Today I was trying to dig myself out if the backlog of podcasts I have to produce for Pastor Shane. The last one i uploaded was about small groups. Over the last several weeks I have been struck by how we have been doing it wrong for so long.

We have a small group that has been meeting for several weeks now. I am amazed at how i can see God working through each of the different members of that group. Even more amazing is how much more efficiently we can care for each other and each others needs. I am also see how quickly we can move to get things done. Its not a big production, it dosent take a committee meeting to form a recomendation to pass to another committee who can then bring it to a vote. We see something that needs to be done, we can make a plan, then we can do it. A small team of carefully trained members can be far more efficient than an unwieldy buarcracy. Look at the SEALs and other eleit military groups, Small highly trained groups.

When Christ was on earth he called 12 men to be his community. It was a diverse group. 12 men from 12 different walks of life. 12 different perspectives. 12 different skillsets. 12 different talent bases. 12 different stories. Under other circumstances, im sure that their differances could be a wedge to divide them. But with the common purpose of Christ's calling, their diversity made them more powerful.

The Church is called the body of Christ. I think of how our body is made up. It IS a whole unit that works togather. But it is made up of small groups of parts that work togather. Each Group is most efficient at what it does best. One could use their hands to grind up food, but its far easier to let the teath do what God designed them for.

The hand is not attached directly to the foot, but they both need each other to serve the needs of each other. If you break it down even farther, one can see some intresting things. Your hand is efficent because each of its individual parts serve a spacific puropse. How different would it be if we had one less bone or one less joint in our fingers? We are designed to work with each member of the small group serving their own spacific propose. Its also easier to take help other parts of the small group from within the small group. Like when you hurt a finger, you dont tape it to your leg, you tape it to another finger, to help lighten the load.

Along those same lines, Your legs and your hands both have a joint in them. But your knuckle and your knee are not interchangeable. They have the same function, but not the same purpose.

So all of this rambling has brought me to this conclusion. I think that God has small group, a community, for each member of his body. He gave each person talents, and intrests that will server that community, and enable them to be more efficient. We need to pray that those who do not know where God is calling them to be will let God place them where he wants them.