Growth  Groups

Everyone will have an opportunity to sign up for a Growth Group, and then the leaders will invite 3-4 people to join their group. This follows the pattern of Jesus and his disciples.

Groups run during the school year from September through May.

Each group leader will decide when, where, and how often to meet. Some groups will meet every week and some will meet every two weeks. Some groups may take a winter break and others will keep going. There's a lot of flexibility.

Growth Group meetings will include in-depth Bible study and prayer. Since the groups are highly relational, group members should connect informally between meetings to share life together.

There will be a variety of Bible study outlines to choose from. These outlines will help guide the Group Leaders as they prepare a Bible study for each meeting, but there is a lot of flexibility with how it is implemented. For example, one group may decide to do 13 weeks in the Gospel of Mark every other week, which would take them 26 weeks. At the same time, another group may do 8 weeks through Colossians, 10 weeks through Exodus, and 8 weeks through 1 Peter, which is also 26 weeks. Either option is fine.

During the Spring, group members will prayerfully consider if God may be calling them to lead their own Growth Group. New Growth Group leaders will be trained during the summer, and there will be a Growth Group kick-off event in the Fall.

Anyone can be in a Growth Group. It is for anyone that wants to grow spiritually. It is not limited to professing Christians. Growth Group leaders are New City members who have been trained and commissioned by our pastor/elders.

Leading a group is not for everyone. There are many other ways that believers can do the work of making disciples (i.e., parenting, mentoring, other ministries). You can sign up to be a Growth Group participant again and again. No worries!
However, we want to make leading a Growth Group as easy and "doable" as we possibly can so that we can continue to multiply new disciple-makers each year.

No. Growth Groups serve a different purpose. Growth Groups are age and gender-specific, and they are focused on bible study for a set period of time. House Church, on the other hand, is all about building relationships across the lines of ethnicity, age, sex, and culture through  fellowship, prayer, and sermon discussion. 

This is going to be discouraged. Primarily, we want to focus on the basics of digging into the Word of God for ourselves. This format doesn't require group members to do homework (i.e., reading a chapter from a book). You can just show up and participate. However, approved books and theological studies can be done from time to time supplement the ordinary work of Bible Study. 

Growth Groups are for anyone who is interested in growing in their spiritual life. It is our hope that some groups will be composed of unbelievers who genuinely want to investigate Jesus for themselves.