Currently, we are relaunching four LifeGroups for the spring semester going through May 2024. We will once again have a hiatus over the summer months during which LifeGroups can have meetups as desired and will restart again in the fall. We are looking forward to LifeGroups relaunching this month as a critical part of the vision for our church. While the overall flow of each LifeGroup may differ one to another, each one will pursue three simple goals:

1. Share life - This often has been over food; however, this is the time and space made to know each other and to be known in return.

2. Be in the Word - The Word of God is the foundation of our faith, our life, and our discipleship. We take time to grow in our study of the Word. We seek to ground all of our life in the scriptures.

3. Pray for one another - We share the burdens and the victories of life with one another and take them before God in prayer regularly.

These have and remain the practical goals of each LifeGroup. Additionally, this semester of LifeGroups, we are bringing Bible Study to the groups monthly. Rather than this occurring at a separate location and on a separate day, we believe the studying of God’s Word can and should be done in the same context of community. For these nights, each LifeGroup will meet as it normally would - same day and time. The Bible study teaching team will come to the LifeGroup to lead the study for that month. The same Bible study will be done at each LifeGroup, so all LifeGroups engage the same material monthly. While we feel that the Lord led us down a different path in the fall to pause LifeGroups, differing from our Big Rocks entering 2023, we recognize their principal value to our body in both our mission and vision. As we look to the future for LifeGroups, we hear clearly four things the Lord has for us in the strategy of these groups:

1. Establish long-term LifeGroups in our community and the city of Detroit. These groups will run from September to May consistently. This will be accomplished through empowering leaders, the discipleship of the Body, and raising up future leaders to start new groups.

2. Empower and encourage strong individual and corporate discipleship within LifeGroups through growth in giftings, spiritual disciplines, and studying God’s Word.

3. Care for their geographical neighborhoods missiologically. LifeGroups will intentionally take time to see and care for the community in which they have been planted, acknowledging the cultural, racial, socioeconomic, and spiritual needs of that direct community. LifeGroups are expected to engage in service in their community once a quarter and be an active presence always.

4. Discipleship Groups (D Groups) to begin again from same-gendered people who have built committed relationships within LifeGroups. We recognize that these are the highest level of accountability discipleship and thereby require higher levels of relational commitment for them to succeed.

The purpose of LifeGroups at Detroit Church is simple. They are the place for people to fully engage the greatest adventure of all time, to care for one another, and to be known in life. This is where we learn more how to see and run with the community of God for His Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. The engagement is more than a club but a call of discipleship in both the LifeGroup setting and the D Group setting. These groups carry the heartbeat of our body - until all are seen, heard, known, and loved into the image and likeness of Jesus.