This past Sunday, our church began meeting in homes for what we are calling Life Groups. There are a ton of books out there on small group ministry and I’ve read about half of them. As we embark on a new ministry, my hope is to keep the wheat and burn the chaff from what I’ve read and what I’ve experienced in small group ministry. This post will be an overview of what we are gleaning and implementing in our local church.
At their best, books on small groups in the local church help us to understand and apply biblical practices. At their worst, some models for small group ministry have isolated one or two biblical practices and thrown out everything else, hoping that what’s lacking will be addressed by another ministry in the church.
For example, some books promote evangelistic groups, affinity groups, missional groups, Bible study groups, or community groups. One group might emphasize reaching the lost, while another may emphasize deep study of God’s Word. One group focuses on relationships with other believers, while another focuses on involvement in mission or ministry.
As I have studied Scripture (and these books) over the years, I’ve settled on what I think is a more wholistic approach to small groups. Our Life Groups are built on a simple weekly rhythm that can adapt to the unique needs of each group.
In many ways, our weekly group meeting will look similar to a lot of small groups out there. Like many others, our groups will probably be less than 15 adults. We aim for weekly gatherings. We eat together, pray together, and open God’s Word together each week.
Broad vs Narrow Group Focus
We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God…
Colossians 1:9ff
Where we are attempting something different has to do with how much or how little structure we lay underneath our groups. For example, are our Life Groups open or closed? The short answer is yes. Our members and regular attenders are signing up and committing to attending a particular group, but that group is also an ideal context to invite a newcomer at church or a neighbor down the street. So, our Life Groups are semi-closed in that the same people will meet together regularly for about 10-12 months (and then replicate). But they are semi-open in the sense that a lost person or a missionary or a visitor at church might be invited at any time to one of our groups.
On whether or not we have a particular focus on relational, missional, or instructional groups, again, yes! One or more of those may take the focus of any individual weekly meeting, but over the course of a year together, the hope is that a broader emphasis on being disciples together will result. We want to discuss the sermon text and apply truth to our lives, but we may also have the opportunity at times to welcome a stranger into our midst. At other times we may be highlighting a ministry or a cause that our whole group can engage in together.
As you can see, we are hoping to introduce a simple, reproducible structure that allows for a lot of flexibility and creativity. With that in mind, we ask our Life Group hosts to engage in three simple activities with their group each week: eat, pray, love.
Eat. Pray. Love
For the Christian family, our home is sacred space. Our marriage isn’t simply for the purpose of procreation but also to bear the image of God as male and female and to exemplify Christ and His Bride. Our home isn’t our castle, it is a mini-Eden where we dwell with God and He dwells with us.
Eating is the Bond That Unites Us
They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts
Acts 2:46b
When we open our home and invite brothers and sisters and strangers to eat with us, we are fulfilling the Missio Dei going all the way back to the original Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were charged with tending and expanding sacred space as priest-kings under the loving eye of their Creator who had given them that role. Instead, they selfishly abandoned God’s rule in exchange for personal autonomy and were then driven out of sacred space. Thankfully, God continually renewed His promise and purpose to dwell with humanity, first in a tabernacle, later in a temple, and ultimately by sending His own Son to “tabernacle” with us.
Even with that biblical vision of the use and purpose of our homes, it’s always easier to just sit at home and watch TV. But sin is bred in isolation. Sanctification, on the other hand, is fostered in community. By providing a simple meal every week we are able to practice hospitality, serve one another, and break bread together — all biblical practices that are hard to implement in our larger corporate worship setting. As image-bearers, we open our homes so that we can experience fellowship with God and with one another.
The meal can be simple, but the spiritual importance of being together on a regular basis is profound. By eating together regularly, we are practicing biblical living, connecting with the body, bearing God’s image together, and spending one less night of the week in isolation where the world, the flesh, and the devil would prefer us to be.
Prayer is the Fuel That Ignites Us
When they had prayed, the place where they were assembled was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God boldly.
Acts 4:31
During our gatherings, we also spend time in prayer. In this way, we are able to “bear one another’s burdens” as Paul encourages us to do. There might even be opportunities for us to help in a practical way just as the believers did in the Book of Acts (see Acts 2:41-47; 4:31-37). It’s tragic that we narrow our focus and separate evangelistic groups from fellowship groups from study groups. But in Acts 2:42, for example, it was their devotion to the apostles’ teaching that brought them together in homes. In Acts 4:31, their prayer was for evangelistic zeal in the face of persecution. It was their sacrificial love for one another and “holding all things in common” that attracted so many to the faith. In short, the early small group ministry of the church was all-of-the-above.
So, we want our time together to include a fervent time of prayer for the needs of the body, for our witness in the world, and for God’s power to be obedient to His Word. Prayer truly fuels our fellowship in the Word.
