People who feel loved are more spiritually vibrant

We move now into the top tier of things that really matter in terms of creating spiritually vibrant people. We have talked about things that didn't matter very much, things that mattered a little. These things matter a lot.

The first one is feeling loved by the people in the group. Here is the statement: "I feel loved by the people in my group." People who strongly agreed with this statement were more than twice as likely (111%) to be in the top tier of spiritually vibrant people when compared with people who only agreed, or disagreed with that statement. Creating a group where people strongly agree that they feel loved by the people in the group creates spiritually vibrant people.

Feeling loved also had a positive correlation with the growth of the group

Isn't this what the Bible says?

Jn 13:34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Jn 13:35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
Jn 15:12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
Jn 15:17 This is my command: Love each other.
Ro 13:8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.
1Th 4:9 Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.
1Pe 1:22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.
1Pe 4:8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
1Jn 3:11 Love One Another
1Jn 3:11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.
1Jn 3:23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.
1Jn 4:7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
1Jn 4:11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
1Jn 4:12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
2Jn 1:5 And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another.

How can this happen?

I asked my wife to share a testimony:

One of the wonderful things in my life is that I love and feel loved by the ladies in my Sunday school class. Not only do I love them....I'm crazy about them and at the risk of sounding full of myself, I think they're pretty ga-ga about me too!

The thing is, I haven't always felt that way. Same ladies over the past few years, but very different feelings. I have been a part of this class for four years, but it took close to two years before I felt a close bond with most of them. You want to know what made the difference between just being a part of something and feeling community? Feeling like a family? Spending time with them. And it's not JUST spending time with them that made the difference. It is what we talk about and share during that time that builds that "girlfriend" kind of love. It all started when someone in our group had a wonderful idea. The idea went like this..."Let's all get together for lunch this month and bring a gift for all of the gals who have birthdays during that month." We all liked the idea and showed up for lunch - I think there were 8 of us-we've been doing it ever since.

During those times together we've found out that one of our friends lost two husbands in tragic accidents, we've prayed with one of our pals whose son was in a horrible accident while serving in the military - that same friend lost her mother who she was very close to. We prayed for her and were sad with her. Our group truly knows what it means to bear one another's burdens. One in our group has grown children who haven't spoken to her in years. All of us who are mothers (and not all of us are) grieve with her and do our best to be there for her as friends who understand. This same friend just lost her sister after taking care of her during her last days. We've had financial struggles, job changes, and sickness, but we've also had celebrations and happy times to share. There is nothing like cheering with a friend when they or someone in their family has experienced victory. When you've been praying for them, it's your victory too!

For me, it's pretty easy to figure out. You want to love and be loved by those in your small group? Make spending time with them a priority. I know you are busy, so am I, but you'll figure out a way to make it happen if you really want to. I guarantee it is an investment worth making. You'll grow to love 'em and think they're "all that". Who knows? They might just think the same of you!

Survey says. . .

How to create close personal friends in the group. Here are a few more findings we discovered as we drilled down deeper into the data:

  • Home groups tended to do better and making people feel loved than did on campus groups.
  • Size of the group didn't matter a lot one way or the other.
  • Discussion groups felt loved more often than lecture-oriented groups.
  • This was surprising. Groups with practical teaching were more likely to feel loved by the people in the group--by a huge margin. Those in practical classes were two and a half times more likely to feel loved as compared with those in content-oriented classes.
  • Groups with accountability were more likely to feel loved than those who didn't have accountability.
  • Groups that were open and honest and encouraged transparency were over three time as likely to feel loved by the group.
  • Groups that regularly participate in conversational prayer are twice as likely to feel loved by the people in the group.
  • Groups with more activities were more likely to feel loved by the people in the group.
  • Here is a no brainer. People with lots of friends were more likely to feel loved by the people in the group, by a margin of two and a half times!
  • Growing groups were more likely to report feeling loved by the people in the group. (Or, is it the other way around; we can never be sure what causes what.) It may be that groups were people feel loved are more likely to be growing. All we know for sure is that feeling loved and growth tend to go together. The opposite is also true. People are not as likely to feel loved in a group that is not growing.
  • Where people felt loved by the teacher, they are (nearly) seven times more likely to feel loved by the people in the group. This was, by far and away, the biggest differentiating factor we discovered.
  • Having attended a group a long time tends to make us feel more loved by the people in the group, but only marginally so.

Summary: if you want to create a group where people feel loved, concentrate on the following: plan lots of group activities, create an atmosphere of openness and honesty, pray together in conversational prayer, and love the group yourself.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to keep the next generation in church.

Image
The latest research indicates that 70% of the kids who grow up in our youth groups are not staying in church. Project that out for about ten years and we have disaster. Based on data from Essential Church, the trend looks like this: For a free sample of the book, see http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/files/lwcF_PDF_Rainers_Essential_Church_Sample.pdf Another good book on the subject is Ed Stetzer's Lost and Found. Let's look at it more personally. My oldest son graduated from High School in 2004. He walked across the stage at church at the recognition ceremony along with 20 or so of his classmates. Most of them had been very active in youth group. Very few of them are active in church today. In fact, my son may be the only one. If you are in the mood for a good depression, do the math at your church. Dig up the list of the kids that graduated five years ago. See if you can figure out how many of them are in church ...
Read more

Sunday School revival

It is amazing what happens when you listen to people. Everyone should be slow to speak and quick to listen. Somebody smart wrote that! For the last several months I have been listening to the people who attend my conferences. I have been using a very simple evaluation form -- one with two questions: What did you like? What could I improve? People always said kind things. I think that has more to do with them being kind than anything I did. I was not surprised at all by two of the suggestions. I was shocked by the third. I didn't actually track it, but it was probably the most common suggestion for change. First, here are the two I was not surprised by. Slow down. I work on that, but unsuccessfully. You just get me talking about doubling groups and I get all fired up. Provide a fill-in-the-blanks note-taking piece. I actually used to do this. Occasionally hosts would drop the ball and not make copies. I always did better when that was the case. I just speak better w...
Read more

The Gospel that doubles, part 1

I work full time promoting church growth in a world where church growth is a multi-million dollar industry and the church is not growing. Millions are spend every year on books, CDs, conferences, DVDs, web pages, research and consulting and the church is not growing. I don't want to be too hard on those of us in the church growth industry/ministry. (I often feel I wear two hats: business man and minister.) The church might be doing even worse without us. But, I can't help but contrast this world with the world of the early church where, best I can tell, there was no church growth industry. They didn't have any church growth seminars or church growth books or church growth consultants, and the church was growing and growing rapidly. Not just one church. Not just a few churches. Overall, there was a movement of church growth that was rapidly advancing. (As it is in much of the world, outside of the USA, today.) Not only did t...
Read more