A working paper written by Paul DeCelles for a seminar on community building in 1979 that outlines six purposes for the weekly meetings of the community. He made several points for leaders about how meetings should be led and what they should accomplish.
Giving a vision of community is an important step in building community. Specifically, the weekly community meeting provides a certain vision of the community, and is therefore very important in building community. I will talk both about the purpose and about the method, why we do what we are doing and some things about how to do it which will explain both the events themselves and how they actually take place.
The first reason why the weekly meetings are necessary is to generate the right kind of a sense of belonging to something other than a small group. Small groups can foster friendships, provide some kind of structure to community life, including some organization or order, and also provide some training. There are also groups established for the purpose of evangelism and mission. These are small groups of either men or women. The groups I am talking about tonight, the weekly meetings, are not small groups. They are groups on the order of 200 or more people. In our community we have a mixture: the 200-size meetings and then the much larger one for the whole community. Each of these groups is intended to accomplish different things. I will concentrate on the intermediate-size group of about 200, but some of what I will say will pertain to the larger one as well.
The reason meetings were developed was to generate a sense of belonging to something other than a small group and yet something smaller than the large group. We have a cut-off at about 200 or fewer in order to make it possible for the ordinary person to be able to belong to a meeting of this size and still feel like he or she knows the majority of people there fairly well. They belong to something; they identity [sic] with everyone there, and they know the schools they go to, which men’s groups or women’s groups they are in, and so on). It is a group which could be extensively headed by about 6 or 7 people, which would be in our case the branch coordinator and branch heads. But the people, while having this sense of belonging and sense of camaraderie, also understand that they are part of something which is larger than a family, larger than a women’s group or men’s group, and the like.
Another reason for the meeting is to have another thing in common with a group larger than the men’s group. It is important to have things in common in a community, to share all sorts of different things about your life with a group that has the dimensions of a community. Now 6 people or 20 people do not a community make. You need something on the order of about 150 to 200 to have a sense of belonging to a larger thing. Therefore, we want to have sharings take place at meetings of this sort, so that people will sense that they have more in common than they would otherwise.
The third reason for these meetings is communication. We communicate in our teachings in the exchange of news, and in how we feel about everything. Let me elaborate. In our teachings we want to cover what is happening in our lives with regard to the world, the flesh and the devil, and with regard to the exercise of the spiritual gifts. We teach about how God wants us to live according to scripture. We have, therefore, always tried to balance our teachings with an analysis of the situations we all find ourselves in and also something about the practical way scripture actually applies to these situations. There are other kinds of teachings. For example, we might have a meeting in which we have a teaching on how to improve your grasp of what is going on in the city in the area of business and commerce, in order for men and women in the community to become more responsible for the things they are doing and for the organizations they are working for, to improve their income, to improve their quality of performance at work, etc.
Now, with regard to the exchange of news, we want to have news such as anniversaries, births, marriages, broken legs, need for prayer in hospitals, and in general things about what is happening with all the different people. Again, I am thinking in terms of a crowd of about 200, where that kind of news makes a lot of sense because practically everybody there knows whoever you are talking about. With a little bit of effort, in fact, it is not hard to get a crowd of 200 people to know everyone fairly well. But you have to work at it. It will not happen automatically.
The final category under communication is feelings. We spend some time in our teaching series debunking the idea of running your whole life according to how you feel and this is really right. But, at the same time, we are people who do have feelings and emotions. They play a huge role in our lives and should. It is therefore very important for us to share what we are feeling and experiencing in the right kind of way. We can do that in a meeting of about the size of 200. You can not do this in a very, very large meeting. It focuses on the method of communication rather than on the personality whom everyone knows and loves who is doing the communicating. You can do the latter in a smaller group of 200.
