We had a really encouraging home group on Tuesday this week - it was an answer to prayer! The group has decided to meet ever week, whether or not Gilberto (the vicar) is around. This shows quite a growth for the group, as they are always very reliant on him, and the studies often just end up to be him preaching. It was a really good study on John 1:35-42 - where Andrew goes and tells his brother Simon Peter that they’ve found the Messiah. It led onto all sorts of things in the area of how can we encourage growth in the church by different ways of inviting people - both within the existing congregation and outside. It was also interesting afterwards to here some of the concerns of the people in the group, and to realise that the same concerns are found here as back home - the small group who appear to do everything without any credit and keep getting given more to do, and the larger group whose involvement is restricted to services.

The study also made me think about the phrase that John used: “The Lamb of God” - What would it have meant to the people at the time? Would it have been understood in the same way as we do? Clearly the Jews would have know of the lamb as the sacrifice at the passover, but would they have made any link between this and a person being referred to as “Lamb of God”? It obviously had an impact on John’s followers, but they’d heard his other teachings about Jesus, and his testimony of Jesus’ baptism.