MOBILE, Ala. ( WKRG ) — Faith Time is our weekly conversation on matters of faith. Joining us this morning is David Cagle with Downtown Church. We want to talk about the concept of small groups. What are they?
Guest: Yes, small groups are smaller context of community in the body of Christ. We obviously have the corporate settings, but also smaller settings. So the church is often focused on that large communal service, corporate gatherings. Where do we see that? In the Bible? Yeah. So there are several references in the Old Testament. God instructs his people to guard one day of every week, which was the Sabbath, and they would gather together corporately make much of him. We see that carry over into the New Testament with Christ followers. And then even in Hebrews, we read where we are instructed not to neglect those corporate gatherings.
Anchor: So how do these experiences in these small groups help us experience community on a deeper level?
Guest: Yeah. So there’s tremendous value in the corporate gathering of God’s people, but that’s not the only level of community that we see. So in the scriptures, we see that there are 59 one another text in the New Testament where we learn about how to experience that deeper level of community. For instance, the Bible says to encourage one another. And if we’re only attending worship services on Sundays and we’re experiencing that encouragement in a quick conversation, that’s limited. But if we get into those smaller pockets of community, we experience a much deeper level of encouragement.