Home Small Group Leaders Articles for Small Group Leaders Your Small Group Is a Fireplace (Not the Fire)

Your Small Group Is a Fireplace (Not the Fire)

Fireplace Groups Pray

A fireplace with one log burning is warm and comfy, but if you want the fire to continue burning hot for a long time, you place more and more logs on the fire.

I give special attention to prayer in meetings. I remind participants that prayer is more than just asking God for things. It is communicating our feelings and thoughts to him. I try to steer the group away from sharing surface-level requests: Aunt Mary’s sick cat, the missionaries in Botswana, a friend of a cousin whose mother is having her appendix removed. Those may be legitimate things to pray for, but group prayer has a particular purpose, which should center on the group and its mission.

Keep your group prayer times creative. For instance, focus prayer times on specific needs or topics. Take a night and pray only for our families or friends at work, or spend an evening praising God for his grace or his power; use prayer times to confess sins to God and to one another (James 5:16).

I know that most groups pray together, but I’ve seen lots of groups miss out on God’s transformational power in prayer. Challenge your group as you pray to ask God for things that only he can do. Then, when he does, remember to take time to thank him–with great joy!–for what he has done.

Don’t be a one-log group. Get everyone involved in prayer, and watch God do what only he can do.

Fireplace Group Members Pray for One Another

When you add another log to the fire, you know what happens. It is soon ablaze itself and it eventually helps keep the other logs burning as well. But the log must be touching the other logs. Set a fresh log outside the fireplace and not much happens. This is what we love about community: We fire each other up. But we’ve got to be touching each other.

I know, this idea of touching one another sounds a little … well, intimate. I’ve read books that say we shouldn’t use the word intimacy to describe the relationships in a small group–we might scare some folks away. But when I read the Bible, especially the gospels and Acts, I see intimacy all over the place. Jesus touched people, physically, emotionally, spiritually. He had compassion for them. He washed their feet, touched their faces, allowed them to touch him.

Perhaps our fear of touching people is keeping God’s church from reaching the world.

Prayer–real prayer–is an act of intimacy. That’s why, I believe, Jesus’ brother connected confession with praying for each other (James 5:16).

Care and prayer for one another in the group go hand in hand. This is a 24-7 thing, not just a once-a-week-at-the-meeting thing. It is also a one-another thing, not just a leader thing. The New Testament shows a church that naturally cared for and ministered to one another. Healthy small groups are places where everyone is involved in ministry to one another, not where one person serves and cares for everyone else.

I want to try to find ways to connect people like logs in a fire in the groups I lead. So, within the first few weeks of a new group, I pass out index cards and have everyone write their name and contact information on one side and things they would like regular prayer for on the other side. At the end of the meeting, we put the names in a hat and everyone draws a card. They meet with that person after the meeting to talk, share other prayer requests, minister to and pray for each other. (This means each person will meet with two different people after the end of the meeting – the person they are praying for and the one that is praying for them.) They are to continue praying for that person every day as well as contacting them to encourage, pray out loud for, and build accountability with their partner. Of course there are many variations on this simple assignment. Whatever methodology you use, what’s important is getting people to pray for one another and thereby touch each other’s lives.

Praying for each other, along with confessing our sins to one another, is part of the community-life dynamic duo that is powerful and effective. Get your group members praying for each other, and they will be transformed–because they are being prayed for and because they are praying. Your group will be transformed from a good group to a great, transformational group. This will fire them up!

And leader, don’t forget that this starts with you, as you model praying for your group members.

Fireplace Groups Produce Growth

Provide the right environment, and growth happens.

For my four children-all now teens and young adults-growth is natural. As long as their mom and I provided the right conditions-good nutrition, a safe environment, opportunities for exercise, as well as schooling, spiritual disciplines, the power of example, and so forth-we knew growth would be automatic. Lack of growth would have meant something was terribly wrong.

The early church grew and grew and grew. Growth was natural for them because all the conditions for growth were right. They were the body of Christ, and that body was, and is, made to grow. The Book of Acts shows what those conditions were. Acts 2:42-47 summarizes the rest of the book; they were a learning, worshiping, praying, sharing, unselfish church. “And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

It’s fascinating to see how often prayer is mentioned through Acts. The disciples joined together constantly in prayer (1:14). In fact, there was a regular time of prayer at 3 p.m. (3:1). Luke records the powerful prayer of the believers and reports that the place where they were meeting was shaken and then the believers began to preach the word of God boldly (4:23-31). And, of course, Paul and Silas prayed and sang hymns to God in prison (16:26).

When we pray, we are taking things out of our own hands and putting them in God’s hands. It is God’s power, not our own strength that will build His church.

Do you want your group(s) to grow? Do you want to fulfill Jesus’ commission for you? Do you want to reach people who do not know Jesus? Do you wish to see real transformation? None of this will happen without prayer.

It’s time to pray!