At Newlife, we recognise the God-given need for people to gather in community. From the very beginning of the church, fellowship was a radical response to the gospel of Jesus–bringing together people who otherwise would not have gathered but for the grace of Jesus Christ. These communities became the bedrock of discipleship and mission within the growth of the early church.

As the church has spread across the world, we continue to see both large gatherings and smaller, more intimate gatherings–all of them shaping God’s people to become more like Jesus. We need language to make sense of both of these spaces.

On one level, there are local, corporate gatherings of God’s people. In the Uniting Church, we call this the gathering of the Congregation or Faith Community. Here, the Word is preached and the sacraments are offered. This is the centre of worship and formation for a Christian. On another level, we’ve seen how smaller gatherings can complement the corporate gathering of God’s people. Some, like the Lutherans in thepietist movement of the 18th century, started discipleship groups called “Colleges of Piety.” Others, like the elderly sisters Peggy and Christine Smith started prayer groups in the Hebrides in 1949, contending for the revival God brought years later. In all this, church history bares witness to the ways in which smaller gatherings can complement the work God does in and through the corporate gatherings of God’s people.

At Newlife, we want to be clear about the different ways that smaller groups function in our life together. We celebrate and oversee three distinct kinds of groups: Community Groups, Prayer Groups, and Life Groups.
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