Small Groups: Dealing with the Mess of Community

Three things to keep in mind

Anyone who has been in a relationship of any kind for more than two weeks will tell you relationships are messy. The same is true for community—perhaps even more so. See, a community isn't just one relationship, but a web of interwoven relationships. So if one relationship can be messy to maintain, just imagine the mess a community can be!

In Genesis, the Bible records the moment often referred to as the Fall. In Genesis 2, God tells Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Just one chapter later, Eve decides to disobey God and eats the fruit and gives it to Adam to eat. What happened in that moment altered the world forever. Sin—choosing self over God—entered the world and separated man from a sinless God, and the curse of sin followed.

God said humans would no longer have a peaceful life but a hard life. Work would be tough, childbearing would be painful, and our lives would now end in death. In Romans 5:12, Paul gives us a divinely inspired explanation of the significance of this event: "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned."

Basically, in this moment the world was broken. Sin created a permanent scar on creation which spread to every person born. Now the world isn't as it should be. And the reality of sin impacts small-group life by making relationships more complicated. Keep these principles in mind to help your group be a transformative place in the midst of messy relationships. Read more