Now the fourth reason for the weekly meeting is worship. Under this I would put music, spontaneous worship, praise, and prayer in all forms. Let me just point out that approximately one third of our time together in smaller meetings is singing. If you add up the number of songs we sing and the average length of the songs, it turns out we are spending a lot of time in singing songs. That is why music ministry is very, very important. It is also important that it continues to be vital and be of such a character that is [sic] is presenting to everyone the kind of music that, when sung, is really prayer or entering into a spirit of worship. Also, with music you can generate a lot of spontaneity, especially with songs like The Litany and some other songs similar to that. When a new song is introduced and we catch onto it fast, it adds a dimension of vitality to the community. But the worship itself in our worship settings is usually spontaneous. It does not always have to be spontaneous. In a typical congregational setting, for example, the worship would be more standardized. It still would be capable of being excellent worship.
The fifth purpose that I have listed for a weekly meeting is to get God’s direction for our lives and for the life of the community. Here we are talking about prophecy and inspired utterances of a variety of types. We try to keep most of the prophecy for the larger meetings, rather than for the smaller meetings, so that the direction would move the community as a whole forward. However, when you are looking at communities that are smaller or in your own branches, and you are looking for direction for the sake of the group assembled, you should not expect prophecy to give you a lot of understanding about what everybody else should be doing. Prophecy is usually given to the people who are there to hear it, rather than to those who are there to repeat it. If the whole community is not assembled, one does not expect the prophecy to be as important to the governance or direction or leadership of the whole. However, our Lord does want to speak to us in prophecy in smaller groups, and there should be time for prophecy at smaller meetings.
The sixth point is that meetings of this type are good for evangelistic purposes. It is possible to bring people to meetings of this sort, when they are in the right position and when it is coordinated in the right kind of way, and they will be able to move forward quite a long way toward the Lord and toward the community. But you have to be careful not to let evangelism get out of bounds. You can have too many strangers at a meeting and destroy the sense of family. It is the same sort of thing you encounter at home when you are putting on a party. If you have too many guests the family does not feel like it is a family. It feels as if it is there to put on a dinner or services of some sort. If you do that continually you lose the sense of family.
The overall purpose is to build up the body of Christ, to build up the body that is gathered. You can always ask yourself the question, “Is what is taking place really building up the body or not?” I would recommend this as the fundamental criterion. Sometimes you can build up the body at the expense of a few people. Sometimes you cannot bring everybody along at the same rate, but you have a sense that, on the whole, everything is moving forward and that at some time those who are being left behind will catch up. They may need some special ministry. You can move the center of 200 forward quite a way. You may leave a few behind with the understanding that they are going to be picked up and brought along also. Let me just give you an example. A lot of people do not like loud praise. If you had a steady diet of loud praise it would certainly be disruptive to the life of the community as a whole. In fact, I think that if you have loud praise at every single meeting it may be too much. You can have some of it but you have to take the time to bring those along who find it objectionable. You have to take the time to explain to them how it is good for some and how on the whole, this moves us forward and give them some perspective on what is going on. So, I offer you that as the main criterion. Is this building up the body? Is it making for relationships and for the deepening of relationships in Christ in the body?
I want to say something about how we do this. I said that the meeting should be weekly. I am thinking of a group of 200 or fewer, between 150 and 200. Not 400, 500, or 1000. Meetings should be prepared and it is very desireable to have the meetings planned to the extent that, if you are leading the meeting or are responsible for it together with others, you have fairly well in mind what you hope to accomplish. If you want sharings, see to it that the good things you have heard get shared. Tell the people ahead of time, “We are going to ask for sharings. We would like you to come forward and share. When it is time to share, don’t wait too long. Come right up.” At the same time you may help them to organize what they are suppose to share so they are in a better position to do the sharing. It requires some preparation to make the meeting seem spontaneous.
Leadership of the meeting must be fundamentally pastoral. It is not a show. It is something in which everyone ought to be brought along. There should be something for everyone, even though not everyone will move at the same rate. It is like pastoring sheep. The requirement is that eventually you move together. For this it is very important that you have a sense of well-being, that you are all a body, moving forward. If you have to stop and go get someone, slow down, wait a minute, go pick up the lost sheep and bring it back into the fold. Then move on together. But there should be a genuine sense of belonging to a large community that people are really part of. “I am missed. I am cared for. People have concern for me.” This needs to be generated.
