Bonus Post #7 – Get Sharing & Support Groups Started

While the experience of authentic community through small groups may be rare, and rather simple to create, we are left with this question: How do we get them started?

Usually, it takes one person contacting another person with an invitation to join a sharing and support group. For example, distinguished pastor and preacher John Claypool recounts how a colleague invited him to join a sharing group:

He was in real personal anguish, he said, and he asked the question: “Where does a pastor go for pastoral care? We are so busy helping other people. Where do we turn when our needs become overwhelming?”

“At any rate,” he continued, “I am calling five of you whom I trust with this request. Would you agree to meet with me in my study once a week for six times? The only contract will be that we will try to be honest and hear each other. Perhaps we can develop enough trust so that we can take off our masks and show each other where we really hurt. . . .I do not know if this will work, but if it does not, I’ll go under for sure?”

Claypool reflects:

I was frankly startled when that conversation was over, because I had only known this man from a distance, and he appeared to be “so together” that I could never have dreamed in a thousand years that he was struggling. . . .So the next morning I went to that man’s study and touched for the first time in my life an experience of genuine koinonia. I was absolutely astonished by what began to unfold before my eyes. For one thing, I discovered that every one of us around that table was struggling with much the same problems.

Claypool concludes:

We were all so much more alike than I had realized. Then to, I was amazed to see that in that context honesty evoked compassion. . . .Instead of being condemned or exploited, I found all kinds of insight and concern.[1]

Early in my campus ministry I felt the need to connect with other helping professionals. So I phoned another campus minister, a parish pastor, and a nurse. I told them I was in dire need of people to listen to my concerns, help me gain perspective, and pray for me. Each of them had similar needs with no prospect of help.

I took the initiative and scheduled our first support group meeting, and for the next two years we met weekly with one another for the care, support, and prayer we all needed.

In each of the places I’ve lived since that time, I’ve taken similar initiative for similar reasons with similar results. I know that I would not have succeeded in my personal or professional life without participating in sharing and support groups. It’s just that central to my survival and well-being. In fact, it’s the most important thing I’ve done in my life over the years! 

(495 words)

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[1] John Claypool, The Preaching Event (Waco, TX: Word, 1980), 73–75.

Bonus Post #6 – Create Community Through Sharing & Support Groups

If the experience of authentic community through small groups is rare, but rather simple to create, then how do we go about experiencing and creating it?

 

I have participated in a personal sharing and support group, and a professional sharing and support group, throughout most of my personal and professional adult life. Let’s look at how the experience of authentic community is experienced and created in these small groups.

Here is what authentic community looks like in my twice-monthly zoom personal sharing and support group:[1]

Group members feel free to speak up and share what’s on their hearts and minds. Everyone’s ideas are important and members value each other’s personal knowledge and experience. Members try to maintain an open mind, listening objectively and without judgment. Disagreements are expressed freely and in a friendly manner, keeping in mind that other people’s views make sense to them. Clear communication is practiced, including listening to understand one another, asking for clarification of unclear points, and perception-checking if communication begins to break down. Members help each other participate, letting one another talk, showing interest in what each other has to say, inviting one another to speak, and making sure everyone has opportunity to share. Sometimes smiles do more to further discussion than best arguments. Members also help one another learn and support each other’s personal growth. An atmosphere of warmth and affection and a culture of care have developed over the years. Indeed, their conversation is a pleasant and enjoyable experience for all. Since these group members have a common faith orientation, they conclude their time together with prayer requests and a closing prayer.

And here is how we create and experience community in my professional sharing and support group:[2]

We meet once a month for a 2-hour zoom book discussion and once a month as a 4-hour in-person sharing and support group. Our purpose is to enable one another to experience personal and professional growth through trustful interaction with colleagues. We are present to, comfortable with, and value one another. We are interested in and invested in one another. There’s mutual affection, appreciation, and respect. There is also a closeness and spirit of camaraderie and enjoyment among us. We allow time to express our deepest thoughts and feelings about needs and concerns that currently matter most in our lives. We feel heard, accepted, and affirmed by caring peers. Confidentiality is observed with freedom to share without fear of being judged or rejected. We practice active listening, offering appropriate feedback and clarifying questions. Accountability for specific change and growth is encouraged and supported. We conclude with a circle of prayer.

