Last night I led discussion and ministry time at small group. I was on the schedule the week before to lead discussion and I got cut off half-way through (our group is getting big…which makes it hard to handle timing with opening questions and all that), so they asked me to finish talking about the same subject.
While I was praying about how to handle the discussion, I got the sense that it would be a great week to just do a bunch of praying instead of a discussion, so I asked Dave and Sharri (our small group leaders) if I could do that, and they were cool with it.
One thing, that God did that I thought was especially cool, is that the guy who had opening question asked something pretty different. He said “Tell us about a time that you hit a speed-bump in your life, that really effected the direction of your life.” And it took something like 40 to 50 minutes to go around the circle because people shared deep, personal, totally awesome stories. I remember thinking after a couple of particularly cool stories, “Wow, this group is so cool, we have people sharing super-awesome God stories, and we haven’t even gotten to Liz yet.” We even had a couple who had never been to our group before totally open up and share stuff that was pretty deep.
That was before any worship, or my little blurb about the Kingdom, or any ministry time…just opening question, where people normally just say their name and some little thing like their favorite ice cream.
After that we did a little worship, I gave some brief instructions (yes, I’m getting better at brevity), and we started praying.
It seemed as if everyone had a good time, and I felt like God really showed up and touched some peoples lives, some in the areas of the stories they shared earlier. It was fun to lead ministry time, I don’t think I’ve done that in a year or so, usually I just let Lauren do it. I do have to say it did make me a little nervous to use Jeff’s patented “just stand up and start praying for someone, and then once that is going move on to someone else” method, especially since I hadn’t done it in a long time, but it was a ton of fun for me once things got rolling.
I got to pray for my wife’s teeth again, one of our small-group members knees, and another’s arm, and for some other people about depression. It was great. Makes me excited for the new building, so we will have space and more time to pray for people.
Anyway, that was just a sweet little praise report. I like my small group a ton, and I pray that others of you have great encounters with God this week as well.