility for your own spiritual growth.
   • Spiritual Adulthood/Parenthood: Moving from independence to interdependence. You invest in others, walking alongside them through the testing of their faith to help them grow.
2. Connecting Small Creates a Place to Learn Sunday mornings are great, but learning theory shows we need more than just a lecture. Small groups provide:
   • Information (Lecture/Teaching)
   • Apprenticeship (Mentoring from someone further along)
   • Immersion (Catching the culture and presence of God by being in the environment) Jesus used all three on the Road to Emmaus. Small groups provide the apprenticeship and immersion that a Sunday service cannot fully offer.
3. Connecting Small Gives Us a People to Love Maturity requires love. In a small group, we hear the hopes, fears, and pains of others. Loving people stretches our capacity and creates a dependency on God ("I don't know how to help them; God, You have to come through"). Loving God fuels our love for others, and loving others deepens our reliance on God.

Conclusion

We don't connect small just to have another meeting on the calendar. We do it because we desire to grow and mature, we want a context to love people deeply, and we want to set the table for others to experience the healing and peace of Jesus.

Calls to Action

1. Assess Your Stage: Are you an infant relying on others to feed you, an adolescent taking responsibility, or a parent investing in others?
2. Join a Group: Don't settle for the "lecture" of Sunday morning. Join a small group to experience apprenticeship and immersion.
3. Look for a Person of Peace: Pay attention to the people in your life. Who is God already preparing? Take the risk and invite them into your life and community.

Transcript

Matthew 28, 19 and 20 it says, go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age. Amen. Go ahead and grab a seat.

Hey, on the, on the heels of launching this week, we're going to be starting Pax, and we thought it would be honoring just to bring value and remind us as a church community, why we connect small. And, if you've been around a while, you might know that we have eight things that we commit to do together as members.

And we believe that this is kind of the unique calling on us as a church community that we commit to doing these eight things because they form us, they have formation or power in our lives to become more like Jesus. So one of these things is connecting small and, to to bring language to it. We call them pax or small groups.

So this morning I want to talk about number one. The big idea behind why we connect small. And then I want to give three contributions that connecting small give to our lives. So that's where we're headed today. So, the first thing is I want to point out that in Matthew 28, there's a call, and this is a general call for every believer, and that is that God's given us marching orders to make disciples, that the gospel that we carry around in our life is too good for us to not give away.

Do you believe that this morning that the life of Christ, that that we have in our hearts is too good for us to keep to ourselves, but it's actually intended for us to give away? And in Matthew 28, it also says that, we've been given marching orders to do it a certain way. And it is that that we were to make disciples by teaching one another to obey what Christ taught us.

So there's this aspect of teaching to obey. There's obedience that comes with discipleship. And we're going to find out that the a key ingredient to a sanctified life, a life transformed into becoming more like Jesus, is the ingredient of maturity. That that Jesus desire to not just bring freedom to our lives and salvation. He actually desired, in Paul's terms, to grow us up into all things in Christ.

So there's no one in here that's arrived. We haven't plateaued. There's there's more for us to receive. There's more for us to there's more ground for us to take in our life with God. So I just want to point out that there's a connection between making disciples and being a disciple in maturity in Christ, and we can do both those things together.

They don't have to be divorced. Where? Well, this season I'm just being a disciple, just focusing on making disciples. And then this next season, now I'm working on my maturity. He actually desired that we pull those things together and do those things simultaneously. And we're going to find that one feeds the other, that as we grow in our life and love for God, we actually want to make disciples.

There's an intrinsic motivation through spirit. So I want to begin by just defining a term. And that is what what is maturity. And I know that we all have wrestled through that in our life and we're at different stages. But a helpful framework for that is, from James Fowler. He wrote a book called, stages of Faith, and he just creates this simple framework and he defines terms, and I just want to march through it really quick this morning and define these stages that we find ourselves.

And I want to encourage you, as we go through, see if you can identify where you're at on this continuum. And it may not be in a certain category you might be in, in between. But the reality is, is that all of us are represented here. So the first stage is spiritual infancy, that some of us might find that we are infants in our faith.

We've maybe came to faith recently, or we've walked away and God's brought you as a prodigal son or daughter back into his kingdom. And and there's a bit of a reset in your heart and you're trying to figure out, what is this life with God look like? And notice how Fowler defines this spiritual infants, they can't care for themselves necessarily.

