Learning His Multiplication

The vision at Harbour Wesleyan is to reach out to people while being His church. Our desire is to Love God with all of heart, all of our soul, and all of our strength; therefore, we are determined to love our ‘neighbours’ as ourselves and sharing this rich, life-giving message of Jesus Christ who came in the flesh to show us the way to be reconnected with God. In the process of seeking direction we have sensed a definite call to be a church structured around small or cell groups. The backbone of these groups are people who have decided to follow Christ, who want to be taught how to do so by learning the scriptures and the disciplines of the faith; such as, prayer, fasting, Bible study, etc…

Recently our church made an attempt to grow from one group to two. Our intention was to create a group that would enrich family relationships and enhance the spiritual leadership of our parents with our kids. The focal point in our minds for the second group was to create a space for young adults. Much thought and prayer went into this move; however, I cannot say that it has been an easy transition. Not everyone has been pleased with the move. Not everyone was actually served by the transition. Nevertheless, we have patiently waited and watched over the past month as we moved into the two groups. First, let me say that often times we believe that people are ready for something that they often are not. This is a misjudgment on the side of leadership. Moreover, I believe that the bigger problem stems from how we made the attempt to grow. We made the assumption that people were ready and that we could take those people and break apart something very divine that was happening in our initial ‘prototype’ group and re-create that in two separate groups.

I believe that that was wrong thinking. After re-assessing what has happened I think we tried to do something artificially that must happen “organically.” The Spirit of God wants to direct things and will make things happen in accordance with our obedience to act. Sometimes we (with the best of intentions) take the reigns and move ahead in our own ‘intelligence’ and ‘know-how’ without thinking or taking time to realize that God is going another direction. I believe that this is the type of error we have made. Not that we were willfully disobedient, but that we were not sensitive enough to what the spirit of God was doing at that time. Therefore, the results were not what we had expected.

“What did we expect?” you ask. Well, what we hope and pray for is the development of a spontaneous movement of God through our obedience to serve and work here in Sydney. We pray to see God’s Spirit move and work to bring salvation and healing to the entire Isle of Cape Breton! As Neil Cole says in his book, Organic Church, “Spontaneous expansion is true power! This what we all want deep in our hearts. This is also what our Lord wants. Let’s have the faith in the Lord of the harvest and in the seed of His word rather than in our methods and strategies. Let us find a way to believe once again, like a child, in magic seeds and miraculous trees.” We didn’t move that direction with our first attempt at cell group multiplication; however, we are certain that God’s grace will see us through our own mistakes as well as any other setbacks that we have/will encounter/ed. We know that God is good and the people God has led us to befriend are just that, friends. The relationships we have formed are stronger than the errors we have made and thankfully God’s Spirit will get us in the right place. Cole also states, (with regard to cell group multiplication) “Actually, reproduction is not hard. It is natural. Dare I say, it is even pleasurable…The fact that reproduction is thought to be so hard and painful for churches is evidence of how far removed we are from being healthy and natural.” Not everything has been wrong or a failure. We have learned from our first experience at ‘multiplication’ and are excitedly waiting to see what is next!

-Michael Hutton