Knit Together

When you’re learning how to knit, you need to learn to read a whole new language: K1, m1, p2, CO, k2tog. You learn to decipher charts and take something that looks good on paper and bring it to life. And you learn, through experience, that knitting takes time and requires a good deal of patience if you’re going to see a project to completion.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I opened our home to a new weekly small group meeting, spun off of our jumbo-sized “small” group that needed blessed division for the sake of future multiplication. It was hard for our large group to split, as we had grown closer, united through fellowship and prayer. As we form a new group with a portion of the old one and invite new members in, we’re trusting God to knit us together.

I know what it looks like to bring a knitting project to life, to take a ball of yarn and create socks or a sweater. But what will it look like for God to knit our small group together? What is the language we need to learn in order to bring this “project” to fruition? The answers to these questions, I believe, are rooted in three key terms: love, devotion, and mission.

Love

“Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” Jesus replied, “You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40, NLT)

The two commands that Jesus (the most important) said are the most important both center on the idea of love, so that must be at the center of our idea of a small group, a microcosm of Christ-centered community. It is our goal to help each other love God and other people more. How do we do that? By taking God at His Word (literally), inviting him in to our lives—both individually and as a group—and seeking out ways of expressing love for God and others in our meetings. As James Bryan Smith writes in The Good and Beautiful Community, “Our daily encounters with others are the arenas in which our relationship with God becomes incarnate” (p. 19). It is through our interactions with each other that we can express love for God and others, find out where we don’t love God and others as much as we thought we did, and receive love and acceptance in both. We can love each other because “he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

Devotion

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer” (Acts 2:42).

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24-25).

Devotion—that word for many might conjure up images of a daily “quiet time” or a classic read by the spiritual. Perhaps we should think about it in another way: loyalty. It’s the thing that brings people to small group week after week, month after month. It’s a commitment to God, a commitment to His people, and a commitment to this group of people with whom we’re choosing to share life. Devotion can be inconvenient. Saying, “yes” to this kind of community might mean saying, “no” to other things. But the consistency of a group creates an environment of safety where the love and the mission parts can truly take place. This aspect calls us to consider, “Have I lived out my devotion to the Lord by being devoted to His family?” Or, perhaps a little deeper, “Am I more devoted to material/temporal things than immaterial/eternal things?” Devotion—loyalty—means that we treasure something in practice. And we know that where our treasure is, there our heart will be (Matthew 6:21).

Mission

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

Our mission as the Church is clear: make followers of Jesus. Disciple-making starts with disciple-being. Jesus told us that our fruitfulness as disciples, our very spiritual livelihood, depends on a vital connection to Him, the true vine (John 15:1ff). As we hope to be used of God for His disciple-making mission in the world, we remember that we are first to be disciples ourselves, rooted and remaining in Christ. Other people can help us remember our mission, help us keep from pursuing what John Ortberg has called our “shadow mission,” and link arms with us as we set out on mission everyday. When we’re in community we remember that we really are a part of something bigger, a Story far grander than we individually inhabit.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of things that we could place at the heart of Christ-centered community. However, I believe that they ought to be at the core, for they are at the heart of what it means to be a Christ-follower. Our new little small group has been encouraged, even in these first few weeks, by how God has been noticeably knitting us together as we learn to speak the language of Christ-centered community together.