When Christians come together for weekly gatherings, we create a unique context for sharing life and truth. Unlike any other cultural gathering, this time allows people to combine the following elements: celebrate life, eat together, enjoy one another, and share the truth in love.
Gather to Share the Gospel
Missional community gatherings are not a time to check off the spiritual list or to be a wallflower. Rather, the Christian community gathers together to share common and uncommon struggles with a common hope in the truth of the gospel. It’s an incredible opportunity to pause in the middle of a busy week and remind ourselves that we are the church, an imperfect people clinging to a perfect Christ, being perfected together by the Spirit.
City Group gatherings are intended to foster substantive community and priestly ministry to one another. We should view them, not with dread but anticipation, adjusting our attitudes during our drive to one another’s homes, eagerly hoping to give and receive the gospel from one another. It is a time to be encouraged in Christ by one another. Graham Benyon puts it like this:
“We are to be teaching each other the gospel, to be correcting each other about the gospel with all wisdom, to be singing about the gospel with gratitude and so letting it dwell richly among us. When we come to church on a Sunday, or to our small group meeting during the week, we should come saying to ourselves, ‘I hope I will be reminded of the gospel in this meeting. I hope I will be taught about it and corrected in my understanding of it. I hope we will sing about it.â€
– God’s New Community, 119.
This is precisely what sets Christian community apart from any other gathering in our week. It is a gathering, not around rules, or goals, or ourselves at the center, but a gathering around Jesus. We huddle, not around our sin or success, but around our Savior. City Group gatherings are a time of Jesus-centered or Gospel-centered community.