I Hate Small Groups!
I recently met with some pastors. After explaining our ecclesiology and drawing out the model of our church, one pastor remarked that he was “not really into small groups.” He talked about how he had never really had much success with them. He went on to say that, “Ten people together for 3 hours each week is hardly enough time to allow everyone time to really be known.”
I think I surprised him when I said, “I hate small groups too.”
If you define a small group as:
- A weekly meeting to “share our hearts” and “encourage” random people
- An awkward bible study
- A support group to talk about our stuff
- A church activity for those “who want to go deeper.”
I’m not really into any of that. I have no desire to lead a church into that. And I definitely have no desire to lead my family into that.
But let’s try something else:
“I love people living everyday life together with gospel intentionality - as a family of learning, serving missionaries, empowered by the Spirit, trying to plant the gospel in our own hearts and among a specific people to make disciples who make disciples, for the glory of God.”
Syntactically, that sentence is terrible. But...
I can give my life for that. I can lead my family into that. And I can definitely get fired up about leading a church to do this!
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Joey Taylor on Jul 29, 2010 12:56am
were you discouraged that after explaining mdc, all he got out of it was small groups?
Juno Smalley on Aug 13, 2010 8:52am
When I think small group I think community, authentic relationships, safe place. If a small group is 'just a meeting' set up to meet the churches program then I don't like them either. But seeing that I was at the table where this discussion occurred let me share that I think most pastors are not most mature believers I know, well for that matter, most people I know don't like to be put in a box for forced relationships. Most people I know value, need and in reality are missing authentic and genuine friendships. Some pastors already are connected into community - a group of people that are life giving and who love him/her and where there is an reciprocation of love and care given.
When the discipleship pastor or formation pastor or small group pastor says, let's do an initiative to help people step into community the senior pastor/or mature believer think "why"? "Here we go again", but in reality most people are not in places of community that set them up to change their own life let alone their families, communities or the world. For our current reality we live in, an intentional small group helps to create environments where new friendships can be created - let's face it- there's a friendship vacuum in our society and small groups are the current way to meet people. Maybe they should be called friendship 101, yet some of us are blessed to be at the doctorate level in some of our friendships...and some of those started in a 'small group'.