Dan Edelen has an interesting post over at his blog called "Are Small Groups Doomed?"
I personally think that small groups are only doomed in so far as the leaders of a given church believe that they are doomed. People will follow and pastors are called to lead. If we teach and model the value of small groups I think that people respond. At our church here are some things that we have talked about as necessary to see healthy small groups:
1. Church leaders teaching and modeling the value of small groups
2. Small group leadership by invitation only
3. Having a structure for developing leaders and investing in those who are already leading
If we don't do small groups, where do Christians have intentional relationships with other believers? If you go to a church of 50-100 people that can probably happen pretty organically, but in the church where I work that is between 800-1000 on a Sunday morning, if we don't structure it, people don't do it. And if they are not doing it, or we are not helping them do it, how do the relational commands for the church of Jesus take shape? In my view, small groups are the best way to do it (given good leadership and leadership training), but I would love to hear about other models that are working. Thoughts?
4 comments:
I've never been a big fan of the conventional "small group" model that is popular today. It's not that I'm against small groups, but they've just never seemed to work for me. Thoughts:
1. The membership of the group is usually just luck of the draw. When you're talking about only 8-10 people, there's a really good chance that I'm not going to have much in common with these people other than we were both assigned to this group. Obviously this can change over time, but it can often take years. I'd be much more interested in a small group if it could somehow be tailored to a group of similar interests, life experiences or personality types.
2. The subject matter for these small groups seems to gravitate to what's for dinner and parenting tips. This same benefit can be had by watching Oprah. I personally gravitate more toward groups that are interested in seriously study, with "living life together" as a nice side benefit. I supposed that it could also be fairly said that this is really just a symptom of the failings of many evangelical churches (no substance).
3. Small groups can actually make it more difficult to get plugged in, in some instances. New people are quickly shuffled off to a new group, and that's the only people they get to know. I'm more of a fan of larger-scale fellowship efforts, but I'll be the first to admit that this may be my own personal preference.
Zach, at one of my previous churches, we had small groups (Bible study groups, mainly), and they were definitely helpful, but they were far from being the main way that people would get to know each other. Here's how it worked, in my experience. The church had a morning and an evening service on Sunday. The morning service consisted of singing, praying, and preaching (with the Lord's Supper at times). The evening service consisted of the same three things (not the same content as the morning though), but shortened, with the main time being given to church members sharing their prayer requests (usually focused on evangelism, missions, and the like, though not always).
The practical impact of having these morning and evening services is that the members could hang out after the morning service, together in the sanctuary, for about an hour, talk to each other and to visitors, and then either go to their houses/apartments to share lunch together, or go out somewhere to have lunch. The building of relationships was greatly helped in this way. Almost every Sunday, I was invited to have lunch with someone or a group of people from the church. Often, in the group, there were people whom I had never met. After lunch, many of us would hang out and talk about the sermon, the Gospel, God at work in our lives, etc. Then, we would go to the Sunday evening service and pray for God's work in the world and in our lives.
This "model" was partially organic, but it was also encouraged from the pulpit by the elders. Sometimes, the encouragement took the form of a pointed challenge from the pulpit, as in "Invite someone you don't know to have lunch with you after the morning service!"
I don't know if this model could easily work at DSC, with our two morning services, but I think it's worth giving some thought, as the second service ends around lunch-time.
Also, at a church in England where one of my friends was a member, they had a church lunch (at the building itself) after the morning service. I don't know if there would be the physical space for this at DSC, but it's just another thought.
Sorry for another epic-length post! :-)
Chris (the 1st commenter, obviously) :-),
You mention being assigned to small groups where you don't have much in common with the other people. What about the Gospel though? Isn't that having *everything* in common, compared to any of our other differences? Now, if small groups are not strongly God-centered and Gospel-focused, that is a problem.
You describe the conversations usually drifting to other things. I don't think that it is a *bad* thing to talk about "life stuff," other than God and the Gospel, in small groups, but if God is not the primary focus, then other things will come to be The Main Things.
To me, here is where personality differences, different interests, and different ages and stages in life (married, single, divorced) become problematic. God and His Gospel unite all Christians. If our small groups are primarily about other things in our lives, cliques and alienation will be the natural results.
I'm certainly not being at all dismissive of the gospel as a tremendous unifying force in the lives of believers, I hope I didn't convey that at all. That having been said, there are clearly different people and personalities among the fellowship of believers with whom I prefer to spend my time.
"Now, if small groups are not strongly God-centered and Gospel-focused, that is a problem. "
You're 100% correct. I think that is a huge problem, and I think that goes back to Zach's original post. There are a lot of small groups out there, even in great churches, that really aren't as focused on the Bible as they could be. Personally, I'd rather see medium-sized groups with better trained leaders and a bigger emphasis on solid teaching.
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