Like two wings of an airplane, planning and training are essential components of creating and expanding a small group program. In my consulting and training, here is what I’ve discovered: “well-planned small-group programs that are not accompanied by proper training for potential small-group leaders are likely to fail because so many of our lay leaders do not know how to lead an effective small group. Conversely, programs with well-trained group leaders but without proper planning are not likely to be effective because the process of implementing new small groups is complex, requiring careful organization.”[3]

The prospect for creating community through small groups has great promise, indeed! Welcome to the journey!

[546 words]

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[1] See What Makes Our Relationships Meaningful, Satisfying, or Fulfilling (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2025), 59–60.

[2] See What Makes Our Relationships Meaningful, Satisfying, or Fulfilling, 62.

[3] See Small Groups in the Church: A Handbook for Creating Community (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), 33.

Bonus Post #5 – It’s All About Relationships (5-Part Mini-Series)

PART 5 – Creating Community

 

How rare is your experience of true, authentic community?

In The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck describes some qualities he's discovered about true and authentic community, such as:

•         Inclusiveness––all are welcome
•      Commitment to one another, including appreciation of differences
•      Making decisions by mutual agreement
•      An atmosphere of realism, of growth, and of safety to be oneself

Peck says, for example, that "Community is a safe place precisely because no one is attempting to heal or convert you, to fix you, to change you. Instead, the members accept you as you are. You are free to be you. And being so free, you are free to discard defenses, masks, disguises; free to seek you own psychological and spiritual health; free to become your whole and holy self."[1]

Perhaps the most startling thing Peck says is this: "The most successful community in this nation––probably in the whole world––is Alcoholics Anonymous, the `Fellowship of AA.'"[2]

 

But community need not start with people in crisis, as in AA, or by accident as Peck experienced every now and then. It can also be designed or created. In fact, Peck traveled around the country offering community-building workshops, which were guided by qualities of communication and community which he found can be simply taught and learned with relative ease. "In other words, if they know what they are doing, virtually any group of people can form themselves into a genuine community."[3]

 

Why is it that so little genuine community exists among us?  Peck says we want intimacy but run from it. Perplexing isn't it! 

 

We want to be honest and open, but we aren't willing to risk being ourselves in a group of sisters and brothers. Surely, it's something we must figure out and address, or continue to miss the most important quality of life both for ourselves and for others.

 

Are we missing out and don't even realize it? Do we know what we're missing but just let it go? Perhaps we don't know how to go about developing intimacy in the church. It's very disturbing––one of the greatest concerns I have for the Church in general, and for many congregations, in particular!  

 

I have a dream for the Church and for our congregations––a dream which I know can become a reality. And it is that we expand our capacity for creating community. 

 

Because it usually doesn't happen in a large group, it means that we need to expand the small group ministries in our congregations. Like Peck, I too have discovered that the process is rare, but rather simple. It’s what my book, Small Groups in the Church: A Handbook for Creating Community, is all about. Thank God for AA! But it need not have a corner on community!

 

[463 words]

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[1] Ibid., 68.

[2] Ibid., 77–78.

[3] Ibid., 84.

 Bonus Post #4 – It’s All About Relationships (5-Part Mini-Series)

PART 4 – The Challenge of Community[1]

In his book, The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck says simply: "Community is currently rare."[2] Writing at the intersection of psychology and spirituality, he speaks personally about his own upbringing in a Christian home and about his parents:

 

They were good American `rugged individualists,' and they very clearly wanted me to be one also. The problem was that I was not free to be me. Secure though it was, my home was not a place where it was safe for me to be anxious, afraid, depressed, or dependent–– to be myself. . . . Had someone asked my parents whether they had friends, they would have replied, `Do we have friends? Good gracious, yes. Why, we get over a thousand Christmas cards every Christmas?' On one level that answer would have been quite correct. They led a most active social life and were widely and deservedly respected––even loved. Yet in the deepest definition of the word, I am not sure they had any friends at all. Friendly acquaintances by the droves, yes, but no truly intimate friends. Nor would they have wanted any. They neither desired nor trusted intimacy. Moreover, as far as I can see, in an age of rugged individualism they were quite typical of their time and culture.[3]

 

Peck continues: “But I was left with a nameless longing. I dreamed that somewhere there would be a girl, a woman, a mate with whom I could be totally honest and open, and have a relationship in which the whole of me would be acceptable. That was romantic enough. But what seemed impossibly romantic was an inchoate longing for a society in which honesty and openness would prevail. I had no reason to believe that such a society existed––or ever had existed or ever could exist––until accidentally (or by grace) I began to stumble into varieties of real community."[4] 

