About Our Life Groups

Table Of Contents

| What is a Cell Church?
| What is a Life Group?
| Group Membership
- Membership Basics
| Staying Connected in Your Life Group
| Life Group Relaunch Timeline
FAQ's

| What is a Cell Church?

Life Church is a cell church. That means that our main work of making disciples for Jesus is accomplished through small groups that meet weekly. Groups like these are generally known as cell groups, but individual churches often have particular names for them. Here at Life Church we refer to them as Life Groups.

By organizing into life groups we minimize that chance that people will “fall through the cracks”.

Life groups also provide us with a practical way of “seeking first God’s Kingdom and his righteousness”. As we learned from our Following Jesus: Family Up module, God’s Kingdom begins with following Jesus and includes everyone who follows Jesus. If you are not genuinely connected to followers of Jesus, you are not seeking God’s Kingdom.

Check out these resources:

What is a cell church?

3 Keys for Successful Small Group-based Churches: Principles that Fruitful Cell Church Pastors Apply

| What is a Life Group?

A life group is a group of 3 – 15 believers who come together weekly outside of the church building for evangelism, community, and spiritual growth with the goal of making disciples who make disciples. As its members win people to Christ and turn them into disciples, the life group itself grows until it needs to multiply into more than one group in order to maintain the size of 3 – 15 that preserves intimacy.

Members of the congregation sitting in groups of 3-5 having a dicussion

At Life Church, we do discipleship for busy people! Our life groups are an extremely important part of the way we carry out our mission:

Life groups provide members with a safe setting in which they can learn to enjoy knowing Jesus without fear, inadequacy, guilt, or shame.

Life groups give members an opportunity to become a family as they follow Jesus.

Life group members learn how to function together as Jesus’ body by making their gifts available to one another.

Life group members learn to work together to expand Jesus’ kingdom by reaching out to the unchurched (people who have not been to a church for the past 6 months other than for a wedding or a funeral).

Check out these resources that describe our approach to cell ministry:

More Important than the Name of the Small Group: Defining a Life-Giving Small Group

The Best Small Group Order: Introducing the 4Ws

| Group Membership

Membership Basics

Groups may be single gender or mixed.

Groups may include people with a common background (e.g. students, teachers, police, people in recovery, neighborhoods) or from diverse backgrounds.

Groups are normally open to new members, but some may be temporarily closed (up to one year).

| Staying Connected in Your Life Group

Register in e-Life

Once registered, you’ll see your Life Group (and other groups) under “My Groups.

If you’ve donated before, your record already exists — but you must register yourself to view giving history or update info.

Join your group’s email list

Each group has an email list for members.

Confirm with your group leader that you’ve been added.

Check out our email lists page

Save Personal Contacts

After logging into e-Life, look up your group members’ info.

Add them to your phone or email contacts so you can connect during the week.

| Life Group Relaunch Timeline

January 2021

We re-organized our life groups around individual virtual check-ins by life group leaders and monthly group meetings via Zoom.

January 2021

July 2021

We reshuffled the designated life group members into 2 ongoing groups.

July 2021

September 2021

– We dropped the Bible study portion of our Sunday services.
– We shortened our sermons so that worship and sermon are now usually completed between 10:30am and 11:30am.
– We began breaking up into life groups immediately after the sermon to discuss the sermon passage.

September 2021

December 2023

We started keeping everyone together after the sermon on 1st Sundays for Q&A / Discussion. We continue breaking up into life groups for the rest of each month.

December 2023

March 2024

We set up the Life Church Training Page to help our members understand the overall picture of how life groups fit together with our other activities to produce disciples who make disciples.

March 2024

June 2024

We are transitioning our life groups from meeting briefly after the Sunday sermon to conducting a full 90 minute meeting during the week – ideally in homes. Our first step will be for every life groups to conduct a full 90 minute meeting away from our church meeting space at least once a month.

June 2024

July 2024

We are returning to our original September 2021 plan for sermons to end by 11:30am – giving us a full hour for the life group meetings that take place subsequently. This will allow the groups to cover 3 of the 4 “W”s:
– Welcome (15 minutes)
– Worship (normally 20 minutes, but skipped for Sunday after-sermon meetings)
– Word (40 minutes)
– Witness (15 minutes)

July 2024

FAQ’s

What’s the difference between Life Groups vs Cliques?

Without Life Groups, we are at the mercy of Cliques and people who aren’t in a clique will “fall through the cracks”. Furthermore, even the people who are in cliques will have some of their issues and needs “fall through the cracks”. This is because life groups are organized to please, and be led by the Holy Spirit, whereas cliques develop solely around whatever the people in the cliques find appealing. Life groups are organized to help you grow and overcome your “issues”; cliques simply aren’t!

Are Life Groups as important as Sunday Services?

Yes, our Sunday services and our life groups are equally important components of the ministry of Life Church. Our Sunday services provide corporate worship, a transcendent experience of God, and biblical instruction from trained teachers. Our life groups provide intimacy and a chance to process Sunday’s instruction in community. They also provide an environment conducive to discipleship. Because our life groups are the cutting edge of our discipleship, everything we do should promote their health and growth. This means that our Sunday sermons will be structured to support the discussions that take place in the life groups.

What are Life Groups like?

Life groups ensure that they deal with the whole person every time that they meet. They care for the emotional, relational, spiritual and ministerial needs of every participant. During the meeting the life group members seek to express Jesus Christ as members of his body.

These groups normally have no set end date, but they may take regularly scheduled breaks (e.g. summer vacation). They continue to meet on an ongoing basis and evolve as new participants join the group and the group eventually multiplies in order to maintain an intimate environment for its members.

Life groups will generally be led by a leader and an assistant. As the group grows through the groups Spirit-led outreach (fueled in part by the activities in the “Witness” section of the weekly meetings), the leaders and assistant will typically multiply the group using one of the following two approaches:

– The leader and the assistant will each take approximately half of the group and begin 2 “daughter” life groups. Each new group will then select a new assistant who has already had practice helping to lead the “mother” group.
– The leader and assistant may instead choose two new trainees to begin assuming overall responsibility for the group. At the appropriate time, the two new trainees will take half of the group and the original leaders will take the other half. This will often be the policy when the group is lead by a husband-wife team.

How do I find a group?

– Visit us on Sunday mornings and ask to speak one of our Life Group leaders
– Contact us phone or email to request a visit