Danger of exclusivity

One weakness that I always saw in CCF is the cliquey-ness. Since it is a large fellowship, it is very hard for newcomers to integrate into the group. I was once a newcomer, and I am naturally shy and I had cultural shock to overcome (since I am a Chinese born in Guatemala) so my first term in Waterloo was quite awful and I didn't attend CCF consistently. Therefore, in second term I purposely wanted to take more effort to get into the fellowship so I served in the welcome team, which is the team in charge of welcoming newcomers in CCF. Most of the time, when you see a need in a Christian community, you might be in the best position to do something about it. For the next 2 years, one of my biggest emphasis while serving in CCF was to address to the issue of cliquey-ness.

I understand how easy it is to want to be comfortable and talk to the people who we already know (or who we are close to) in CCF, and it usually takes extra effort and time to talk to newcomers of people we don't know well. Many times I grew frustrated at this, and I vividly remembered one particular CCF Friday night, after the program was done I was looking at the entire room (from the stage) and saw many people segregate into groups while there was clearly one person and another group of 2 people who were isolated from everyone else, and no one noticed that. It is challenging in a large fellowship, as naturally people tend to bond to a smaller group within the fellowship.

Obviously, smaller groups are necessarily to build community. Cell groups (grad cell, frosh cell, 2nd year cell, woman cell, man cell, worship cell) and discipleship groups are available in CCF as smaller groups to build community and exercise discipleship. These are very important. The danger I usually see is when people spend too much time with these smaller groups. I understand that spending time with some smaller group members (outside of the smaller groups time) is beneficial to further get to know them better and do mentorship. But when spending time with the same smaller group members all the time (like during Friday night, and post-fellowship time) is avoiding the possibility for people to get to know other members of the fellowship. This can deter people from learning from people of other smaller groups or to help integrate a newcomer into the fellowship. Since CCF has a variety of members from different ages, majors, background, theological views, it is really beneficial to learn from this "variety". This "variety" helps us to learn from the older, more experienced, more seasoned followers, and also to invest and mentor the younger followers.

I do think that the level of intimacy and the amount of time spent should be given priority to the smaller group, but one should not forget that there are other members in the fellowship who we share in the love of Christ and that we we should also fellowship with them.

After all, we are the body of Christ, and we are all together under the same purpose to serve God and further His Kingdom. I can see each member of CCF as a single cell (with nucleus, mitochondria, etc), and that DGs (discipleship groups) are strong cells working together becoming a tissue, and that all DGs together are an organ that can perform a valuable function for the body. If there are many tissues, but they don't communicate with each other, it is not possible to work together to perform that important function. Unfortunately, this is the my limit in biology knowledge.

In general, this issue can be extrapolated to situations when Christians only spend time with believers. It is true that spending time with fellow believers is always nice and encouraging, but we need to also develop relationship with non-believers hoping that the message we bear will be proclaimed to them.

Overall, it is a good thing to be part of a smaller group as the level of intimacy is stronger, and this propels more opened-sharing and stronger bonds. But the danger is to be too comfortable with this group, that members don't want to develop relationships with others, and we might miss the beauty of fellowshipping together with the entire fellowship.

A brief update

It has been a while since I last blogged. It has been busy, work is demanding but not as bad as I expected because somehow the workload got lighter due to various reasons. Co-leading Breaking-down Brick Walls (BBW) has been also very time-consuming, but it is a joy and privilege to serve the fellowship in teaching members about studying the bible. We have covered the following topics:

• importance of the Bible
• Old Testament context (very high level)
• New Testament context (early church, also very hight level)
• various observation skills (repetition, connecting words, keywords... there are like more than 10 distinctive items to look for)
• sentence structure analysis
• translations (will cover it more extensively)

Honestly, I don't personally utilize many of these techniques to study the Bible myself. Perhaps some of these come naturally to me, but most of the time I get lazy and when I find a hard passage to decipher I usually go directly to trusted commentaries. I guess as I teach these techniques in BBW, I am also learning a lot, and it's really cool to dig into my set of old notes from my years in university to find some Sunday school handouts from PT about sentence structure analysis (which I don't do in a bible study) and I was so happy to find such hidden treasure :)

Looking back, many of these bible study techniques I acquired them through exposure to leading bible studies in CCF. During pre-studies, I don't only learn about the passage but also about how the DLs approached to get to a conclusion regarding the passage. It is through serving God that many of these skills are acquired, and  it took me much practice to be comfortable handling a bible passage. 

It was a dear brother of mine who encouraged me to lead bible studies during my 1B work term. I seriously never considered it, but since he was intentional in asking me, I decided to try it out. And my first bible study experience wasn't easy at all. I remembered there was a very intimidating-looking upper year in my group, so I was scared all the time, and doubting whether I was doing something wrong. But as I continue leading bible studies in CCF, I started to learn, grow in confidence in leading, and appreciate the Word of God more. 

Many times we question ourselves if we are adequate to serve in an area. Many times we want to say no, because we don't feel confident nor feel that we have the skills. I think all that is very secondary if we look at great leaders from the Bible like Moses (who struggled with confidence and public speaking) and Peter (who was impulsive, and just a fisherman), I see that God doesn't necessary call the most equipped people to serve, but that He chooses the untrained so that they can be trained to bring Him honor. After all, it is not by my strength, but by the power of the Holy Spirit that I serve. Everyone has to start from somewhere to learn, so grow close to God everyday, and discern in what area you can serve Him to bring Him glory, honor, and praise.