Our Built-In Support System

Our small group experience began in the fall of 2015. My wife and I took the Grace Membership class and met Wade, who would later become a friend and fellow small group member. Fast forward a few months to one Sunday in church when Wade invites us out to Putt-Putt with his small group for their summer social. The funny thing about this is we were “mistakenly” invited. We were not the couple he thought we were. While at Putt-Putt, we had the greatest time connecting with everyone. Three years later, we can happily say that the mistake was actually just God placing us in a small group that would change our lives.

One of our favorite parts of small group is hearing everybody’s perspective. Each week that we meet, we take a deeper dive into that week’s message. This discussion has enabled us to read and study the word through the week as well as hold us accountable to keeping up with the message each week. What was an hour long message on Sunday becomes a week of thought and meditation preparing for our group meeting.

Small group enabled us to gain close friends within Grace. Very quickly, we were being invited to things outside of small group by other members. Adam began a weekly movie outing with someone who had been sitting directly in-front of us in church. We know this never would have happened without this group.

The Christian journey is full of peaks and valleys. Small group is a built-in support system to praise how God is working in your life. At the end each session, we break up into subgroups for a fifteen minute prayer request time. These fifteen minutes allows us to really speak about what’s on our hearts. It is very rewarding to pray for the members of the church on such a personal level. This gives the small church feeling within Grace Fellowship.

Throughout this past year, we shared our greatest journey yet with our small group as we prepared to become parents. I can remember the week that we shared that we were expecting and how excited everyone in our group was for us. From that point on, we always knew we had this special group of people praying for us weekly as we gave them the updates. Now that our little girl is here, we continue to have weeks that we have to stay home with her and it is so encouraging because we always know that our small group understands. When we miss a week and return, everyone is so quick to welcome us back and ask us how we are doing. It’s that relationship that makes being in the right small group within Grace so worth it! You can be in any phase of life and have people walking along side you and praying for you in a small group.