Dave and I had been speaking about community and what it means to us and then somehow we got the idea to do a thing at cell group where we can build community, share about community/fellowship and get people to be real and to share a bit with each other. We then thought communion would be something awesome to include in the evening, because not only does communion represent the last supper and what Jesus did for us on the cross but it also represents community and fellowship. I got the "Messy Questions" as I call them from Mel, they're actually called "Honest to God questions". At the start of the evening everyone chose a question form the bag and we all had to answer it. Some of the questions are light hearted questions and others are pretty deep.. by some random chance we all ended up choosing the deeper questions. It was pretty funny.
One of the questions that we had to answer was; "I wish people my age were more..." It was pretty interesting how everyone who is in my age group, 25 - 30 all had the same answer. We are all very different, in different friendship circles and from different lifestyles, but we all said that we wish that our friends were more focused on building real friendships with their close friends, spending quality time with them. We all agreed that we live busy full lives focused on everything else that after a while we reach a point of, "I haven't seen my friends in a while". We also agreed that we don't really hang out as much as we used to, and that we don't have deep, real conversations with our friends anymore.
.... It was somehow pretty epic that this question came up during "Messy Questions" because it links to the topic.
Dave gave a short talk on communion, why we do it and how it was done back in the bible times before we ate bread, cheese and drank grape juice. While we were eating and drinking we had a small amount of discussion of fellowship.
The thing about communion that is blowing my brain at the moment is that back in the day the disciples not only broke bread to remember what Jesus did for them. They also came together as a community with friends, family and fellow Christians and shared a meal with them. During this time they spoke about the things that were going on in their lives, they were real with each other, they encouraged each other and prayed for one another.
It blows my mind that the simple act of communion can mean more that just remembering Jesus, it also serves as a reminder of how we need to be living like Jesus. We need to be loving and accepting of everyone - being willing to share a meal, opening up "our homes" to people and getting real with them and allowing them to be real with you.
This is HUGE in my head at the moment! It also challenges me to be more real and it gives me a desire to want realness from my friends and the people I encounter in life. I want real community and fellowship with people.
We ended the evening with everyone sharing where they're at, what happened during the holidays and gave prayer requests if there were any before we went into a time of prayer.
Last night was really awesome, God was awesome. He just showed up and filled the room with his presence and created a space for the evening to be a success. Dave lead the group really well and his talk on communion kind of blew me a way a little. It was also really cool how everyone opened up and was willing to be vulnerable and share during the Messy questions and during the prayer requests. It really feel like last night was fundamental in the building of a safe place for our cell group to share things with each other without feeling like they are being judged or rejected.
xKx
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