Small Group Goodbyes

We had only been attending our church a few months when Pastor Cindy invited us into her office for a talk. Not because we were in trouble, but because she saw potential in us, and she wanted to get to know us better to see if we would be a good fit to be small group leaders.

We had led a couple of small groups prior to that invitation, and we knew we loved doing it. After she talked to us for a while, she said we were welcome to become official leaders if we wanted to give it a try. We were nervous...only because we were new. When sign-up Sunday came, we stood behind the table at church, sporting our matching small group t-shirts, and waited to see if anyone would want to be in a group led by two strangers.

Still to this day, I'm convinced our group was built up because it met on Tuesdays. No one knew us. I had no idea if anyone even wanted to know us. But Tuesdays worked for them, so they signed up.

We started out that first fall with about a dozen people in our living room. We were all over the place in age and life station. We had older, middle-aged, and younger members. We had married and engaged couples. We had new believers and long-time Christians. We had people who had been part of that church forever and others were new like we were.

Every other Tuesday night they came, choosing a coffee cup from the kitchen, filling a plate with snacks, and settling in to learn together for a couple of hours.

We finished the first year and the second one began. People came back. They all came back except the couple that moved away. (We miss you guys!!) And then a third year - with new couples added to the mix. We grew until we were almost bursting at the seams.

I think it was in the third year that we finally hit our stride. Some couples who didn't even attend our church anymore still wanted to be in the group because we'd become framily for each other. One friend who came just to make a video one night ended up staying and becoming part of the group.

People stopped leaving the moment study time was over. It was not at all uncommon for them to stay an hour or more past study time just to talk and have more snacks.

We loved it, and we loved them. We had prayed people through losses. Our people had prayed us through losses. We had celebrated answers to prayer. We wrestled through difficult questions. We told stories.

And when the world shut down, we started meeting on Zoom so we could still see each other and share life.

When we wrote the email a few weeks ago - the one in which we told them we were moving - we weren't prepared for the outpouring of love and sadness that came our way. We knew they loved us, but we didn't know they loved us that much.

And they needed to tell us goodbye. We planned a Zoom meeting, but it wasn't enough. They needed to see us and hear our story - and we needed to tell them it was okay to continue on even if we weren't there with them each week.

So a week ago today, one of the couples (with a lot of space to allow us to spread out) invited us over for an evening of talking and praying together - and I think it was just what we all needed. We cried, they cried, and at the end of the night, we got close enough to get in a picture together before spreading back out for air-hugs.

We got a nice picture, with everyone looking and smiling, but it's this picture I'll be framing for our new house. (We thought the pictures were over and we saw the timer flashing for one more.) These laughing, loving faces are the ones who made our small group leadership such a delight. These are the people who have loved us so well these last three years. These are the people we will miss studying with every other week, but these are also the people who have given us the hope that we can lead again in a new atmosphere with a new group.

Small groups aren't the answer to everything in life, but for us, they have sure been a blessing. And this crowd is a big part of the reason why.