Shaping Small Groups

Notice the double (or even triple!) entendre of the post title? As we shape Southside small groups we expect that God will use them in our lives to shape us to be more fruitful disciples  and we see the LifeShapes to be the tools of all of this formation.

The Triangle: Deepening our relationships with God, one another and those whom we seek to invite to know the reality of God's future arriving in their lives is one of our discipleship values. Striking the balance in these 3 directions is very important. At any point in the life of a small group we should be able to describe the way that the group is active in the "up," "in" and "out." When 1 of these is missing the group is not healthy. You can probably remember being in a small group at some point that had a focus on 2 of the 3 (actually any 2) and how that group was dysfunctional to some degree. So in shaping Southside Circles we must remember the triangle. Up: we will see the Circles as a setting in which we pay attention to what we are learning in God's Word and worship as their curriculum uses (predominantly) the circle to take us from kairos to kairos. In: The New Testament is full of "one another" instruction. We are a community of faith and the Circles can be places where we encourage one another and disciple one another as  we all sharpen the tools of LifeShapes. Hence the "in" angle collects all 8 shapes in its learning circle. Out: Perhaps this has been the angle most neglected in small groups. And yet the most dynamic relationships in groups and teams are usually formed when there is a common cause or task or project. Think about sports teams, short term mission teams. A packed full word about this is "communitas." It'll take another post dedicated to this to do it justice, so stay "posted." But often mission needs more manpower (personpower?) than 1 small group can muster. So clustering groups together can make sense. And "out", as well as "in" and "up" but more poignantly, needs the Spirit given orientation and abilities of the 5-fold APEPT preparation. So the pentagon LifeShape is clustered in 5s (5 joined Circles.)