RNLI Small Group Church

The Vision of William Booth

Our thoughts for what has become a way forward for our Small Groups began with us looking again at the vision given to William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army. It was powerful enough to send him off with a passion and drive to bring about a major missionary movement at the end of the Victorian era. It speaks of the need to join with Jesus in rescuing the drowning and of the problem of churches that didn’t seem to care. It spoke to us in similar ways.

This sparked our own desire to ensure Mission stays at the front of all we do and it led to our interpreting church with an analogy based on the UK based seagoing lifesaving organisation – the RNLI.

RNLI Small Group Church

The RNLI has headquarters in Poole, Dorset. There they help with fundraising, carry out training, encourage life saving teams, and provide the resources to enable life saving to happen around the shores of the UK, through well trained volunteer teams. But the HQ doesn’t directly save anyone. It enables teams to do the saving, based locally where people often get into trouble. The teams form to suit their local need.

They might be a beach based small team with surfboards and floats.

Or they might be a slightly larger group who operate the semi-rigid inshore lifeboats.

And then there are the much larger teams who man the deep sea lifeboats.

We give each of our Small Groups full permission to explore how they will meet the needs in their situation.

Paul and his letters

As we looked closer at the analogy, we realised Paul wrote to churches in his letters – not individuals, apart from the Pastoral letters to Timothy. All those instructions and exhortations to worship, have fellowship, grow as a disciple be involved in ministry to the church family and reach out in mission were written to groups. He expected all those things to happen amongst groups. Our large Sunday Church models are too big for almost all of the things he called for us to be involved in. Small Groups are needed

The RNLI analogy continued

Therefore, we reasoned that the Small Group needs to become more like the biblical church – effective in all the areas of life Paul spoke into – but together as a group.

So we used RNLI as an acrostic to help us remember what we need to be involved with

R escuing

It begins with the thing most easily put aside which is arguably the most important. The whole analogy is based on saving lives. This is outreach in a way that suits each group. It will begin with discovering the sort of social things they like to do – then invite friends to join them – as a group. Eventually, we rely on the prompting of the Holy Spirit on what to say when. The time for that part of the process is not in our own hands, we just provide suitable environments, the rest is God’s domain with the individual.

N urturing

We want to ensure part of the Small Group’s year is spent growing as disciples of Jesus. We want everyone in each group to become more like him.

L oving

We need to keep the great commandments together. Finding ways appropriate to our groups to show God we love Him and ways we can minister to each other and serve the family of God.

I ncluding

Fellowship is crucial for the lives of our groups and our church. Groups need to be open to each other in confidence, but also learn to live with the tension of being open to new people joining them. In time, groups will grow to a size when they may need to form a new offshoot with their same DNA, who will start to explore again the values around which they will reform anew.

Keeping on with the Vision

There is a story told of an Eastern seaboard life-saving station that turned from its primary mission to become an inwardly focused club. We don’t want this to happen in St Jude’s…

More?

Want to know more about our Small Groups as they evolve? Please just ask or look at our Small Group Portal where we’re putting details of the groups as they become live and open. This is new to St Jude’s from the Spring of 2010 and we look forward to watching what happens for Jesus and His Kingdom as we try to change.

The teaching series talks that gave the theological background, and the handouts that went with them, as well as the start up materials for the Small Groups can be found here to listen to or download.