Sharing Our Faith Story in Small Groups
Hebrews 10:25
One of the reasons that we, who have been a part of a mainline Christian church for many years, have trouble being able to articulate and talk about our faith experience and what God is doing in our lives is because we don’t create places where people are able to share their experiences. Obviously in a church this size not everyone can be given time to share their faith journey during a worship service. That just wouldn’t work primarily because there just would not be enough time.
For many years a lot of Christians thought that the only involvement in the church that was necessary was to attend worship. Since worship is not a good place to share our stories we began to forget our stories. It isn’t that we don’t have faith stories. It isn’t that God is not working in our lives on a daily basis. It is that we have forgotten how to take those experiences and articulate them in words and share them with others.
We need to find a place where we can practice the telling of our faith stories. We need a group of people who will be patient and kind as they listen to our stories and we re-acquire the ability to share with others what Jesus has done and is doing in our lives. The organization of Alcoholics Anonymous has discovered that when people gather in smaller groups it is much easier for them to learn and to take the risk to share about themselves as well as about what is going on in their lives. When we gather in small groups such as in a Bible study, a share group, or a book study. Then we are in a setting where we can share about our journey and share about our faith experiences. In this kind of setting we can re-claim our faith story and become comfortable in sharing that story with others.