 

Peck goes on to describe a few rare instances of stumbling into community. And then he says a very disturbing thing: "On my lecture tours across the country the one constant I have found wherever I go––the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, or West Coast––is the lack of–– and the thirst for––community. This lack and thirst is particularly heartbreaking in those places where one might expect to find real community: in churches.”[5]

 

And then he says this about true and authentic community: "In our culture of rugged individualism––in which we generally feel that we dare not be honest about ourselves, even with the person in the pew next to us––we bandy around the word `community'. . . .[But] if we are going to use the word meaningfully we must restrict it to a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to `rejoice together, mourn together,' and to `delight in each other, make others' conditions our own.' But what, then, does such a rare group look like? How does it function? What is a true definition of community?"[6]

 

What do you think such a group looks like? How would it function? How would you define the essence of community?

 

Peck also reveals what he's discovered about how to experience true community. It’s the topic we’ll explore next month in the concluding post of this mini-series, PART 5 – Creating Community.

 

[571 words]

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[1] Note: this bonus post is adapted from my book, Small Groups in the Church: A Handbook for Creating Community (Herndon, VA: The Alban Institute, 1995), 6–8.

[2] M. Scott Peck, The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 25.

[3] Ibid., 27–28.

[4] Ibid., 28.

[5] Ibid., 57.

[6] Ibid., 59.

 Bonus Post #3 – It’s All About Relationships (5-Part Mini-Series)

PART 3 – Create Authentic Community 

How do you create a sense of community––healthy, authentic, and quality close personal relationships?

My research and experience suggest that these four qualities are central to experiencing meaningful, satisfying, and fulfilling personal relationships: openness, acceptance, growth, and warmth. Let’s look at these four qualities more closely. 

Openness in communication means sharing honestly, risking being misunderstood or not taken seriously, and asserting rather than avoiding or being aggressive in how we express our thoughts and feelings. 

Acceptance of one another’s thoughts and feelings happens through perceptive listening, trusting one another to work out relational quandaries, and empathizing with one another.

Moreover, rather than deny or become defensive about occasional awkwardness in our evolving relationships, we find ways to grow our relationship by being supportive, empowering, and imaginative. 

And we find ways to generate warmth and affection through genuine care, authentic connection, and mutuality without crossing boundaries of professional propriety or personal intimacy.

These are the keys to creating authentic community, to relational health and satisfaction––to the magic called Real!

I’ve found that participating in a personal sharing group is the single most important experience in my life over the last fifty years. And regular participation in professional support groups has added vital, integrating impact on my career over this same time span. This is where I most experience authentic community! 

How so? 

Because there’s been an openness to talk about the more important things in our lives. Sufficient freedom to be ourselves, without judgment from others, is present because we share our hopes and dreams, failures and feelings, ideas and suggestions. And from such openness and acceptance, including prayer for one another, we experience a powerful kind of bonding or warmth that brings growth and change––a feeling of being rejuvenated, of receiving new strength and Life! In fact, we experience authentic community and the magic of becoming Real.                                                                                                        

Most humans yearn for authentic community––quality personal relationships characterized by openness, acceptance, warmth, and growth. It may surprise you to learn, though, that an expert on our contemporary experience of community, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, suggests that it is exceedingly rare. What do you think? What’s your experience of true, authentic community?

 

We’ll explore Peck’s reflections from his book, The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace, in next month’s Bonus Post, PART 4 – The Challenge of Community. (Originally 533 words)

 

[387 words]

Bonus Post #2 – It’s All About Relationships (5-Part Mini-Series)

PART 2 – The Magic Called Real

How do we create healthy ways of relating to one another?

In last month’s Bonus Post I noted that I am most alive, most human, when I meet another person at the real, genuine, authentic gut-level. This month we’ll explore just what this magic called real is all about.

One of my favorite children’s stories captures this quality of realness. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams is a children’s fairytale about what it means to be “real.”

In the story a little Velveteen Rabbit is loved by a small boy. It was once new and shiny. It lived in the nursery and talked to the other toys. The mechanical toys felt superior and pretended they were real because they had springs and could move. The Rabbit felt very insignificant and commonplace by comparison, and the only toy that was kind to him was the Skin Horse.

