There is a wonderful description of effective fellowship in Mark 2. A paraplegic wanted to hear Jesus teaching, but the room was so crowded that no one else could get in. Four of his friends made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven.÷ Get up. Pick up your stretcher and go home."

John Ortberg refers to this group of roof-crashers committed to Jesus as “the fellowship of the mat: one of the killer small groups of all time.” Ortberg describes their decision to get their friend to Jesus as one of determined faith. “They had decided they wouldn't let anything get in their way, so strong is their trust in Jesus, so great their love for their friend,” he writes in Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them .

“These men are devoted to their friend, so they decide a little roofing is not going to stand in their way. They serve him with determination, boldness and a certain right-brained creativity: Community gets built by servants. Great community gets built by roof-crashers.”
When I last wrote an article for this newsletter, I had been chairman of the women's ministry at our church for two years. God recently let me pass that job to E.A. Vermillion, whose many gifts are much better suited to that position than mine. I am now the team member responsible for fellowship.

At one time I would have referred to any social gathering at church as “fellowship.” As a ministry, we have sponsored dinners and other events that were primarily social. We started affinity groups that allow the women of our church to get to know one another through bridge games, painting, scrapbooking, gourmet cooking and a host of other activities. Next month we will be hosting a recipe exchange, where each woman brings her favorite dish for everyone to taste and shares copies of the recipe, so that each woman goes home with a whole cookbook. These types of gatherings are a good entry point to involve women in our ministry and begin the process of closer relationships. But social events don't change casual church acquaintances into roof-crashers. I think only small groups can do that.

Before I joined a small group, I had a lot of friends, people I could go to lunch with or see at parties, people I worked with, even people who attended my church. But I noticed that if I changed jobs, towns, social groups, or churches, my friendship with these people rapidly dissipated. I realized that these friendships were usually shallow, based on proximity, common social circles or secular interests.

For seven years I have been in several small groups at First Pres, and I discovered in each one a “fellowship of the mat.” When the book of Acts says of the first Christian small group, “They devoted themselves to the apostle's teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer,” I doubt it is talking about playing bridge together or scrapbooking. The kind of intimate fellowship described in Acts comes when you are in a safe, small group where you and your group members can study the Bible, share your spiritual struggles, and “open wide your hearts.” (2 Corinthians 6:13)

“The word for ‘fellowship’ in the New Testament Greek, koinonia , means neither punch and cookies nor cookie-cutter Christians,” state Chuck Colson and Ellen Vaughn in Being the Body. “It conveys something much richer. Literally it means ‘a communion,' a participation of people together in God's grace. It describes a new community in which individuals willingly covenant to share in common, to be in submission to each other, to support one another and ‘bear one another's burdens,' as Paul wrote to the Galatians, and to build each other up in relationship with the Lord.”

The collective faith of my small groups has carried me so much farther spiritually than I could go alone. My small-group sisters have loved me but also held me accountable, driven me deeper into the Word, and challenged my complacency. Notice in the roof-crashers story, the Bible tells us Jesus saw their faith and healed the man. The paraplegic wouldn't have left his mat if it hadn't been for his friends' practical help and their faith.

It seems to me that all fellowship- and community-building efforts in our women's ministry ought to try to move women into tight-knit, supportive, burden-bearing, small-group communion. Last month, a woman in one of my small groups notified us that her husband and child had been in a horrific car accident. While she waited at the emergency room for her injured family to arrive by ambulance and helicopter, she called on her small-group members to start praying fervently. Quickly group members left jobs and families to go to the hospital and pray with her. Each of us knew her so well that we knew exactly how to pray, not just for the healing of her husband and son, but for her to overcome fears, build up her faith, and help her accept the lessons God wanted to teach her. We surrounded her with love and support that she hadn't always experienced in other churches.

She recently told me that in a weird way, the accident was the best thing to ever happen to her. Our prayers were answered. Against all human logic, her family members left the hospital without the need for surgery, a cast, or even one stitch. More important, her faith in God's supernatural power and grace, and her ability to trust and open wide her heart, were increased exponentially.

My number-one goal as community and fellowship coordinator on our women's ministry team is to assure that every woman in our church has the opportunity to develop those kinds of roof-crashing relationships. “Small groups are not an add-on secondary concern or fad. What happens in a good small group is part of the very work of the church itself. It is primary, and should be seen that way,” according to Henry Cloud and John Townsend in Making Small Groups Work , an essential manual for small-group leadership.

There is a secondary benefit to a small-group emphasis in women's ministry. Planning large retreats and dinners for 140 can be organizational challenges. Even Jesus concentrated his efforts only on a group of twelve. Wouldn't our time and effort be better spent identifying and training strong small-group leaders and then encouraging our members to join a group? Only then can our members experience the fellowship that God outlined in Acts: the communion of the saints or, more colorfully, the fellowship of the mat.