The Great Commandment to love God and love others has been emphasized in churches over the past fifteen years or so. Thus churches should be places where real community happens and where people can exercise their gifts for one another. Here are some ways churches can start redesigning their fellowships so that we can fulfill the Great Commandment.
1. Whole Person Inventory. This would be for churches that are committed to building relationships. It would be a set of written inventory “tests” that would help people know their personality, strengths, and weaknesses. Many quality tests exist for this. If a church gave each leader a Whole Person Inventory it would go a long way to helping people understand themselves and how they can be a part of a community. Pastors would be able to decide how best to help this person grow. Leaders would also discover any significant disorders they might be struggling with, and the church could help them through ministry and appropriate treatment. Churches that used Whole Person Inventories would develop a reputation for being serious about understanding people and helping them grow, develop their gifts and build healthy relationships. (It may also help screen out toxic people from leadership, though this is not the primary purpose.)
2. Sermon Twitter. This creates more interaction with the congregation which increases relationship and gives people a voice. It lets people ask questions they are interested in and lets the speaker know what questions to answer. Set up a Twitter account for the church and let people use Twitter to send in direct messages to ask questions about the sermon (and make comments if you’re brave). The speaker can decide how much they want to say before they invite people to send messages. They could say a couple sentences about the topic and then invite messages or they could wait until they were part of the way through the sermon and then invite messages. Another idea is to put the sermon outline on the church website and let people start messaging before the sermon. Sermon Twitter should make sermons more interesting and keep people’s attention. It should also help the pastor to identify gifting in the congregation.
3. MOE Groups. MOE stands for mutual openness and edification. This phrase sums up the main activity of fellowships according to the New Testament. (See Romans 12, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3:16, I Corinthians 14) Yet MOE is often lacking in churches. Small groups are supposed to provide MOE but the great majority of them spend most of their time on a curriculum/book, a long message, singing and other activities. Shouldn’t MOE take up at least half the time that small groups meet? If a church really wanted strong relationships then a pastor could teach the leaders to do more MOE and less of other activities (but not eliminate teaching or singing). Then the pastor could visit the small groups to help the process along and make sure it is a priority. MOE should be very effective for providing a place for people to discover and use their gifts. MOE also creates better relationships and more community because people are sharing more of their lives. If MOE isn’t happening in a church are people really doing Christian fellowship? (Obviously there can be special interest groups that need to focus on a task and can’t do much MOE, but these would not qualify as someone’s fellowship group.)
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