At Church a few weeks ago Matt was attempting to introduce his plans to refresh the idea of cells in our church. For many, cells haven’t really become all that they wanted them to be and as such several new initiatives have started, by way of experiment, to see if we can scratch the midweek meting itch.
I’ve talked about a couple of them already on this site; Beer & Bible and The Exodus Study both came about because of a perceived need to find more than what we were finding in a cell group.
There are many reasons why cells, sadly, haven’t achieved all we hoped (which I think is a discussion for another time) however the upside is that we now have the room to try some new things.
Essentially what was being described was a discipleship group. Discipleship is one of those Christian words that seems to mean different things to different people. As such the suggestion didn’t offer much interest for me. After all, I’m sure many of us can remember re branding efforts of midweek groups before which amount to little more than a change of name. Bible studies become home groups. Home groups become cell groups. Cell groups become care groups (etc etc).
There was one, almost throwaway line, towards the end of the preach that did offer some hope that this was more than just a re branding.
Jesus spent three years with his disciples showing and teaching them what living the life is all about, and yet we expect to learn all there is to know is a six week course.
It’s a slight paraphrase but you get the idea.
While we have no firm details yet of how this will work in practice it does give me enough to be hopeful that as a group of people we are going to attempt to engage in true discipleship. Discipleship that takes time and commitment. Discipleship that is about being Christ’s apprentice, about learning to be like Him.
