Finding Community in Home Groups

Audrey Waggoner is the Home Group Intern at FWCM. Here is her views on how home groups had an impact on her life.

It is no secret that I love community. I love our collaborative nature and the camaraderie that comes from it in any form – from group projects to team sports. When people are united by a task or a common interest, it’s like something in me wants to jump up and down.

Coming to Baylor University my freshman year from out-of-state, I literally did not know one person. I had great friends back home, but needed to seek out that fellowship in Waco.

Before coming to a home group, I did not really grasp the biblical depth you can achieve with other believers. Home group was the first place I really saw people actively striving and struggling to live out their faith. My relationship with Jesus became so much more vibrant as we began to ask tough questions and talk about biblical truths throughout the week – in and out of home group. We challenged each other. We encouraged each other. I had to confess sin that I never thought anyone would ever know.

Accountability, confession, sanctification – home group is great for all of those things. And it is also much more than a place where big church words happen. The people I met there have become some of my best friends. I’ve lived as roommates with them, served overseas with them and been in their weddings. We were united by something so much greater than a liking for Frisbee or an assigned project. We were united by the transformation of grace through Christ.

Being in community helped me figure out how to live for Jesus in the every day things. In terms of living missionally and for the gospel, home group is where the rubber meets the road. And I am glad to be traveling that road with fellow believers.