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Community Groups
What is a community group? Well, it's pretty much what the name suggests: a small group of individuals who meet, face to face, on a regular basis, for the purpose of building relationships with one another, encouraging one another, teaching one another, praying for and with one another, and even, at times, rebuking one another in love. In short, it is a subset, a smaller "group" from within the larger "group" that is the congregation of the local church. Ideally, that is what we want South Baton Rouge Presbyterian Church to be - a community of communities.
Why are community groups important? Because this is what we were created for. It is hard-wired into the system. Think about it. One of the most fundamental realities in creation is community - God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit - three persons, existing together for all eternity in perfect community. As a result, when God created man and woman in his image, he created them to be in community, in relationship with one another. That is a fundamental way in which we "image" God. And if such a thing was good and right and necessary before the Fall into sin, it is even more important and necessary since then. Thus, the New Testament sees the community of God's people as a vitally important reality. Belonging to a community of God's people, building real relationships with one another is part of what God uses to make us more like his son Jesus, it is how he grows us up into maturity in Christ.
But if our only connection with one another is for 90 minutes on Sunday mornings, then those things will never happen. The only kind of community that will see lives changed and sin addressed and griefs comforted and hopes restored is the kind where we are involved in one another's lives, where we spend time together, where we pray and study God's word together, where we fellowship together, where we serve one another, where we laugh together, where we cry together, where we speak the truth in love, where we confess our sins to one another, where forgiveness is sought, and forgiveness is granted. In short, real biblical community requires getting all tangled up in each other, in all the joys and frustrations and the beauty and ugliness of life.
At South Baton Rouge, one of the ways that we want to assist and encourage this sort of community to "happen" is through forming Community Groups. Some of these groups meet on weeknights and are mixed. Some of them meet on weekdays, in the mornings and afternoons, and are for men or women in particular, some of them meet on weekends and are for whole families. Our hope, as God grows our church, is that we will be able to offer a number of different options in terms of time and place and composition of groups so that everyone who is part of SBRPC will be able to get plugged into a community group.
If you would like to find out more about community groups at South Baton Rouge, please contact our church office for information on which groups are currently meeting.
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