More tea?

Last week there was a brief conflict in my mouth. A molar, which had been minding its own business, suddenly took offence to a piece of rock-hard dried fruit in my breakfast cereal. The breakfast cereal won, noisily, and my molar was suddenly two thirds of a molar. A trip to my dentist for a filling proved totally painless, mainly because of the humongous injection that I was given, which numbed one side of my mouth for many hours, which happened to include a one to one with the Bishop of Bristol. Drinking tea proved a bit of a challenge and  I now realise that when I do drink tea I tend to use both sides of my mouth, as the resulting Niagara down my clerical shirt proved.

Anyway, as the preacher would now say, ‘God’s a lot like that.’ Well of course He isn’t, He isn’t remotely like that, but what is a tiny bit like that is Christian discipleship—you need both sides to make it work properly. The two sides in question are the small group and the big group.

Big group—the congregation, the celebration, the service, the gathering (ekklesia in Greek); where we come together and worship and pray and encourage one another and are inspired by speakers and break bread and share wine. Big Group Church has occupied Sundays for two millennia and right now you might well be sitting in it. Small Group Church is that vital other side of the jaw, without which the nutritional and refreshing value of Sunday can simply dribble out. There our communion becomes more intimate, our learning gets earthed in the reality of our lives and thinking, and our pastoral care of each other (aka Love) goes deeper. I need both; so do you. Join one, and join us next Sunday, Bible Sunday, at 10.30am and 4pm, when our guest preacher, Revd Tim Hastie-Smith, Chief Executive of Scripture Union, will be with us, to highlight the need for us to gather in small groups around the Bible together, and to be pastored by our brothers and sisters. At both services we will also be commissioning our growing team of small group pastors— who will pastor over 150 people in the coming year.