Is Your Group Safe for Open-Heart Surgery?

Becoming places of true authenticity and heart transformation

Three years ago when Cindy came to church she would sit in the back and slip out quickly after the service. Though the church was small, she hardly knew anyone. She was, in her words, "a very private person."

Today Cindy sings in the praise team. She is among the first to enthusiastically welcome visitors. She and her husband shepherd a house church where they help create a safe environment for heart-level sharing by sharing deeply out of their own lives. The incredible change in Cindy's life is a window into the "extreme church makeover" that our church—Hilltop Urban Church in Wichita, Kansas—has gone through these past three years.

Small-group guru Lyman Coleman talks about three levels of sharing: mouth-to-mouth, head-to-head, and heart-to-heart. Small talk about the weather, sports, and cars, plus most small-group icebreakers, are mouth-to-mouth. When a group studies a book or Scripture together and discusses, "What do you think this means?" it moves to the head-to-head level. Most groups get this far but rarely reach the deeper heart-to-heart level. To read more, click here.