Group Life: Heather Zempel

Very good stuff from one of our favorite authors!

by Sam O'Neal

If you're not familiar with Heather Zempel, you need to go to SmallGroups.com right now and search for what she's written there. It's all great stuff. You can also go to her blog, which is called Wineskins for Discipleship.

Today at Group Life, Heather talked about the reality of mess in small groups. Specifically, the fact that messes are given in any place where human beings come together. I intellectually agree with everything that Heather said, including different ways to engage and address the messes as a process for growth.

But I've not experienced a lot of this recently. I'm in a pretty clean group right now, and I guess that scares me. Are the group members just not opening up? Am I not providing the right kind of atmosphere for them to open up? Is it possible that we're just in a time of little trouble right now, and we really all like each other as much as we claim to?

I wish I had answers to these questions, but I'm pretty blank right now. I'm going to chew on this for a little while, but I'm curious what all of you are experiencing, as well. Got mess? (reminds me of those milk commercials.) And if not, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is that your fault as the leader, or the fault of your group members?

posted by Sam O'Neal on October 24, 2009 11:55 AM