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.
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