They're fully dependent upon others for spiritual nourishment. And in Paul's terms, he said this in first Corinthians three, that, he's not able to speak to you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I give you milk, not solid food, since you're not ready for it. So Paul was saying that there's more, but maybe you're not necessarily ready for it.

You're in a place in your life with God where you're you're ready for milk because that's what you can digest and internalize and process. But Paul says there's more. And in fact, I want to give you something of substance to build your life on. Are you are you ready for that? And infants don't know what they don't know.

And in fact, they're fully dependent upon others.

So if you find yourself in that category, I just want to say that that God has more for you and that he's going to begin to turn your perspective outward. And we're going to see that through these next stages that, little children have an eyes centered worldview. Everything revolves around their needs, their timing and their wants. And oftentimes we find that in spiritual infancy, we're looking at the next message, will it feed me?

We've all heard that, right? Well, will it give me what I need? Where's the next popular book or podcast? Because I need I need things. But as we're going to see, maturity is bigger than that. And the next stage is adolescence. And a spiritual adolescence, is defined by this. You begin to personally be responsible for your own needs.

So there's this revelation of, okay, there's something for me to grab Ahold of and begin to be responsible for.

No longer am I looking to others necessarily fully for my nourishment, but God's called me to become responsible for my own growth in Christ, and I'm going to be given are required to begin to take steps towards that.

In Philippians two, Paul alludes to this when he says, do nothing out of selfish ambition or deceit, but in humility consider others more important than yourselves. Everyone should look, should not look to his own interests, but rather the interests of others. So there's this looking up from yourself and saying, what steps can I take? To pursue Christ on my own and grow up in things?

And then finally there's this third stage, and it's kind of divided into two, but it's really, kind of similar in its life stage. And that is, we arrive as adults and, Colin and I always joke that there was one moment our marriage where we were like single adults in a marriage where we could, like, stay out half the night.

And it was like, no repercussions because we could sleep in the next day, or we could, go quickly on a on a moment's notice to a weekend out or away and travel. And it would have no impact on our family because we didn't have kids. We were immobile and without, you know, responsibility. And as we hit spiritual adulthood, one of the things that we realize is that we're not alone now.

So as we're seeking to be responsible for our own spiritual life, we don't have to do it on our own. But there's relationships around us that we want to build, and it's a call to relationship. So we go from a dependent life on others responsibility. And then the reality is that God sets you in the community and he wants you to lean into it.

So we find ourselves building community around ourselves where we can be challenged, where we can get support, and we can experience resilience. So in first Corinthians four it says, for you may have countless instructors in Christ, but you don't have many fathers, many mothers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Therefore, I urge you to imitate me.

So Paul was recognizing that he had a lot of adults. But he had few fathers which take it to the next level of adulthood. And I love, the the message trans translation here it takes Paul's words and brings a little bit more texture to it. And it says this. There are a lot of people around, who can't wait to tell you what to do.

We got a lot of instructors. We got a lot of people that are observing us, and they have all kinds of feedback, right? Some good, some we just need to move on from. But the reality is, there's many people that run that, role in our life and, are that voice in our life. But then he goes on to say Eugene Peterson in The Message.

But there aren't many fathers willing to take the time and effort to help you grow. See the difference in that? So a father, a spiritual parent, is invested in growth. So we see that in this continuum, we arrive to spiritual parenthood, where God's called us to not just be responsible for our own growth, but look on how we can strengthen other people, how we can give away our life to others.

So we're out early, focused and invested in others, and the final little, feature or detail of this spiritual parenthood is this idea of our faith being tested, that we arrive in spiritual parenthood and, grow in that stage of life as we begin to live out the testing of our faith, because then we have something to share and give away.

James one it says, consider it great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance take its full effect, that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. So I love the mature and complete part, but I don't know about the various trials. But there's no shortcut.

We've got to live through that, experience it and wrestle with it and see God come through for us to form our testimony that we can give away in these later stages of life. So if we put that, just that chart up there again, I just want to ask you, where where are you at? Where do you find yourself?

What's God doing in your life to form you into growing up in Christ in full maturity? In him?

