{"id":4206,"date":"2018-01-15T15:09:19","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T15:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journeyonleadership.brentwoodbaptistonline.com\/?p=4206"},"modified":"2018-01-15T15:09:19","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T15:09:19","slug":"engaging-whole-person-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leadership.brentwoodbaptist.com\/adult-discipleship\/engaging-whole-person-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Engaging the Whole Person \u201cin the Community\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<address>By Paul Wilkinson<\/address>\n<p>The mission of Brentwood Baptist Church is to <em>engage the whole person with the whole gospel of Jesus Christ anywhere, anytime with anybody<\/em>. What are some possibilities for \u201cengaging the whole person\u201d in our LIFE Groups?<br \/>\nWe must <strong>internally engage the whole person<\/strong>. We have group members who live as chaotic lives as we do. They carry the same guilt and shame from <strong>poor decisions, broken promises, and sporadic failures<\/strong> as the rest of us. On the other end of the spectrum, we have people who are incredibly, dangerously comfortable with the status quo. Life is good for them and <strong>they are perceiving, undiscerningly, material fruits as God\u2019s favor<\/strong>. And we ourselves, as leaders, are perpetually moving back and forth across this spectrum.<br \/>\nAs Mike Glenn says (my paraphrase): <em>we\u2019re either coming out of a storm or about to go in one<\/em>. We leaders have the advantage because <strong>we are steeped in Scripture as we prepare to teach the Bible<\/strong> each week. Are our <strong>group members diving as deep<\/strong> as we are; are they diving into the Bible at all? <strong>We are perpetually praying about our groups<\/strong>, that we lead them to rich springs of faith and that they are quickened by the Spirit; <strong>are they praying like that?<\/strong> We spend time alone thinking through the content of the <strong>text in solitude with the Spirit<\/strong>; are <strong>they having Sabbath like that?<\/strong><br \/>\nThe <strong>Holy Spirit<\/strong> intercedes and compels us to become our <strong>whole selves that the Lord designed<\/strong>. We are remaining in tune with the Spirit through our prep work each week. We must help our group members to do the same: <u>give them homework, let them struggle with theological tension, forever challenge them to be \u201cin the Word\u201d coupled with a commentary or the like<\/u>. The first step in engaging their whole person is getting them in tune with the Holy Spirit: repentance leading to worship and obedience.<br \/>\nA second level of internal whole person engagement is that we are <strong>caring for one another materially<\/strong>. James asks, \u201c<strong>If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, \u2018Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed,\u2019 but you don\u2019t give them what the body needs, what good is it?<\/strong>\u201d (James 2:15-16) Do we personally <em>know <\/em>the material struggles of our group members? More strategically, do we have the substructure in place such that care groups <em>know <\/em>the material struggles and needs of our group members? If our LIFE Groups are primarily social space discipleship elevating community, mission, and practice through Bible and prayer, then how are we creating personal space discipleship elevating closeness, support, and challenge through deeper Bible, more personal prayer, and sharing\/confession? <u>Does your group have a set of care leaders that regularly follow up with assigned members to see how they are and in what ways the group can support them<\/u>? If not, then strongly consider creating such a ministry.<br \/>\nPart of reaching people spiritually is caring for them physically. We must <strong>help them get in sync with the Holy Spirit<\/strong> so that they can respond to the Spirit\u2019s conviction and prompting. We must <strong>create healthy communities that are welcoming and hospitable<\/strong> so that they can readily receive the lost and searching. We must organize the necessary substructures <strong>to care for people\u2019s material struggles<\/strong>, coupled with the Brentwood Baptist Church benevolence team. <strong><u>As Allan Taylor is wont to say, <em>if we want to reach people with the gospel, then it\u2019s going to cost us time, money, and effort<\/em>. May we be willing to count the cost<\/u><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Paul Wilkinson The mission of Brentwood Baptist Church is to engage the whole person with the whole gospel of Jesus Christ anywhere, anytime with anybody. What are some possibilities for \u201cengaging the whole person\u201d in our LIFE Groups? We must internally engage the whole person. We have group members who live as chaotic lives&#8230;","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13,15],"tags":[54,76,121,249,366],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Engaging the Whole Person \u201cin the Community\u201d - Adults<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/leadership.brentwoodbaptist.com\/adult-discipleship\/engaging-whole-person-community\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Engaging the Whole Person \u201cin the Community\u201d - Adults\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Paul Wilkinson The mission of Brentwood Baptist Church is to engage the whole person with the whole gospel of Jesus Christ anywhere, anytime with anybody. 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