I have mentioned our new church, Catalyst Church. The church doesn’t have Sunday School. Instead, people are broken up into small groups of 6-8 singles or 6 couples and meet once a week in someone’s home. This provides a much more intimate setting and a chance to really open up and connect. I haven’t had a good bible study since college so I was excited about the small groups beginning. Small groups are formed at an event called GroupLink.
Today was the big day. Everyone interested in small groups arrived at the appointed time and put on name tags. We were then directed to a room with tables labeled by stage of life – Age 20-30 single female, Age 20-30 single male, Age 20+ married with kids, Age 20-25 no kids, Age 26-30 no kids, etc.
Theoretically this should have made forming a group very easy. The problem comes from the fact that a lot of us know each other from our work at the church and are at separate tables because of only a small age difference. Wade and I ended up sitting at a table with 7 couples. The limit was 6. It took us an hour to figure out a way to split our group that people were okay with. We tried to separate the group by age, pregnancy, church staff, etc. Wade and I kept giving each other looks – we were both thinking this reminded us of sorority rush.
There was one group everyone wanted to be in, nobody wanted to be mean, and everybody wanted everyone else to be happy. The funny thing to me is that this is an 8 week trial group before choosing the group you will stay with for 12-24 months. All is well now and I have to admit that I am excited about the group – we are meeting for a get-to-know-you dinner tomorrow night. There is even one couple that had visited church for the first time this morning – they rock!
The tables at the meeting tonight were decorated with gourds and Wade brought home a mini pumpkin. He wrapped up his evening by practicing for our pumpkin carving party. Because he no longer has an active blog, I am posting a picture for him.