And I share this framework. Most of it's not revolutionary, but the reality is, is that we have a challenge before us as we walk out our faith that that ultimately the goal is for us to look more like Jesus. We were we were talking at dinner last night. I asked Colleen, I said, men, if you look over the last five years, and I just before I tell you the question, I just want to warn you that I don't know if it's a good question.

It could be a painful one, but I ask your. Hey, do I look more like Jesus now than several years ago? You know, we are just kind of talking about our family and life together. And and there were some things that I think she could say. Yeah, you know, I see you there. Clear. And then some other things are like, well, you know, how can I say this kindly?

There's some things that God wants to continue to refine into you. So we're a mixed bag of all kinds of things. But God wants to grow us up.

And reflect his nature. So we know what maturity is, or at least the goal in mind. But how do we get there? And I want to say that again, these eight ways that we're disciples together, they're they're all together. It's important that we do all of those things, but we have this unique ability to or responsibility to, connect small.

And I think it's a beautiful contribution to our lives. And there's three things that it actually does to our life to contribute to our maturity, our growth in Christ. And I just want to give you these three things. The first one is that connecting small contributes to our maturity by creating a place that we can learn. Yeah. And I want to say from the get go that if Sunday morning is your primary place to learn, you're missing out on more.

That's there more. That's that's, been given in an opportunity for you to participate in. We believe that Sunday is the highlight of our week, and it's valuable to be together in worship and to hear and to sense God's presence in what he's saying to us. But we also see a value in going small and deeply, learning together and, that there's there's three things that we find, and in, just learning theory that over the past several decades, our understanding of how our brains work has exploded.

And learning theory has taught us that there's like three primary ways that we learn. And the first way is, we, we learn through classroom or lecture style environments. Kind of like this. You're looking at me and I'm speaking to you. It's one directional. Sometimes.

And it can be passive, unidirectional, where information and processes and facts are, are taught from a teacher to students or a speaker to an audience. It's not necessarily on its own, fully transformational, however. It's part of the learning process. And I know that in Western education, all of us know exactly what this is. So that's that's one way.

The other way is apprenticeship that really to have deep learning take place, we need to learn a set of skills by practicing it under someone that's mastered those things that we need, someone that has already lived through that, mastered it, walked it out, that can share those things with us. And we've all experienced this in life, especially if you've tried to do a home improvement that God that went wrong.

And then you invite the right person in and they're like, oh yeah, just do this and do that, and you need to go to Lowe's one more time to pick up these supplies. And they're a master at it. They they know exactly what to do. And you're like, why didn't I call you two weeks ago? You would have saved me $200 and five trips to Lowe's.

But we need apprentices in our life that that can walk us and lead us and guide us through the formation of these things that we're learning. And, a thing about apprenticeship also is it's very incarnational, it's personal, it's very up close, it's hands on, it's active. We have a place to ask questions and get feedback. It's a two way type of learning.

And then finally, this third way of learning is immersion. It's being around an environment that's caught more than taught. And in fact, we've also experienced that as well. This morning you came in and you sensed by immersion the family that we are as a church, that we value the presence of God. And you felt the presence of God.

It's not taught necessarily. You don't even need an apprentice for that. It's caught in your spirit. And typically you're like, I want more of that. So we have these immersion experiences that are intuitive, that we pick up information and skills by spending time in an environment, they're experiential and visceral. We sense them. So we, we have information that's more lecture to us.

We have apprenticeship, but we also have a need to get around others that carry values that we need and we desire and want. And I would say that, all three of these are really needed.

Because the risk is this, that if we only get one of them, for example, like lecture or the classroom will mistake knowing about something with literally knowing someone, it doesn't quite translate. And we can fool ourselves with thinking that information is going to transform us. But it's only a little piece of of what God has for us. And and Jesus was a master at this, using these three ways of learning.

And he weaved it into his discipleship with men and women that he encountered. And I'm not going to read this whole passage of Scripture, but in Luke 24, 13 through 25 is the road to Emmaus. And it's a profound story of Jesus coming like an everyday incarnational person, not the not the the Son of God fully, but just, a person that you can relate to that, that we can connect with, that was actually almost incognito.

And he used all three of these things with two disciples that he walked with down the down the road. And it was fascinating that, the kind of the gist of the story goes like this. There were two disciples, most theologians believe that it was a couple walking from Jerusalem back home to a mess about a seven mile walk, and it was getting dusk, kind of evening or late afternoon.

