One of our motto’s is that life is complicated–church shouldn’t be. Church can often become a place where an endless number of possibilities confuses us about exactly what we should do and where we should connect. To explain who we are at as a church, we have three core actions–that is, three things we feel are essential to living out a faith in Jesus. We encourage those who are considering calling this home to live out these actions: Gather, Grow and Engage.
Gather
To come together in order to worship God, learn from the Bible how to live and experience community as a larger group.Grow
To intentionally develop and mature in our faith.Engage To connect with others in order to make a difference in the world and serve others through the church body.
To help everyone understand where we’re going as a church, I’d like to talk a little about Grow today…
In order to help people grow in their faith, we offer small group learning experiences. While many of these may be informal, we do have several that meet informally. Of course, our “formal” ones are still very causal–just advertised better! And we have other groups to join now (and more in the future!) in order to be part of serving the community or the church. Sometimes it is difficult to classify what a group is–like Multiply… But here are some definitions that you might find helpful:
Community Groups
While personal disciplines of prayer, Bible reading, etc. are helpful, it is often easier to grow when connected to others in community. These groups are designed to help you grow in your faith–while getting connected and experiencing community. Sometimes they form along the lines of age-groups, stages of life, etc. They normally have anywhere from 3 to 12 people–although they sometimes grow a bit larger.
Discipleship Groups
These are variants of community groups with normally 2-5 people (normally of the same gender) meeting for a defined period of time with a goal to to help people grow in their faith. These groups can take the form of getting together with someone for coffee and going thru some basic materials about what it means to follow Jesus–or sort out what it looks like to live a life following Jesus though answering questions and coaching. Sometimes members can use more intense forms or materials with homework to study and learn more in depth.
If you’re interested in becoming part of a group or being in a discipleship group to learn more about following Jesus, we have groups forming now. Some will be listed in our groups directory. However, many will not be. For example, if I meet with someone over coffee for 45 minutes a week to go through our 7 week course “First Steps, Learning to Follow Jesus”, we won’t list that as an official group because it meets short term and informally. Oh, and by the way, throwing that in there was a subtle way of letting you know that there are some of us here at Deep Water who would love to sit down and talk to you about what it mean to follow Jesus and go through that 7 week course.
Check out our updated groups page to see available groups.