Missing last year's Bible study

It’s a brand new year and everything is starting up again, including home group. Off you go, expecting what you got used to last year… but new people are there now. And because there are brand new people, the group feels different. The old dynamic that you quite liked last year (or at least got used to!) isn’t the same. The new people aren’t an exact fit for the group. They lean right politically, and the rest of you swing left; they want to support refugees, while the rest of you have different solutions; they send their kids to a private Christian school, but your kids all go to the public school down the road. The old jokes don’t work. There’s a kind of awkwardness. It feels like a completely different group.

How can you think about and approach this change?

Maybe your situation is a little different: maybe you’re the new person! You’ve finally decided to join a Bible study, but you feel like you just don’t fit. These guys are older, long-time friends with each other, younger, more affluent, unemployed, all extroverted, all introverted—just so different to where you are at. What do you do? Was this a bad idea? What’s your attitude to this new group you’ve joined?

The best way forward is the same for both groups of people: to see this situation as a way that Jesus rules your life.

Here in your study group are some people that Jesus has put in your path to love as you love yourself, as you follow Jesus. If you are radically different to them, then your being a part of their group is a good gift of God to them because they are learning to love bigger than they may have before. Every clunky conversation, every misunderstanding, every minor annoyance is a chance to forgive and persevere.  Every moment of true, others-centred love is a moment of change fuelled by the Holy Spirit himself as he remakes us into Jesus’ image. It feels horrible. But it is glorious.

If you miss the old vibe of your group, it might be because you were all sufficiently similar that you quickly ‘got’ each other. It is much easier to love people more like yourself, but loving people who aren’t like you is exactly what we are all called to do. Loving your brothers and sisters in Christ means accepting and loving people who are completely different from you—except that you both trust and follow Jesus. Accepting that these people who are different to you are your family, instead of dismissing them as beneath you or as weird, is agreeing with God. Treating them well despite a sense of disconnection is trusting God and living by faith.

So embrace your adjusted group. Ask God to change you if you struggle to keep attending each week, so that you can find contentment and express love in this new place he’s called you into. Ask him to comfort as you are misunderstood and when you miss what you had before. Ask for wisdom and kindness as you move into another awkward moment or conversation.  Find ways of giving thanks for this, and learn to love these fellow soldiers in the battle to trust Jesus first and best.

It’s a brand new year. Are you ready to follow Jesus into it?