Dear First Pres,
This Sunday evening, from 5 - 7, our Community Groups will gather all over Fresno and Clovis. Community Groups are our mid-sized regionally based groups that officially meet once a month building relationships with others from church who live in our part of the city and leveraging those relationships for the sake of living out the Gospel in our everyday lives. We are best when we live our lives on mission together. Community Groups exist to catalyze that kind of missional community in the places where you live, work, and hang out.
One of the ways that Community Groups have been most effective is in providing nearly immediate connection for new attenders of FPC Fresno. It's just about every month that one of the Community Group leaders reports that they had a brand new person or household attend their gathering. The Community Group setting and size is really a perfect way for people to get connected beyond the warm welcome they receive on Sunday mornings. So, if you consider yourself relatively new to our church and/or you desire to grow in relational connection with other FPC folks, I encourage you to find your Community Group and be there on Sunday. (Look below for help to locate your CG.)
But we don't want to simply build relationship with one another for relationship sake. Everything we do as a church is to help us obediently live out the mission of Christ together. We definitely want to find ways, therefore, to leverage those relational resources for God's Kingdom purposes. Sometimes that means helping care for one of the other members of our Community Group who is struggling. Sometimes it means supporting a local ministry partner in a tangible way. Sometimes it means encouraging one another in the ministries in which we are already connected. And, often, it means bowing our heads together to boldly pray that God will use us to build His Kingdom.
Have you prayerfully considered your involvement in your Community Group? If not, please do. I believe they are a wonderful way for us to engage together in Christ's work of making disciples for the redeeming transformation of our city and world. Of course, that's not all going to happen at a monthly two hour meeting ... but that monthly two hour meeting can be the catalyst of His Kingdom coming and His will being done.
Blessings,
Jeremy
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