life Groups

One part of our mission is simple: restoring everyone into full fellowship with Christ and others. While this can occur in a multitude of ways, one primary way this occurs is our Life Group environment.

Church Alive's Life Groups are 5-20 people meeting together once a week for 10 weeks to learn more about the Bible, grow in their faith, and have fun meeting new people.

1) Find the group that's right for you.

2) Choose the join option.

3) Your Life Group Leader emails you all the Group details.


At Church Alive, we believe spiritual growth happens best in the context of community. That’s why we encourage every person that’s serious about following Christ to get involved in a Life Group. We offer outreach groups that serve and love our community. We also offer Bible study and curriculum-based groups to help you grow in Bible literacy.
 
Whatever your season of life, whatever your interests, we believe the abundant life we all long for is found in a community. Don’t miss it!

Do you ever have the urge to buy school supplies in early August? Do you feel like the world winds down to a slow crawl from Thanksgiving to New Years? Do you find yourself eager for a fresh start when spring arrives?
 
We have all grown up in the modern educational system, and we are wired to associate feelings of new beginnings and inherent endings within seasons of the year. There is a natural flow in how we relate to the progression of our months.
Our educational structure defines our culture. People adhere to the rhythm of the educational system throughout their developmental years. As grown-ups, that doesn’t change. Either our lives still revolve around the academic calendar because we have kids in school, or we are likely involved in some form of continuing education ourselves. Even the farthest removed adult still feels like he or she should get a summer vacation. We know that and intrinsically respond to the structure of this system.

This truth plays a significant role in the development of Church Alive's semester-based Life Group philosophy. The same type of system we have all been in for most of our lives also work best for Life Groups. That is, a semester-based system, modeled after the prevalent American educational calendar.

People grow best through built-in “stress and release” periods that make up the school year. In other words, we grow most effectively in a semester-based system. Semesters are, by definition, time-bound.
 
While most Life Group philosophies tell you that groups need to last anywhere from 18 months until-death-do-us-part, we believe that 8 to 12 weeks is the perfect length for a healthy group. When you put time-bound groups in place and mold them around the natural flow of the academic year, you encourage more people to sign up. Also, you guard against the genuine danger of stagnation and open the door for new guests to participate.
 
Church Alive offers Life Group in a three-semester rotation: Spring, Summer, and Fall. The spring and fall semesters are 12-week commitments while the summers are 8-week.

We fight hard to make it crystal clear how to sign up for a group at Church Alive. Here are three particularly useful ways:
 
1. Sign Up During Our Weekend Service.
 
Signing up during service is the most common way to join a Life Group. As you enter the Church Alive facility for our Weekend Service, you will receive a program.  This program will include an outline of the message, a communication card, and a magazine listing available Life Groups for the semester.  
 
As you thumb through the magazine, you will notice that we label each group with a specific number. Once you identify which group works best take note of the group number and write it on the backside of your Communication Card.
 
2. Use Our Website.
 
We have a direct link at abq.group that will take you straight to the Life Group information on our website. Feel free to use it and sign up with minimal effort. Or click on the tab above that says, "Join A Life Group."
 
3. Sign Up at the Groups Table in the Lobby.
 
Many of our group leaders are available after service in the lobby near the Life Group table. They will be wearing a blue lanyard. They will be familiar with our Life Group environment and will have a general knowledge of all groups available. You can sign up at the table in just a few seconds.
 
4. Church Center App.
 
Church Alive has a Church Center App that allows you to register on your phone.
iPhone   Google play

Time is a valuable commodity. It should never be wasted and must to be prioritized. At Church Alive we believe that setting aside the time to engage with Christ and other believers in life-giving fellowship is of high importance. It serves as an indispensable aid for your spiritual growth and personal health. Therefore, we ask you to prioritize your time and engage in a Life Group.
Simultaneously, we want to be respectful of your time. That is why we have asked our Life group leaders to make the first meeting, and every meeting to follow, 90 minutes or less. We have asked them to keep from dragging beyond that time limit.

On rare occasions, a Life Group may require a longer meeting time. If this becomes necessary, as much as possible, we will look to disclose that with you ahead of time.

You are probably familiar with what a standard syllabus looks like since you came through the educational system. As you might expect, a syllabus is merely a list of critical dates for the upcoming group along with the reading/study assignments for each week the group will meet.
 
Even if a group doesn’t have outside reading, a syllabus lets everyone know the meeting dates and what topics will be discussed on those days.
 
These will most likely include:

When the group will be off
When the group will meet at a different location
When the group will do an evangelism outreach together
When the group will do something fun together
Date of the last group meeting