Are small groups Biblical?
Read Matthew 18:19-20 and journal your thoughts.
Usually when we read this verse we use it as a way to describe church, right? We say it doesn’t matter how many people we have in church because Jesus promises that if 2 or more are gathered that he’ll be there. This is beautiful and true, but are we missing something?
The first rule for a Disciple (Talmid) was to get a Rabbi, the second rule for a Disciple was to get a “Haver” (Note: Haver is for men, Haverah is for women). The best way to describe a Haver in our culture is a small group. It was a group of at least one other person who would get together and discuss Scripture. Usually when we get together for small groups once a week, we have a set of stuff that we plan about talking about, we have a set of questions and a set of answers, and probably all of this on a work sheet. This is not what a Haver was like, a Haver was a group of people who got together all the time and talked about questions that they had because of what they’d studied on their own that day.
Here’s the key, the goal for them was to disagree with each other. There is a story of an ancient rabbi who had a haver and nobody there dared to question him. The rabbi prompted discussion over and over and still no one would disagree. Finally at the point of frustration the rabbi says how are we supposed to learn anything if no one will disagree with me? In our culture we struggle with the idea that not everyone believes exactly what we believe, but in their culture disagreement was actually a good thing, it lead to growth, it stretched us and pulled us in directions we had never thought of.
Today may you struggle with the Scriptures with someone else so that you may grow in God’s Law
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