And it was right after the crucifixion. And this couple were were kind of frustrated and debating and questioning one another, kind of wrestling through what they've just encountered. It didn't make sense. What just went down. Why Jesus was crucified and died. So they were walking along and and they were just talking about it. And it says that,

Jesus came up to them along the road. So he literally just kind of walked in and just kind of joined them. And he looked over and he says this. He says, what are you what are you debating about? What are you talking about? And they begin to kind of get a little sarcastic and they're like, man, where have you been?

Like, are you're the only guy in Jerusalem that doesn't know what just happened? You know? And Jesus says, what things just happened. And they begin to share with them their disappointments and frustrations and the things that they just couldn't understand. And then it says he began to open up. And share with them about Moses and all the prophets.

And he interpreted all these things that were said in the scriptures concerning himself. And they still didn't know that it was him. And they continue to walk. And as they got closer to their home, he went to walk on and they were like, hey, kid, come, come to our home and have a meal with us. We want to continue this conversation.

So he goes and has a meal with them, and it says that when they sat around the table, he took bread and he broke it and he gave thanks and their eyes were opened. Whoa. That's Jesus.

Do you see the the different styles of learning there that he appealed to when he was walking along the road? He opened up scripture to them.

He revealed things that they didn't understand. He mentored them. And then around the table, they had this immersive experience where they encountered his presence. It was familiar and it drew them in. And then he left. So why do I bring that up? I bring that up because that's really what we want to capture in our is we want to leverage these ways of learning.

Yeah. We don't want to just gain knowledge. We want to work it out in our lives, and we want to create a a community where we have some people that are ahead of us and some that are behind us, that we can give our life away to one another and, and tapped into the resource that each other is.

I mean, I'm grateful that we're beginning to develop, my pack in particular. We're beginning to try to work on having a multi-generational pack where there's some different ages represented around the table. Because we can learn from one another. And that's a that's a beautiful thing.

And I would say this as well, that, we need all three of these styles of learning because, we can't capture it just in one segment.

Packs contribute to that. And Philippians three, it says, my goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection. So, man, I pray that our church wouldn't be, a people that would be satisfied with just knowledge and information, but that we'd push forward into relationship and be immersed into a culture that the gods uniquely given us as a church family.

The second way that parks contribute to us is, it gives us a people to love, a people to love. It's like a community within a community. Parks create time for hearing about people's hopes and dreams and fears and pains and joys and all the in-between. We get to know one another's lives in a way that we can identify ways to love one another.

And I bring that up because I think this is probably one of the most important things, because love is formative to our maturity. In fact, we can't mature without it. Yes. And we find that that loving others and loving God are connected. When we do one, the other increases in her life and feeds the other. So as we love others, our love for Jesus, our dependency upon him increases.

I mean, I know many of us have loved people to the point of being over our skis in it and and realizing that, man, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help this person. I don't have the answers. It's bigger than I. I feel like I am. What do I do? It creates this dependency on God.

God, you got to come through. And then, by loving Jesus, that fuels our ability, our capacity to to love others, that we actually can't love others until we really tap into the love of God, it feeds one another.

So I would submit this, that if if you're having a hard time loving others, maybe the starting point is, is turning your gaze to Jesus. And spending time with him. And quickly capturing what's on his heart. And I guarantee you it'll be utterly oriented for sure. First, John four seven and eight says, dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of him and knows him.

So our love from God feeds our ability to love one another, and we want to set the stage for that. In connecting small that there's going to be many opportunities for us to work that out, and it's for our own benefit in maturity. And then finally, perhaps, our, our, formative for our maturity because they give us the opportunity, for invitation.

That we're not satisfied with it looking the same over and over and over again. But we want to open it up and open our lives up to more and be an invitation of people. And I know that sometimes it's scary thinking about invitation because you run the risk of being rejected and no one wants to be rejected, or you run the risk of of extending your life and then realizing that that person wants nothing to do with it, and you've invested some time and energy into it.

But I just want to encourage us to remember that that God's at work even when we're not expecting it. And he's moving. And men and women's hearts, even when we can't see it on the outside. The god's active. He's working and forming our hearts.

