Emerging small groups
Thanks for the input Tim, Lance & Bill. Great to hear from you.
This morning I have been wondering about small groups and how they fit into the emerging church. A friend, who is in my small group and sometimes lurks here, says small groups are overrated. Especially so in the small church. I tend to think he's right (don't get a big head Tom Datema). Don't most of our small group programming ideas seem rather "confining" or "boxed in"... even "programmed"? I don't think we shouldn't have small groups, but maybe they will look different than the willow and saddleback models. I believe, in the smaller church, and the emerging church, it's much more important for small groups to just sort of naturally occur. Maybe teaching people about being friends, and learning how to live together as friendly people is more important than formatting a certain ministry idea. I dunno - I hate the idea of not having that element of control though... argh.
What do you think? How do you go about small groups in your church? Are they programmed, or do they happen naturally? ???
posted by dan at 9:58 AM
4 Comments:
Dan,
If a ministry is going to be rooted in the New Testament model, it will have to include small groups. Jesus began the foundational work or creating the church by calling a small group into existence.
Having said that, I think you make an extremely important point. If we think that we can simply replicate the Saddleback and Willow models, we are fools. Our congregations are not, for the most part, suburban. Our people are not upper class college educated professionals. And, the people we hope to evangelize among our friends, relatives, neighbors and coworkers aren't the people reached by Rick Warren and Bill Hybels.
Just how we conduct small group ministry in emerging congregations in the CGGC is a good question. I'm not sure that allowing them to simply happen is the best idea. However, I believe that there is a postmodern mind that is different than the modern mind. And, I believe that the postmodern small group will be a different kind of creature than the one descibed in most current small group literature.
Great points, Bill, and I absolutely agree. I think small groups are necessary. I refuse to read anymore books on small groups though, because I just don't think that works for people in most of our cggc churches (meaning rural, small, family).
I think, for one thing, we've looked at family churches as a bad thing. And there are many bad elements, but wouldn't it be great if our family gatherings were where the most teaching/learning was done (for those of us who have a lot of family-type churches)?
I guess maybe I'm wondering if we should be less concerned about calling something a "small group" and more concerned about teaching people how to interact in the groups they're already a part of. You know, how can I talk about spiritual things with the people I hang with at work; my family; the people I see everyday at the post office; at the coffee place; my softball teammates; the parents I see at my kids events, etc.? Do those things qualify as small groups? Could they, if the content of interaction were different? It's not a matter of simply "letting them happen" but it's being more intentional about how we interact, rather than being intentional about how many groups we can get going. Does that make sense?
I struggle with the whole "community" element though. Sometimes I wonder if having church at night would be a better way to get people to connect. They could go out for ice cream afterwards or something. Discuss things. I dunno. Just thinking out loud.
I've come with 7 practices we want to emphasize in 2006 and one is "Make friends." As opposed to a programmed small group, what people really need is simply friends.
Small groups haven't worked extremely well here, but one I think is a lack of leadership on my part, as well as training, as well as some out of the box ideas for small groups.
My wife saw a flyer the other day for Group Smallgroup training. She said we should do this training. She is full of ideas and many seemed aimed at me. I got my backbone up and said, "No one will want to go, but if you want to go and take some people, be my guest." She walked out, seemingly not upset, yet I had ended that little idea.
On the next Sunday, she announced that she was going and if anyone wanted to go, they should see her. She signed up 14 people to go.
So next I told her, "OK, so you can't stop here. You absolutely have to help them organize at least five small groups as they come back from the training." I think she will. Lucky me.
www.gods-kingdom.org
has a booklet called "If God Could Save Everyone, Would He?" I think it's great...
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