You could, for example, focus the meeting on the truth. If you do this, it could be very unsound pastorally. People may know the truth but not have any inclination to follow it any longer or to go along with it. The meeting not only has to be true, but it also has to be accurate in the sense of being pastorally effective. The purpose of the meeting is to make the people one in Christ. Scripture teaching should not be directed at explaining every conceivable interpretation of a passage. It should, rather, be oriented to making people accept what it is God is saying to them, to orienting them pastorally so they can pray better or to orienting them toward the world in which they are living so they understand the nature of the problems they are facing. There always has to be a pastoral payoff in everything you do in a community meeting. By “pastoral” I mean useful in situations where people actually live their lives; we don’t want just an academic exercise, an emotional high.
The fourth point in regard to the method is that you have to have leadership in order to avoid the group being dominated by a clique. In fact, the leadership has to see to it that this does not happen. We do have a prophets’ group, a word gifts group, but at the same time we should have broader participation in word gifts so that those who have a word have a chance to speak it. We have to be careful and avoid domination by a few people or a situation where we have a showcase. For example, some people like to speak in front of a large crowd, and they speak very animatedly. This sometimes can be a fairly exciting thing and can move the meeting forward. But, if you have a steady diet of showcase performance it will kill the community because it is not pastorally sound.
Leadership should not be too loose. The tendency for some of us is to lay back and let whatever happens happen. It is important that it not be that way. The meeting needs to be lead, so that everybody will have a feeling that it is moving all together. It should not so tight that it quenches the Spirit or causes people to become critical. If you cirticize someone publically, he or she will never speak again. Leadership should be authentic and not phony. Leadership should also avoid crowd control through the use of emotions. There are ways in which you can involve people together, such as music and, sometimes, dancing, if that is appropriate. There are other pockets of spontaneity you can allow for, such as praying with one another for the gifts of the Spirit. I am speaking here, however, of bringing somebody in on a bandwagon, where the essential element is control or force. A person who finds himself in this position would feel under some pressure to respond in a certain way, e.g. to answer the altar call. Everyone else is doing it, so he has to also. “Have you had a healing lately? Raise your hands.” He might pretend there has been a healing in order to respond with everyone else. When these things actually happen (and they do happen occasionally) look around and watch people’s reactions. Sometimes I have noticed men sit there and watch other people. Then, when they see a lot of hands go up, they will raise their hand also. This is not a very good position for them to be put in.
Another kind of control is mindless loud praise. Too much loud praise fries the brain. I believe that loud praise can be a very good thing, and it often is in our community. Generally it should be something that is a response to a real event. It should be something done in a natural sort of way rather than just a lot of noisemaking. It should be something where there is loud acclaim, e.g., when a miracle is claimed. Recently I thought we had a marvelous miracle story at the end of which there was enthusiastic but rather mild applause. However, later on in the meeting we had quite a lot of loud praise. I thought about that and it just illustrates the point I want to make. If there is ever a time for loud praise, it is when someone tells you about a great miracle that has happened. It should stir your heart. When you hear of a soul being saved or a situation being redeemed by God or a marvelous accomplishment on the part of God, then we should be enthusiastic. But sometimes people do not respond as eagerly to these things as to a word of loud praise. They somehow get led and the praise gets generated by the leader. I believe that is not as real as the former. In general, I believe that loud praise should be the response to something and that it should be natural. Generating a lot of loud praise just for its own sake seems to me not to be a good idea.
Meetings should include a lot of participation and, if possible, activities on the part of everyone who is there. They should be of such a character that they fit in naturally to the moment, rather than cause crowd pressure to force people to move in a certain way. In order for this to happen in the right way, there has to be a leader who provides focus for the meeting. Sometimes the focus can be in the crowd when the leader wants it to be there, such as when various people are being prayed with for trips or for missions or for gifts. But even then the leader has to be in charge.
