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Showing posts from September, 2015

The brain science behind why small groups are important

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It's September, and small discipleship groups all over America are firing up afresh for the fall. Here's how being in a small group can contribute to your long term spiritual growth. It's about brain science. Authors Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee begin their book Primal Leadership with the science of how people affect one another. Among the three main centers of the brain, the limbic brain is our emotional center. If you take a moment to survey how you feel right now about different things, you are accessing your limbic brain. The thing is, Goleman et al point out that the limbic brain is an open-loop system. That means our limbic brains are directly affected by the limbic brains of others around us. It's what allows a mother to soothe her crying infant. It's what makes it so fun to watch a football game with other fans of your favorite team. It can make you love or dread the thought of going to work on a Monday morning. When we get toge