Our GROW Ministries are what we do to edify and disciple one another so that we might grow in love and knowledge as we live out our faith in Jesus.
'And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ' (Phil 1:9-10)
Key is that we know the importance of being prayerfully dependent on God in all things and that we respond by serving him in many and various ways. There are no passengers in a growing church family.
Some Key Priorities looking forward are ...
Family units are one of the most effective places for mission and ministry to be taught, caught, modeled, and mastered. We need to put our minds towards helping family units to disciple and minister together, not always dividing them by age, but encouraging families to serve together.
We have seen this happen with annual events like Holiday Club and Christmas Lights. Families who serve together, grow together.
How can we make this happen regularly?
We already have a reasonably good culture of Growth Group membership with groups meeting each week in various locations and times - for adults, youth and kids. We know it is in our smaller group settings where the most BIble discussion, prayer and pastoral Care can be given, unless the group becomes too large. Our new reality is we need far more groups than we currently have - both to care for our current members and to have groups to add new members. To accommodate our projected growth across the parish, we need to double our present number of Growth Groups. This of course will require more leaders. And for this to happen we need groups willing divide and multiple.
Whilst this can be hard as it changes relationships, it does mean that we carry forward a gospel-minded culture, which has been such an important and good part of our existing Growth Groups, into new Grwoth Groups. These are good growing pains, which cause us to look back with thankfulness.
Is this a discussion you need to have within your Growth Group?
If families are, as mentioned above, a key missional and ministry unit, then we need to work hard at strengthening our family units to help each person grow and thrive in Christ. We know that singles, couples, families, single again - can all look very different yet all come together as the LMAP Church Family.
This may include running some training events in these spaces - Single-Minded Conferences, MarriageWORKS, ParentWORKS and more. But to do this well, we need a few people to champion this effort and take a key role in making such training events happen.
Could this be you? Could it be you and a friend or two? Could it be your Growth Group?