Friday Flashback: Renewing our Small-Group Purpose

Stop "going to church" and start "being the church!"

by Dan Lentz

It’s always important to think about the purpose of small groups. Whenever I think about this issue, I almost always go back to examining the New Testament pattern of church to confirm the “why” of small groups.

Consider some of the history of the early church:

Though there's a lot we don't know about the early church, we can learn a lot from the New Testament, especially the letters of Paul. Paul uses the word "ekklesia," which from pre-Christian days meant "any gathering of a group of people," to refer to a gathering of people before God. The gatherings were usually small, probably 30 members on average, and the people often belonged to the same household or guild. Sometimes several such groups met together, but this was probably rare before the third century, when special buildings for Christian worship began to be constructed. Small groups of Christians met regularly for worship, encouragement, and instruction as early as the first decades of Christianity, but it's not quite accurate to call them "small groups" in the contemporary sense. These groups didn't think of themselves as the more personal, relational aspect of a larger church, as many small groups do now—they were the only church that members knew. (Taken from BuildingChurchLeaders.com “Ask Christian History”)

That last statement, for me, is the real key: "These groups didn't think of themselves as the more personal, relational aspect of a larger church, as many small groups do now—they were the only church that members knew." As we consider the early days of the church, it doesn’t make sense to see small groups (or whatever you want to call them) as the "what is missing, help people connect, add one more thing to my schedule" component of church. Instead, is it possible for all relational, purposeful gatherings of Christ-followers, whether small or large, to be simply looked at as just "being the church"?

If we could see church as not something that we do, so much as something we are, then the small-group gatherings (or large-group worship services, for that matter) would just be part of the natural expression of "being the church." And with that vision and purpose, small groups don’t become the forced add-on to what we now think of as "church." Rather, smaller gatherings are simply an expression of the overall organism of the Body of Christ. Then we can gain freedom from the purpose of "going to church" and replace it with the purpose of "being the church."

posted by Dan Lentz on August 26, 2010 10:08 PM

Comments

Thank you for your comments. I find it difficult to persuade the people of our church to join a small group and have been looking at new ways to get them interested. I'll try your ideas.

I like the idea of shifting our focus from small groups being an add-on or some extra thing people take on if they feel up to it and want to take another step in the church, and instead make it an outgrowth of who we are as a community. It seems the hard part here is just creating that thought shift, since it's easier to say we need to make the change than it is to actually get hundreds of people to change with me. It seems like it might almost be that we're complicating things by publicly announcing the groups and their leaders. What if it took on a more relational model and rather than announce and ask people to sign up, we just told the leaders to start recruiting friends to hang out and almost build the groups more like a regular set of friends coming together to commune and enjoy the company of friends from church. It would also make it easier to invite non-Christian friends to come get involved.