erichao

In my single year experience of being a small group leader in IV, I really thought I was doing my job. Simple right? Go to leaders meetings on Sunday, prepare a little Monday night, stay late on campus every Tuesday, hang out with some interesting characters for an hour or two, read some bible, and eat with them from time to time.

Ah yes, the weeks would go by, as I would lead meeting after meeting with my quasi-passionate guise. Going with the small group guidelines presented to me in the beginning of the year, I did everything on the list to ensure I was fulfilling 100% of the tasks required. No matter how torpid meetings felt, I was confident in myself that I was doing my job…isn’t that all that’s required of me?

There is no doubt in my mind that similar mindset/models of small group leading exemplified by myself and other older leaders have been passed down and have de/evolved into what is now know as 09-10 small groups.
Contrary to my thought processes as a sophomore small group leader, I now believe strongly that I cannot call myself the small group leader of Tuolumne Hall 08-09.

Frankly, bestowing that title upon myself after the efforts I put in would simply be…for lack of better words, bullshitting myself (Excuse me) and defaming the role of a small group leader.

Here are a couple things I have found that small group leading is not (which coincidently parallels quite well to exactly what I did all last year):
- Spending one hour on Monday night at one in the morning looking over the passage being covered or “winging” small group hoping my charisma and character would be enough to communicate the message of the cross, the bible, and the God I claim to serve.
- Complaining about all the time small group takes when doing the bare minimum adds up to about 3-4 hours a week.
- Treating small group like it’s a night class. You know, 7-9pm…dragging through it in a desultory fashion.

Small groups should be a place where you go to escape the pressures of school and be with family. Why is it that my small group always felt like a classroom?

Of all these things, the thing I am most guilty/ashamed for, is treating my small group members like they are homeless people.

During my spring break in Sacramento, we had a devotional one morning about how easy it is to be deceptively servile towards the homeless by giving them some food, attention, and maybe some spare change if our pockets would happen to bear such coinage. This was such a disgustingly convicting topic of “loving” on others at arms length.

Well to be very honest, I had almost less desire to invest and hang out with some of my small group members than I would to hang out with a homeless person on the street. To me, if a small group member didn’t fit the mold I was looking for, I would treat them as I would a bum driven to the point of insanity after years of penury.

The result: A long fruitless year. (With exceptions, because God is faithful)

In short, I did what I had to do, and left.

God, forgive me for my indolent and apathetic “service”.
Forgive me for wasting your gift of time and influence.
I have done little more with these gifts then help produce a cultivated mindset of laziness and apathy that has begun to permeate to the roots of our fellowship.

My dear small group leaders for this year and next year:
I beg you
Do not model yourselves after me
Do not do only what you have to do
But do all you can do
Love what you do
And if its not love and first sight, pray; fast; do what you must to acquire an unquenchable passion and insatiable thirst for pouring yourself into your sheep.
If there is no joy in it, there will be no fruit in it.
Trust me

We are setting the bar for the younger ones.

“Feed my lambs, Tend my sheep, Feed my sheep”

Some of my readers might point out that this post seems like a big contrast to my previous post…however in this situation too, I am glad God didn’t strike me down in my lazy indolent stages so I am able to kneel in this place now and cry out for something more.

I will close with the wise words of a meditating mystic:

God does not require much, He only requires all.
Much you may not have, all you certainly do.
Much He does not need, all of you He does not have.