Our Growth Groups are such an encouragement to many at St Mary’s. We have a number of groups that meet in the evenings, and also some daytime groups. In September the evening Growth Groups will be reorganising. This will be a good time for new people to get involved, so I’m writing to explain why Growth Groups are great to be part of, and why they are reorganising.
Why Growth Groups?
Growth Groups are a brilliant setting to do many of the things the Bible calls us to do for each other as Christians. In our groups we can ‘love one another’ (John 13:34), ‘carry each other’s burdens’ (Gal. 6:2) and pray for each other. We can also ‘teach’ and ‘encourage’ each other from God’s word (Col. 3:16, 1 Thess. 5:11) and grow together in our knowledge and love of the Lord.
Our evening Growth Groups are organised within congregations and mostly meet in someone’s home. They tend to have between eight and fourteen members and they meet for ninety minutes to two hours each week, except for the weeks when we gather together at church for our monthly St Mary’s Evening.
If you are not part of a Growth Group at present do speak to your congregation leader or someone who is in a group, and look out for information coming soon about joining a group from September onwards. No experience is needed and it’s fine to try a group and see how you find it.
Why Growth Group reorganisation?
Every four years we reorganise the evening Growth Groups and that is happening this September (the daytime groups are organised separately). As we reorganise the groups we hope that new people will get involved. And we hope that those who are in a group at the moment will find themselves in a new group with some old friends they have been with before and some new friends to get to know.
Later in May we will produce a leaflet explaining how to join a Growth Group from September. Whether you are currently in a group or not, please fill in this leaflet and return it to us. You will be able to specify which evenings of the week you can and cannot manage and any other requests, for example one or two people you’d especially like to be with. The Congregation Leaders will then use this information to put the new Growth Groups together. We will let everyone know which group they are in well before the new groups start in September.
St Mary’s and many other churches choose to reorganise Growth Groups after a number of years for a number of reasons. The main one is that it gives us the joy of getting to know and love new people in the body of Christ. It is also an ideal time for people to join groups. On previous occasions when the Growth Groups have been reorganised it has been wonderful to see an increase in the number of people in groups. The reorganising also serves to strengthen the bonds of fellowship in our congregations as we all share our lives with a new group of people.
Please do speak to or email your Congregation Leader if you have any questions or concerns about the Growth Group reorganisation. We will be delighted to put our heads together on how this can work well for each group and individual.
I write this with great thankfulness to God for all he is doing in our Growth Groups, and excitement about what the future holds as we seek to grow the number of people involved in our groups and the bonds of fellowship within our congregations for the glory of his name.
Ian Miller