Small groups. We all know they are important to church life, but often wonder how they fit in with what we do. We know that a measure of the health of our churches is the percentage of people in small groups. But how should they function as part of our life together?
There seems to be no end of books on this topic.
Sarie King has been working on small groups and has suggested the following three ways of classifying small groups.
- For some of us our small groups fill the gaps left from what our Sunday meetings are unable to do. On Sundays we can’t really get to know each other well or ‘chew the fat’ on what the Scriptures say and their implications for me now, or care for each other in the situations and circumstances through which we are going. And so this is what small groups are for.
- Others see us being a church of small groups. The lifeblood of our lives together are these groups. It means this is where we will put resources, and as we gather in larger groups, we do so to fill the gaps that our small groups cannot meet.
- Still others see the church as small groups. This is seen the cell church movement. There really is no place for what we would call the Sunday gathering.
One way of putting it together
I was speaking with Peter Hughes of Soma church this week. Soma has both Sunday and small group gatherings. They call the small group gatherings gospel communities. Peter describes the functions of the two gatherings in this way: ‘the Sunday gathering is our opportunity to love many people in a few ways, and our gospel community groups are an opportunity to love a few people in lots of ways’. This distinction captures the difference nicely. Both gatherings are edifying, and shaped by love but the reach and depth is where the difference lies.
I like Peter’s statement, and will probably take it as my own. However, in order to push our thinking on Soma’s distinction I want to question the limiting what we do in larger meetings to ‘a few ways to love’, and the limiting our love in the community groups to ‘a few people’. Let me explain.
Many people have benefitted in so many untold ways through the ministry of our large meetings. Sometimes it has been having spirits lifted by seeing other Christians, sometimes hearing the testimony of a person who they don’t even know, not to mention the ways the proclamation of the Word of God has had so many different godly effects on the hearers. We may only do a few things in our larger gatherings but what is achieved under God’s good hand is extraordinary. The difference between our larger and smaller groups may be that you are less likely to hear of the diversity of the effects of love in the larger group and have fewer direct ways to show it.
In our small groups, as an individual grows through the fellowship that God has created with other members as we partner each other to glory, the effect does not, nor should not be merely seen in that group. Individuals maturing as slaves of Christ and servants of each other will affect everyone with whom they come into contact. This means that while we may explicitly see the fruit of love shown within the group, it cannot be contained in the group and will flow over to the larger community. If we narrow the scope of the effects of love to the group we are in danger of losing the breadth of concern for others that the gospel creates in us, and it becomes ever so difficult to split groups or redistribute membership as time goes on.
No description of the distinction between small groups and large groups can ever solve this dilemma, as it is part of the way God has ordered our world. We are citizens of heaven, who will inhabit eternity with each other, but in the here and now we are transitory, and our relationships shift and change, and wax and wane.
I guess we should strive to order the times we spend with each other so that we maximize opportunities to be centred around the Word of God.
Photo Credit: SMBC
