Churches And Small Groups: Reflections

Some comments from the last post, Brian Jones' article about the usefulness of small groups in churches.

Full disclosure: I used to be active in church, and am comfortable no longer belonging to a church. I still believe in God and am eternally grateful.

When my wife (fiancee at the time) and I were looking for a church home, one of the more important draws was that when we arrived at the doorstep of the church in which we eventually became members and married, we were recognized and warmly greeted by some casual acquaintances from my college days. Shortly afterward they were starting up a small group, called us personally to invite us to join, and in time we became close friends.

Those same friends invited us to join the choir with them. It was the first time I'd ever participated in a formal musical group. The learnings from that experience had a major influence on my subsequent joining of the church contemporary band for a few years, and most recently joining musical theater.

The core of our small group stayed together for ten years. I have no natural family in the area - these were the people with whom I shared philosophies, joys and concerns of life. In time, the others embraced their passion of raising children, which moved us in different directions.

There were many other factors (including several of my own personal mistakes) at play, but there could be at least a little something to the reality that I stopped attending church not long after our small group parted ways.

I've told several people through the years that to me, by nature never much of a sermon listener, Bible scholar or corporate worshiper, the small group was the heart of my church membership.

To Brians' points:

I'd agree that cookie-cutter sure-fire small group starter books may not be the best tool for everyone. Our small group did begin with one of those books. What it did was help us to break the ice by talking about our beliefs. After about a year we got away from the canned books and started coming up with our own topics.

I more strongly agree with him about leadership. It makes all the difference, there's no easy how-to for it. I think it's the greatest challenge of any small group ministry.

A greater challenge may be to introduce new members to an established group. So again I'd agree, small groups may not be much of a recruiting tool in terms of reaching out to find new prospective church members. But if personal experience teaches anything, it could be good at retaining them.