Love is the Action That Identifies Us
But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility. In his flesh, he made of no effect the law consisting of commands and expressed in regulations, so that he might create in himself one new man from two, resulting in peace.
Ephesians 2:13-15
And that brings us to our sermon-based discussion. After we’ve eaten and prayed together, we spend time reflecting on and discussing the sermon text that we heard that week. The goal here is to discover through discussion how the text applies to each of us and how to begin putting that truth into action so that we can better love God and one another.
It’s through this discussion that we grow in our knowledge of God and our love for God. We demonstrate our love for Jesus by obeying His commands. Hearing and understanding Scripture isn’t the end goal. Doing and exampling Scripture is what counts. As James said, “faith without works is dead”. It’s in the discussion of the text with other brothers and sisters (and sometimes strangers) that we look at it from every angle and seek to understand it so that we can implement it.
This isn’t the kind of discussion that invites everyone to find their own meaning in the text. Not everyone’s viewpoint is spiritually mature and equally valid. But it is not until we are willing to voice our thoughts, true or false, get them out of our own heads and into the light of day that they can be scrutinized and refined in the context of community.
Have Things In Common Or Hold all Things In Common?
Now all the believers were together and held all things in common.
Acts 2:44
This chance to discuss God’s Word together brings us to a final difference between our Life Groups and many of the small group models being taught today: diversity. Some churches seek to find commonalities when starting new small groups. It’s easier to sell your small group program that way. We naturally gravitate to people who we like and who are like us. A commitment to diversity is much harder.
When a group is made up of singles, married, and retired who are from various ethnic and economic backgrounds, political perspectives, and spiritual maturity, the multi-faceted discussions that result are richer and transformative. When we group newlyweds or divorcées or senior adults or teenagers into their own groups we are creating additional silos that cut them off from the rest of the body. Diverse groups challenge our perspectives and lead us deeper into the truth of God’s Word while helping us to see the struggles and concerns of a wider variety of people.
We experience true fellowship when we are committed to holding all things in common even when we have nothing else in common.
How Life Groups Promote Unity Not Division
From him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building up itself in love by the proper working of each individual part.
Ephesians 4:16
Some might say, well, don’t small groups already cut people off from the rest of the body? Isn’t a small group really a silo or an inner circle in the larger church that separates rather than unifies? Even further, in the case of our new Life Groups, we’ve attempted to serve those in our community who struggle with English by starting a Spanish-speaking Life Group so they can discuss in their primary language. Doesn’t that cut them off from the rest of us? Is that group formed around a specific language any different than a group exclusively for moms or a group for seekers?
These are the wrong questions. Every Christian can’t be in fellowship with all other Christians all the time. Instead, we must ask, “Are these smaller meetings in people’s homes biblical?” If so, then the second question every member of the local church should be asking is, “Am I obeying Scripture?”
Not only do we see hospitality, fellowship, and house meetings in Acts, but we even see similar patterns in Jesus’ earthly ministry for us to follow. Jesus wouldn’t apologize for having an inner circle of twelve disciples. That was part of His plan. But at the same time, Jesus wasn’t exclusively available only to those Twelve. He continued to love and serve others and simultaneously invited Twelve in closer to specifically learn from Him and begin to do as He did.
Throughout Acts, we see how the early church began putting Jesus and the Apostle’s teaching into practice. From Day One, they were devoted “to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). That’s what they did, but it’s where they did it and how often that’s instructive: “Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house…” (Acts 2:46)
We are hardly able to do all-of-the-above in a 60-70 minute service, once-a-week, in a church building (though I’m not denying the primary importance of such a gathering). So, the second question was, “Am I obeying Scripture?” The vast majority of “regular” churchgoers in America will attend church 2.5 times a month never to see or hear from one another the rest of the week. Does that look anything like what we read in the New Testament? Is that kind of involvement anything like those who walked with Jesus in the flesh or of those in the early church who sought to walk by the Spirit?
Returning to the earlier question: Does a small group isolate me from the other members of the church? Quite the opposite. Life Groups move us from nominal involvement to deeper involvement in the life of the church. If I showed up late every other week to church and only spoke to two people in my rush out the door, but now I’m attending service and a Life Group where I am weekly sharing a meal, prayer, and biblical discussion with 10-15 other brothers and sisters in Christ I’d say that’s a step in the right direction.
Ultimately, if you are my brother or sister in Christ, I need you to be in regular fellowship with other brothers and sisters, even if you’re not regularly meeting at my house. You and I need the Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters to meet regularly just as they need you to meet regularly. We all need each individual in the church to begin loving and caring for and watching out for one another.
Far from isolating ourselves from the rest of the body, it’s in our Life Groups that we learn what it means to be in fellowship with one another. Over time, our service and love for one another will spill out of that initial group and will touch other brothers and sisters and neighbors and co-workers. Rather than creating a clique, we are learning to engage in community.
