I honestly did not like the idea of small groups in church. Some churches call it lifegroup/small group/Connect group. Whatever it was, I had disliked the idea of group of men gathering in a circle and talking about their feelings etc. It just didn’t look very cool for me.
But when I moved to Japan I came to join a local church, and as expected I was invited to join a small group because that was like the culture of that church. In the group we would share about our good news from the week, and then we would share a scripture from the Bible and what we thought about it.
I personally disliked it because I never read the Bible, even as a Christian. Cause whenever I did I felt so sleepy and it just never connected with me, with all the “Thous” “Thy” and words that I didn’t understand. It was just too much work.
Anyhow, I really liked the people in church and so I didn’t want to change to different church but the thing was I needed to participate in that small group.
I wasn’t going to start reading the Bible just because my leader told me so. Instead, I had this devotional book that my mom had given me but never really read. But I knew it had these ready made scripture devotionals. So what I did was before Sunday, I would copy these notes and I would share those in the group, them thinking it was my own devotional words.
And so whenever we’d gather and share, they were so impressed by how wise my words were. Little did they know I was simply copying and pasting from this devotional book.
I did that for quite a while. Until one day, we were at La Pausa with a bigger group of guys. And when it finally came for me to share, I shared the scripture where Jesus told his disciples to pick up this donkey / or small horse that nobody was paying attention to. And that he wanted to ride it into Jerusalem where he would be welcomed as the Savior.
And as I share about it, the idea of this particular passage was that nobody had paid any attention to this donkey. That it didn’t look like something worthy for a king to ride. It was such a humble animal that you would not imagine Jesus riding it into Jerusalem.
But Jesus doesn’t care about appearance nor background. He chose this donkey regardless.
And as I spoke these words in the group, I kind of got emotional half-way through. Cause I felt like I was the donkey that Jesus was talking about.
Thing is, I struggled with my low self esteem, and had always compared myself with others. But I felt Jesus was telling me, those things don’t matter to him. But just like the donkey, he just wanted me to be available and be willing.
And what happened that night changed something inside of me. All of a sudden, I wanted to read more about Jesus words. All of a sudden there was this hunger in me to read the Bible for myself, not impress the group but to know about this Jesus that accepts me for who I was.
So I began reading the Bible, I used a different translation too. And that’s where my life began to change. I also began to see the value of small groups and how accountability works. And I also learned why the local church is soooo important for me to be a part of.
If you’re still on the fence of joining a local church, I want to encourage you to just try it. You’ll find great people there. People who love Jesus. On the other hand if you find a church that doesn’t love Jesus, then I think you should think about it.