Wired for Community 6 - A Community that Attracts!

This week's cell is the last chance to grab hold of some of the principles of this series on community.
We're considering together how a church where people are loving each other is attractive to those outside and sadly when we're not loving one another it's not an attractive place to be. How can your cell group grow in this?

(sample icebreaker: what is the most loving thing someone in church has done for you over the past twelve months and why did it make such an impact on you?)

Witness: this week we're looking at how our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ makes church an attractive place to the unchurched. Over the course of this series we've highlighted a number of ways that we can grow in showing love to each other:

Sharing a Long-Term Commitment & Focus
Overcoming our past experiences of family life
Sharing our home & possessions
Learning how to communicate deeply
Practically expressing love to one another (e.g. through touch, time, gifts...)

(All together) pick one area that challenges you and share why. Describe how you would like to grow in this area. Cry out to God together for His help to grow.

Word: Read together two verses - 1 Peter 1:22,23 (try for a couple of different translations)

1Pet. 1:22 ¶ Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.
1Pet. 1:23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

The Message 22-25Now that you've cleaned up your lives by following the truth, love one another as if your lives depended on it. Your new life is not like your old life. Your old birth came from mortal sperm; your new birth comes from God's living Word.

Questions:
Flicking back to the opening verses of 1 Peter, what was Peter's motive for writing to these churches?*
With this motive for writing, why does he spend so much time talking about community life?
What are some of the sacrifices we see couples making when they choose to have kids?
How might some of these sacrifices correspond to a cell welcoming in new additions to the group?
Parents unconditionally love their children, how could a cell show unconditional love to new members?
Read John 13:34,35 and 1 John 4:7-12
How do these verses motivate us to love our church family?
Pray in pairs and share with your prayer partner how you could show love to one other cell member this week.

* Peter wants the churches in those places to be united, strong and faithful witnesses for Jesus in the face of mounting opposition and specifically wants to protect the visible integrity of the body of Jesus in the face of persecution.

Robin Plummer, 27/11/2007