What do decisions, addiction, self-esteem, pornography, doubts, and the Sermon on the Mount have in common? They are all topics that we frequently discuss in our spiritual small group for guys.

As a congregation grows and reaches a certain size, we rejoice that many are hearing and receiving the Good News, but we also begin to struggle with a few things. One of these things is intimacy and openness between our brothers and sisters in Christ. We sometimes struggle to be completely honest about our faith walk.

One of the ways that we found to help overcome this, was by starting a small group for guys with a strong spiritual focus. We call it “HODOS” – which in Greek means “the way”. The Way was the term used in the first century to describe the Christians’ different lifestyle, which is based on Jesus’ teachings. Our focus is to live differently in a world that has so many temptations to offer – especially to young guys.

This group meets every two weeks for prayer and discussion on a passage from the Sermon on the Mount. Sometimes we make a special retreat for a whole weekend. Every week each of us meets with another member of the group to share our struggles and victories. We are all committed to living out spiritual disciplines such as fasting one day of the week, reading the Sermon on the Mount twice a week, and spending 15 minutes in silent prayer every day.

Everyone in the group is being edified and challenged. The strong sense of community and spiritual disciplines are useful tools for God to create change in our lives. We want to keep the group small (12 members) for the sake of intimacy. This past weekend we welcomed one more member into the group. He is eager to share in this spiritual journey.

We hope to start more groups like this one. In this age of technology where anonymity is highly valued and our social life is on Facebook, our society thirsts for a new deeper sense of community, which can only be truly found in the Way of Jesus.