Looking for Beta Group leaders and hosts

Redeemer launches new, seven-week Community Groups every fall called “Beta Groups” in an effort to help people new to the city, new to Christianity, new to Redeemer, or new to intentional community to find life-giving and life-transforming community. In order to do this, we need people who are willing to lead and/or host groups.

What we look for in a leader is simple: someone who loves Jesus, who believes his gospel and seeks to live out its implications in all of life, and who loves others. Someone who has a genuine desire both for their own growth and the growth of others.

For hosts, we look for someone who can create an atmosphere where people will feel welcome, like they are at home.

Remember that God doesn’t ask us to do anything out of guilt. Jesus has put away our guilt. Rather, it is his grace changing our lives that motivates us to be a part of changing others’, and it’s his grace that teaches us to look beyond ourselves and towards the good of others.

The gospel teaches us that it’s only when we forget about our own happiness that we actually find ourselves to be truly happy.

In Mark 8:34-35, Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

To “lose your life” means more than just to flat-line. It means to give your heart, mind, and will — everything that makes you “alive” beyond the biological — to Jesus.

These words are as challenging today as they were then. Yet millions of people over the last two millennia have accepted Jesus’s call and found that no matter what they have given up for his sake, it does not compare to what they have gained in him.

These words are true in an ultimate sense, but this truth plays out in our lives in a thousand different, ordinary ways. Every day, we are being asked to “lose our lives” in small ways — to give up our desires, our comfort, and our convenience for the sake of another. Jesus so often asks us to give up things that we think will make us happy for him and for the gospel.

It’s the peculiar pleasure of a Christian to be able to say that by doing this, by ceasing to seek our own happiness and to give our lives to Jesus and his mission, we actually find that we are happier than we would have been otherwise.

Yes, leading and hosting will take effort, and it won’t always be easy. Yet this may be a small way that Jesus is asking you to “lose your life” this fall — to give up your comfort and convenience for the sake of another. As you serve others, you may find that you’ve forgotten about your own happiness, and in that, you are truly happy.

This is one practical way that you can live out Jesus’s call this year. Would you prayerfully consider leading or hosting a Beta Group this fall?

For more information, visit redeemer.com/beta.

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Articles in this Issue

		Defining a Gospel Movement Tim Keller
		A twenty-year-old commitment fulfilled Mai Hariu-Powell
		The Redeemer Lincoln Square Report Joe and Connie Ricci
		Formation: In Christ, With Community, For the City Lyn Cook
		The problem with our “Me-ology” Peter Ong