One day the Velveteen Rabbit had this conversation with the Skin Horse, the oldest and wisest toy:

“What Is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

“Real isn’t how you’re made,” said the Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.[1]

As the conversation continues between the Rabbit and the Skin Horse we learn that becoming real sometimes means being hurt, takes a long time, and once you are real you can’t become unreal again––it lasts forever.

The Velveteen Rabbit is eventually loved by the boy so hard that it didn’t seem to notice its beautiful velveteen fur getting shabbier and shabbier, its tail becoming unsewn, and the pink rubbed off its nose by the boy’s kisses. And one day when the boy cries out to Nana for his Rabbit at bedtime, Nana grumbles:

            “You must have your old Bunny?” she said. “Fancy all that fuss for a toy!”

            The boy sat up in bed and stretched out his hands.

            “Give me my Bunny!” he said. “You mustn’t say that. He isn’t a toy. He’s REAL!”

When the little Rabbit heard that he was happy, for he knew that what the Skin Horse had said was true at last. The nursery magic had happened to him, and he was a toy no longer. He was Real. The Boy himself had said it.[2]

So, by the end of the story the Velveteen Rabbit becomes real, too:

“You were Real to the boy,” the Fairy said, “because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to everyone.”[3]    

But we’re left with an especially important question, aren’t we? How does the magic called Real take place in our lives? What does our love for one another look like in real life? In short, how do we experience meaningful, satisfying, fulfilling close personal relationships? See what answers you come up with as you reflect on this question over the course of the next month.

(520 words)

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[1] Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2011), 5.

[2] Ibid., 13.

[3] Ibid., 31.

Bonus Post #1 – It’s All About Relationships (5-Part Mini-Series)

PART 1 – Introduction

I recall an early insight in my graduate studies in interpersonal and small group communication from a textbook by John Stewart and Gary D’Angelo, Together: Communicating Interpersonally. They say, “the quality of our interpersonal relationships determines who we are becoming as persons. Although our individuality is tremendously important, we don’t become fully human all by ourselves; our humanity develops in relationships with others.”[1]

Jesuit psychologist John Powell puts it this way: “What I am, at any given moment in the process of my becoming a person, will be determined by my relationships with those who love me or refuse to love me, with those I love or refuse to love.”[2] It reminds me of the African tribal philosophy of ubuntu: I am, because we are.

Moreover, as Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca observes, “One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.” In fact, the communication process involves more than either a one-way speaker-centered bow-and-arrow type action of shooting our ideas to another person, or a two-way message-centered ping-pong type interaction of batting our ideas back and forth. Rather, it pays to approach communication as a dynamic, meaning-centered transaction in which a relationship emerges between people.

Here is how Mennonite theologian and counselor David Augsburger puts it: “’Experiencing the other side’ is, in Martin Buber’s words, ‘the heart of dialogue.’ Feeling any experience from the side of the other person as well as from one’s own side can make the experience twice as rich. Seeing any event through the other’s eyes in addition to one’s own makes the scene truly three-dimensional.”[3] 

Augsburger continues:

The art of dialogue is openness to the other side, a willingness to enter the other’s turf and to explore it until it is familiar territory. The heart of dialogue is coming to value a place near the center, on the boundary, where the other person’s perspective is valued alongside my own. At this point of meeting, I become as concerned for the clarity of the other’s stance as for my own; as willing to contribute an argumentative point to the other side as to assert one on my own; as committed to supporting the other’s right to be at his or her position as I am to claim my own.[4]

I find that I am most alive, most human, when I meet another person at the real, genuine, authentic gut-level wherein a deep, intimate relationship is created between us. Reaching beyond phoniness or superficiality, this kind of relationship is deeper than that of acquaintances or even friends. It is marked by the quality of sharing that good friends with a close personal relationship enjoy––love for one another. We’re made for relationships with one another. In fact, it’s all about relationships!

So, how do we create healthy ways of relating with one another? Think about this question over the next month, and see what answers percolate for you? We’ll explore this question in next month’s Bonus Post, PART 2 – The Magic Called Real. 

[504 Words]

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[1] Stewart and D’Angelo, Together: Communicating Interpersonally (Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley, 1976), 23.

[2] Powell, Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? (Chicago: Argus Communications, 1969), 43

[3] Augsburger, Caring Enough to Hear and Be Heard (Ventura, CA: Regal, 1982), 6.

[4] Augsburger, Caring Enough to Hear and Be Heard, 6–7.