One way in which you can create a focal point is to have a place of honor. Honor should go to the leader and to others who ought to be honored. There is a role for honor in the meeting. At a meeting you may have a fixed position for those you are honoring. They may not be doing anything, but there is one place where, when you want to honor people, you put them. You do not have to say a word; they are just there. There is a very interesting book entitled The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, which I would recommend to you. In this book there was a description of the head of the community who, when he came to the equivalent of their prayer meeting, sat behind something like a veil. It was difficult to see him, but you knew he was there. He did not say anything during the meeting, but he was, in fact, the spiritual leader of the community and had an enormous influence on their lives. In many religious or ceremonial situations there are positions of honor where the leader will sit, even though he does not lead what is going on. Things of this sort are very useful for providing a sense of stability and permanence to the community.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that the meeting will include a mixture of men, women and children. A meeting of all men is different from a meeting of men, women, and children, or a meeting of men and women only. Things are appropriate for groups of men that are not appropriate, or at least as much, for mixed groups. I would say, on the whole, that there are certain kinds of dancing which will be very valuable to a group of men but which, in the presence of their children or their wives, may not be so desirable. When we do spiritual warfare, there is something unseenly about a woman jumping up and down shaking her fist at Satan. Yet that might be exactly right for men to be doing. There are different ways in which men and women should be participating in gatherings and worship and the leader has to take this into account. You cannot normally have heavy spiritual warfare at a mixed meeting because you would throw the women and children off balance. You might scare the children and probably the women, or at least put them in a position of acting in a very manly sort of way.
The meetings should not necessarily be too predictable. But, on the other hand, they should not be capricious. It is a good idea for the meeting to be planned or prepared so as to eliminate some of the capriciousness. There is already enough spontaneity or character to the meeting if people are participating in the normal way when you have a big crowd present, and you can make meetings very dull by making them very predictable. If, for instance, you have had 15 prophecies for the last 3 weeks about hard times coming, then it does not do a lot of good to have still another five more. It can generate a bad kind of “common-placeness” about the prophetic word.
I would like to say something about guests. There are some guests it is appropriate to introduce in order to accomplish something. For example, recently we had some guests introduced who were from a community that is related to us, and it was to the advantage of our community to know that those folks were there because it generated a sense of participation in something larger than our community alone. On the other hand, you can have a situation where all the guests are introduced because someone brought them or just because they are visiting the community. If you do that you run the risk of decentralizing the meeting. It ceases to be a community meeting and becomes more of a showcase again. Or it becomes a meeting focussed on guests.
The way in which people are introduced is a problem which James talks about in his letter. He is referring to how you behave when a rich man comes into the assembly. It is also true that when different people come in you may have very selfish motives for introducing them one way or another. For example, in our community, it would be a great temptation to introduce some black guests. We could fawn over them in a certain way which would disorient the community. It would not be right. It would be somewhat similar to what James was referring to. On the other hand, it might be a good idea to do that if it would put the guests at ease. But again, you would have to be very careful about that. You would have to know why you are doing what you are doing.
Another element to the meetings are the informal periods. It turns out, as you all know, that a leader is one who is always responsible. He is responsible all the time. There is no time when a leader is not leading. It is very much like a father and his children. No matter where he is with his children, or even when they are not with him, he is concerned for them and is responsible for them. In a certain sense, he never relaxes. He can never cease being a father. He can never cease being responsible for the children. Most people in leadership experience being a leader as a very big drain on them emotionally because they are always responsible. Some people feel that it is great to be a leader for a while but those are the ones who are not the real leaders. If there are people who aspire to leadership they certainly aspire to a noble position, but also to something that will take a great toll on them.
When you are in those informal periods before, during or after a prayer meeting or community meeting, it is just an opportunity for you to do some one-on-one communicating or getting people to be reconciled, or getting things worked out for someone’s job, or getting a family a little better straightened out or solidifying your relationship with somebody who was beginning to feel you did not like them very much. Circulate. You do not have time to just have a good time, sad to say.
Finally, we should avoid gimmicks with regard to our method; something that is just catchy, that is transitory, that is unreal and does not fit into our life.
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