When I first moved to Las Vegas, my husband and I looked for a new church to join. We wanted to stay fairly close to home (believe it or not, Las Vegas is HUGE!), so we first looked in the phone book to find churches close by.
We set out one Sunday to drive by three local churches, just to see what we thought. The first church was SO small, we had a hard time even finding it. We decided against something so small. The second church was a nice size, but there wasn’t a white person to be found. We felt a little intimidated and out of our rhelm. The third church was HUGE, bigger than any we’d been in before. We weren’t sure how that would feel–would we be lost? Sort of like Goldilocks, but actually NONE of them seemed to fit!
Well, we gave the BIG church a try the next Sunday. Yes, it was huge. But we certainly felt at home with greeters welcoming us, etc. And once the worship began, and then the sermon, we knew this was the place for us. Except for the fact that it was about 6 times the size of our church in our old town, it felt just like home. The same music, same style, etc. So we decided to stay and have been there ever since.
We found it true, however, that you could feel overwhelmed in such a big church. And there were so many people. How do you get to know people?
Well, this church had an answer, and a very good one, I might say. They strongly urged their members to get into a small group. They had groups for everything you could think of. Quilting groups, men’s groups, a fold-the-bulletin-inserts group, all the “anonymous” groups, a finance group, etc. The interested things was that even the fold-the-bulletin-inserts group was a ministry in itself. You don’t just go to fold, you also go to share together, pray together, encourage each other and care for each other.
We quickly got into a small group ourselves. It was newly formed, based on the DNA of Relationships, and guess who got to lead??? (Not a task we were looking for!) We started with 4 couples and have been going strong ever since. We meet once a week. We decide what we’re going to study (a group collaboration). We pray, we pass around and share prayer requests which are taken home to be prayed over during the week. We talk about things going on in our lives. We lend an ear and sometimes advice. We call to check on each other during the week. We’ve nurtured a close bond among our members. And it’s through those members that we’ve met others and joined in on other things (volunteer opportunities at the church are abundant.)
Now when we walk into the main hall for our Sunday service, we see and greet familiar faces. We know we are cared about and prayed for. We’ve become part of the church family yet we don’t feel overwhelmed because we still have our small group.
If you’re going to a big church or, really, even a small one, I highly recommend getting into or starting a small group. There’s nothing like it.
