If you think community is an important part of healthy church life, and I hope you do, then small groups should also be important to you. They are actually crucial to the life of any church. I’m not the only one who thinks so, and I have the research to back it up. Be sure to read our research reports on Transformational Groups. I’ve written several:
Ways to Grow Your Group (Part 1): Five Ways to Connect With Disconnected People
Ways to Grow Your Group (Part 2): Seven Ways to Reach Out to Your Neighbors
Ways to Grow Your Group (Part 3): Reaching Neighbors Through Group-Sponsored Events
The Right Culture for Community Groups Matter: My Interview With Eric Geiger on Transformational Groups
The Surprising Truth About Discipleship and Spiritual Disciplines
You can’t build community by way of programming, but you can use a program to create a pathway through which community can happen. Maybe you should read that sentence again; the difference in the two is subtle. Programs do not community make. However, programs can create the pathway—the opportunity—for birthing community.
Depending on the culture of the church, community normally happens, or at least begins, in small groups of some sort, including Life Groups that meet in homes, discipleship classes and Sunday Schools. However it is organized and participated in, believers intentionally put other things aside in order to be together because life change happens via relationship. We join our lives together for the purpose of maturing in the faith and engaging in God’s mission, both of which are key elements in effective and long-lasting small group strategy.
Small groups can become agents of both individual and community change when they are organized around, bathed in and focused on living out the gospel together. When we are honest, open and vulnerable with one another, there is opportunity to bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2) and spur one another on to love and good deeds (Heb. 10:24).
When we preach the gospel to one another in close-knit community, there is spiritual growth that changes us individually and as a whole. We can also begin to position ourselves with an outward focus and encourage gospel transformation in the communities outside the church walls.
As much as I love gathering with the whole of the local church for corporate worship, there is something powerfully unique about an intimate gathering around a living room or a small classroom or a dining room table that forces us to think differently than when we are in the sanctuary for a time of preaching. Small groups, in fact, are where much of the theology taught in our pulpits begins to be fleshed out in conversation and action. If you want your church to be on mission, teach it from the pulpit and equip your people to wrestle with it in small groups. It’s messy that way, but it’s fruitful.
The obvious question is how many should be involved in groups. Well, it depends. Here are some suggested rules of thumb.
