Posts about Jay Fennell

Community, Accountability, Family

It’s no secret that Brentwood Baptist is a large church setting.  For some, it is all too easy to slip in and out of our church building without making a meaningful connection with anyone.  We are here to remedy that as quickly and as passionately as possible.  While corporate worship is shared among many, we aim to make this big church setting feel smaller and more intimate, which is one of the countless benefits of LIFE Groups.  We are so thankful for you, the leaders, for helping facilitate such intimacy throughout the many people that make their way in for LIFE Groups on Sundays, during the week, on campus, and off campus.  But the goal is still out there for us to keep striving forward.

⁴² And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. ⁴³ And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. ⁴⁴ And all who believed were together and had all things in common. ⁴⁵ And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. ⁴⁶ And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.                                                                                                Acts 2:42-47

 
What a fantastic scene being painted here, of the once downtrodden, the once defeated, now redeemed by the resurrection of Christ.  Here, a watershed moment where Christ issued His Helper upon his followers and thousands came to professing Jesus as Savior.  The journey for these multitudes of people didn’t stop at their decisions for salvation in Christ, they continued on in fellowship with one another, to teaching, to caring for one another.  Just as these masses were struck with awe, we pray with every fiber of our being that all who step foot in Brentwood Baptist would be struck with that same awe because they have a people so ready and so willing to love them and care for them to ends unknown.  That is why we do LIFE Groups.  We hear words like “community” and phrases like “building relationships” and perhaps after hearing them over and over, they tend to lose a bit of their zeal.  Let this be a time where you are refreshed in their meaning and struck with awe and wonder at the family you have found here with your brothers and sisters in Christ.  Know that that is our call to discipleship, to provide this sense of family and community for everyone as we encourage growth and advancement towards Christlikeness.  LIFE Groups are such a wonderful tool that we get to utilize to breed such growth, love, and care.
Again, with Group Connect on the horizon, we are asking you, our leaders, to come alongside of us in prayer and support as we pray that so many would come thirsty for life abundant, and that they would find Jesus through the teaching offered in LIFE Groups and the intimate community to be had.  We ask you to look at your own experiences, your own blessings that you have found through LIFE Groups and know that those same blessings are to be had by so many.  So, pray for boldness, that many would step out and be vulnerable for a bit, only to find the open arms of Jesus waiting on them through the small group LIFE Group communities and families.
Things to Pray For:

• For many to find home here at Brentwood Baptist through LIFE Groups.
• For feelings of boldness in Group Seekers to step out of their comfort zone and plug in.
• For Group Connectors, for discernment on their part in helping our Seekers find rich community.
• For LIFE Groups to continue on as a vehicle that breeds true, genuine, and Christlike relationships between people here at Brentwood Baptist.

Expansion by Multiplication

In 2000, Haley Joel Osmont, Kevin Spacey, and Helen Hunt teamed up for the movie Pay it Forward.  This movie isn’t the cornerstone of any of their careers.  It’s not necessarily a fantastic movie, but if you’re a big sap like me, it has its place when you’re in the mood for a tearjerker.  In this film, Spacey’s character assigns a class of youngsters a year-long project of coming up with an idea to change the world and put it into action.  Not your garden variety middle school project, but Osmont’s character returns with an idea that catches even the brilliant teacher off guard.  The model that this young student returns with is one where an individual does one big favor for three people that cannot be returned, only “paid forward” to three others and so on, and so forth.
However cheesy the movie may be, this is the multiplication model that we desire here at Brentwood Baptist in regard to discipling leaders.  Think of your own story.  Think of those around you that encouraged you, that sparked the idea in your head and in your heart that you are more than capable of leading, of shepherding, of loving and edifying.  Who can you pay that blessing forward to?  We desire and are called to growth here at Brentwood Baptist and, while addition is always welcome, multiplication is so much more expansive and empowering to those around us.
With Group Connect on the horizon, we have the goal of initiating 30 new LIFE Groups this fall.  After surveying the need, there is potential to be at least 250-300 people at this event on August 23, which is wonderful that so many would be so hungry to plug in and go deeper with Christ.  With such a need for harvest before us, we find ourselves in deep need of leaders like yourselves to rise up and steward these groups to come.  It is no easy task to do what you, and to have leaders like you is such a blessing, so you can sympathize with the reverence that we carry into this search for new leaders to rise up and lead these new Group Seekers.
We ask you to once again join us in prayer for Group Connect, for our passion to see those not plugged in here at Brentwood Baptist to jump in with both feet and find rich community as you have.  Along with that, we ask that you pray with us for solid leadership to rise up and look to care for these people seeking to plug into a LIFE group.  We ask you to pray for those who embody and live out 2 Timothy 2:15:

¹⁵ Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

As said earlier, it is not easy doing what you do as leaders, but we invite you to pray that there be a spark that ignites a fire in the souls of those who are called to leadership, that boldness would well up inside of them to the point that they know clearly that to follow through in obedience is to step forward as a leader.
Things to Pray for:

• That leaders would rise up in obedience.

• That disciples continue to be made with true and genuine hearts for Christ.

• That as people are poured into, they obediently pour outward and slosh out the love of Christ that fills their hearts.