A Window and a Door: The Importance of Large Group Meetings

Large group meetings are an essential part of your chapter life, vitality, and witness. It is the one time that you can meet together as a corporate fellowship. There is both a strong biblical basis and practical necessity for meeting together as a whole group. Many of the goals of your chapter will be most effectively accomplished through meetings of the whole chapter. At the same time, large group meetings are not the only important element of chapter life. A strong small group program and one to one relationships are equally essential to healthy, growing chapters.

The large group meeting is a gathering together of the whole chapter for fellowship, worship, teaching, and witness. This large group chapter meeting tends to become identified with the essence of InterVarsity on a given campus. The question is often asked, "What is InterVarsity?" Answer: "Oh, they meet in the Student Union Thursday evenings at 7:30 pm." Most InterVarsity members will identify their chapter with the large group meeting. Other Christian groups, faculty, administration, and non-Christians who know about InterVarsity will probably know it by the meetings of the whole chapter.

If this is the case, it is extremely important what we are doing in our large group meetings. The quality with which we are presenting these meetings deserves our careful attention and prayerful preparation.

The large group meeting is the door through which many people walk who become introduced to the fellowship, and who later become involved with the total life of the chapter.

The large group meeting is the window through which many interested people will look to see what InterVarsity is all about, what it stands for. They will see something of the quality of fellowship that exists there, and if they want to be a part of it.