We’re using the Life Teams Meeting Process on Wednesday evenings. It’s been yielding some really good results. Here are some examples:
- Since its a story telling process, it has served as a powerful tool for intergenerational development. Our daughter who has always struggled verbally, has demonstrated a strong proclivity for learning, internalizing and retelling the stories. Story telling has been more than a spiritual discipline. We’ve discovered that it’s a helpful intellectual exercise for her as well.
- Chronological Bible story telling has allowed our resident seeker to encounter the word of God directly. My cousin has been coming regularly and contributing significantly to our discussion (as well as to the quality of the food). He wasn’t raised in church and has only had a shallow and widely varied exposure to Christian ideas. In spite of that, his comments during our discussion have been deeply insightful and enriching to the whole group. He’s being impacted by the experience as well. The other day he asked me why everyone doesn’t present the scriptures as we are doing.
- The participants in our Life Team have been naturally sharing the stories with their family and friends. One woman had the Story Map on her fridge when her daughter in law came over to the house. The daughter in law asked about it and the woman was able to tell her the story. My cousin called a friend on the way over to our meeting to practice telling her the story before he had to present it on a “Meeting B” week. Another woman in our Life Team has shared some of the stories as ministry to family members and coworkers who had been experience relational “drama” in their lives.
That’s just the stuff I can think of right now and we’ve only been using the process for 5 weeks. I think this process has been resulting in growth because we’re allowing people to encounter to word of God directly in community. One of the stories we’ve learned recently was about Joseph’s reunion with his father, Jacob. When Jacob first heard that Joseph was alive after believing for 22 years that he was dead, he struggled to believe it. The passage in Genesis 45 goes on to say, “When he had seen the gifts and heard the words that Joseph had said his spirit revived.” It is the very words of God and not our interpretation/explanation of them that are spirit and are life.
I commend our Meeting Process to you because it is rooted in the word of God and it works.