But he requires someone to offer the invitation. In Luke ten, we find that Jesus kind of modeled this approach of invitation. And there were disciples that he gathered in a passage of, of Luke chapter ten. He refers to the 72 disciples that he sent out before he went out. And he says this kind of interesting, it's like a, an instruction that he gives to them that are kind of it's kind of strange.

It's not really the language or, or even, like a term that we would use, but it has some significant, connection to invitation. And he said this in, in verses five and six of Luke ten, whatever house you enter, first say peace to this house. Or if a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on him, but if not, it will return to you.

If a people of peace is there. So Jesus instructions sitting out the 72 is enter homes and look for a people of peace.

Now, no. What's a person of peace or a people of peace? Mike Breen, in his book Building a Discipling Culture, said this that a person of peace is one who is prepared to hear the message of the kingdom and the King, and ready to receive what God will give. So a people of peace is often a condition on the inside.

It's not something that's evident on the outside. So just by measuring someone up doesn't necessarily give you the clear picture of what's going on inside.

And a people of peace means a prepared people internally to receive what God has for them. So what Jesus was saying is you first of all, you have to enter a house. You can't stay outside of it, so you have to enter into a relationship, and then you have to risk that I'm already at work. And by the way, if they reject you, that's okay.

Exit the house and move on. But the reality is, is that we have to engage and we have to move towards someone. And we have to, by faith, believe that God is continuing to work and we're just partnering with what he's already doing.

So my my question to you is, could there be people in your life that are people of peace, that God's already been at work in, and God's uniquely positioned you in a place where you can begin to invite them in. Invite them in to a place where they can learn about the Kingdom of God, and experience it through those that have walked with God over time.

And be immersed in a culture of of value and who we are. Are you willing to to risk an invitation?

And living again in a way that's invitational, is scary and inconvenient, but anything that's a value requires some sacrifice, some risk. An offering that that costs us something. So you never know, as Mike Greene put it, that the person next to you is already responding to what God's doing.

And I want to invite the worship team up, and I want to end by, just appealing to just this cultural moment that we're in. I think that we're uniquely positioned to be aware of people of peace because we bear God's peace in our lives. So I bring this up because, I lived through all three of these things.

So it's kind of interesting. I have memories of of these things actually happening in my own life, and I'm encountering what's happening today as well. So, back in the 80s and 90s, one of the ways or probably the substantial way that the church was ministering to people and calling them into community is by an apologetic approach.

Giving an intellectual defense for the gospel, answering the question that Christianity is true. So all kinds of apologetic books like Josh McDaniels evidence demands a verdict. Anybody? Yeah. A few of you did. You're all right here. A lot of a lot of apologists over the years. And they appeal to this idea that there's evidence, actually, that what Jesus did, the kingdom he brought is true.

It's not fictitious. And it stands tests with other world perspectives. So the question was, Is Christianity true? The twin, the 2020 tens, as you guys know, 20 oh or 2001 was like the wake up call that the world was bigger, and it didn't share the worldview that we had in the West with 911 and we began to ask a different question, like, what?

What's the meaning of life? Is there meaning what does this all mean? So in response to that, Rick Warren wrote a book called The Purpose Driven Life. Yeah. Where people read it and came to faith without even encountering a community. God really use that book incredibly, but he was answering a fundamentally different question. He was answering the idea of meaning is there.

Is there meaning? And then finally, we find ourselves now answering a third question. That third question is, is healing possible and chaos? The brokenness that we experience around us. The headline feeds through our social media all around the world. Things are going wrong and chaos is ensuing. Is there is there a source of hope and healing? Is there peace that's possible.

So the question they're asking our culture is asking even maybe some of us are asking is, is peace and reconciliation? I mean, is that is that a real thing? And I just want to say that that's that's a prime set up for people of peace, that people are going to come and experience the life of Christ in you and go, man, I want more of that, because that's not what I'm seeing and hearing.

And experiencing in the world. There's something different about you. And there's going to be an invitation that we have to be bold and courageous and willing to take a risk for trusting that God is at work. So why? Why do we connect small? Because we desire to grow and learn and mature our faith through that we we want to be a people that love well.

And it's a it's a simple avenue of bringing love close. And we also want to set the table and bring in others. We want to be invitational because we know that that ultimately stretches us and grows us in maturity.