I like people who reinforce my biases.

Yesterday I met with a student minister in one of our parishes who is preparing to plant a church after finishing Moore College. He has gathered 8 people into a core group over the past year or so. They meet just like any other small group in the sending church, praying and studying the Word to strengthen each other in the faith. But because they have a mission project to bring the gospel to a particular community, they are hungry. My bias-reinforcing friend has noticed they are not like many other small groups. There is a renewed zeal for the Word and prayer as they plan together how to reach the lost. They are learning and growing more than others in small groups.

What if we ditched small groups and started disciple-making teams? Stop all our home groups, men’s groups, women’s groups and build teams that are working at making disciples together. Or even better, gradually reinvent our small groups as ministry teams.

Many of our small groups are stuck. Everywhere I go ministers agree. We have good numbers in small groups but they are often not dynamic in growing the Christian or the gospel. Especially for adults in their thirties and older, small groups become routine and ground-hog-day-like. As young adults, youth groups and groups for young Christians were life-changing. There was a real sense that we were changing the world together through the gospel. Now we resist changing small groups after 10 plus years in the same group. We’re stuck in a safe small group rut.

I’m in contact with a small group of converts from another faith in another country. They meet regularly for prayer, praise and teaching to strengthen each other. Various members have been physically attacked and verbally abused and are now receiving credible death threats by telephone and over the Internet. Some have to move house regularly and are seeking a safe house for security. In the midst of this they are boldly telling their community the good news of Jesus through tract distribution and personal conversations and inviting others to their group. It reminds me of the Thessalonians who received the gospel with joy, in spite of severe suffering and from whom the gospel rang out like a bell (I Thess 1:4-8).

My friends are treated like the scum of the earth (1 Cor 4:9-13). They would be horrified by many of our small groups as we politely discuss our Bibles and theological nuances, share our personal prayer requests and enjoy coke and chips. Okay, that’s a bit harsh, but you get the point. Sadly, our small groups teach new Christians to pull their heads in and be safe. We achieve the functional goal of having lots of people in small groups but are they really growing in Christ? They can be in a group and going nowhere.

My disciple-making team

Before you stop reading this arrant nonsense, let me tease out what I mean by describing a group / team I’m working with this year.

In consultation with the minister of our church, we have invited 10 men, aged 30 to 50, to be in a team for a year. Married with the usual pressures of growing families, work responsibilities and insecurities, some with mid-life questions, moving house, juggling lots. I’m leading with one of the other guys. It’s just one of the many small groups in the church and most of the men have been in groups for years. They are mature, godly men, serving faithfully in the church with a variety of gifts and personalities.

We have introduced the language of being a ‘team’ and how this is different than a ‘group’. That was an interesting discussion. We still haven’t arrived at a team name – I thought ‘Team Col’ was a bit much. There were suggestions of team caps and jerseys but … Anyway the language of ‘team’ is proving helpful in thinking about who we are?

To be honest I’m not real sure yet what they all think of the team idea after about 6 weeks together. I suspect there is a little humouring of Col going on, hoping I will get over it soon. (I have shown them this article.)

We’ve been doing Bible studies on 1 Corinthians following the sermon series. I’ve introduced the Swedish Method of Bible reading as a way they could read with their families or other blokes.  We pray for each other and our wives and children (we produced a sheet with names of kids and ages), talk about our job situations, share how we came to know Christ, eat, some leg pulling and so on. We are working on ‘ministry of the pew’, so I gave them the assignment to talk with older women at church, because we tend to stick with each other. The older women were delighted, if not a little bemused. We’ve started using emails to keep in touch during the week with news and prayers. We need to be a band of brothers who will back each other no matter what.

Last week we reviewed our studies in 1 Cor 1-4 and talked about how this applied to us as a team. I confess I had a definite agenda. Like the apostles we are entrusted with the gospel, and like the apostles this will take us out of our comfort zone (scum of the earth sort of thing).

So we talked about some of my wacky ideas about being a gospel team. Let’s move the team meeting to a club instead of my lounge room, so we can meet other men. Let’s get out of the ghetto mentality. How about we run Simply Christianity for our mates? We could do some door knocking in the parish or set up a stall in the local shopping precinct. It was all a bit overwhelming really. But we agreed to hand out leaflets at the train station before Easter. Team bonding and gospeling at the same time.

We talked about the problem of being a team when we don’t have a specific project like starting a new church.

Where to from here? Start with the easier and move to the harder. We’ll learn how to read the Bible one-to-one with another Christian bloke, practicing with each other for a few weeks. Thinking through how to minister to our wives and kids will always be on the agenda. We’ll have some fun together as families somewhere along the way. We will work at connecting with men at church who seem on the fringe, get to know them and offer to meet with them one-to-one. And we’ll try the harder one down the track – inviting outsiders in! It will be fun debating and thinking how to do this.

All of this should make our Bible study and prayer urgent. So last night we were in 1 Corinthians 5 and the excommunication of the unrepentant brother. If we are a team trying to bring others to Christ, how do we welcome the sexually immoral, the greedy, slanderers, drunkards, swindlers and idolaters while disciplining sinners in the church? Our mates think the church is an exclusive holy club, while the reality is that Christ washes sinners (1 Cor 6:11). Wrestling with this huge PR problem sharpened our Bible study and took it from intellectual theory to how we run our team. 

We’ll do some Bible study on God’s big plan in Christ to build a people for himself, so that we see our mundane lives in the light of what God is doing. We are not preparing the men for any particular church role but to be disciple-makers in their families, church and community. The aim is to build ministry around them rather than use them to fill gaps in the church program.

My initial hope is that each team member will have one other bloke they are helping to win or grow as a disciple, as well as leading their families in Christ.

Convinced something needs to change?

In my next post, I'll discuss the why we should turn our small groups into disciple-making teams, how to do it and what might stop us doing so.

Col Marshall is the director of Vinegrowers, running workshops now around Australia and overseas.

Feature photo: Lumaxart