Whenever we use words like good, better, and best, we should always ask: “Compared to what?” What does it mean to have a better small group? There are lots of reasons churches organize small groups. For my church, the reason is discipleship: training one another to be trained by Christ. So a better small group is one that grows its members in their ability train each other to be trained by Jesus.
Being trained by Christ means knowing what Jesus taught and then aligning to it. Training one another is a community activity — each of us helping all of us stay on course.
With that goal set, here are seven practices to make our groups better.
1. Interact with the Bible
When we’re being trained by someone — in sports, music, acting, etc. — we need to know our coach and what he expects. For Christ-followers, this comes through spending time in the Bible and in prayer. We all have an impulse to act on ‘common sense’ or what we think we know about God. Reading and studying the Bible will show us where our thinking is wrong.
When people in our groups ask questions, it’s a great practice to invite the group to find answers from the Bible — maybe as homework for the next meeting. This keeps discussion from straying into opinions that have no biblical foundation. It also helps members get more comfortable and skillful at finding, reading, and interpreting scripture.
How do you know if you’re interacting with the Bible? Ask yourself: “Did we read from the Bible?” Bible-based books and studies are helpful, but be sure to spend regular time in the primary source.
2. Pay attention to environment
Environments can support your goals or can work against them. We want members to be comfortable and to feel included. For some this means comfy chairs arranged in a circle. For others it might mean sitting on the floor. Most of us feel comfortable in a space that’s clean and tidy. But one that’s too formal can actually inhibit discussion — a few folding chairs or using paper plates can help with that. The point is to know your members and pay attention to how they’re responding to the environment.
It may be helpful to have Bibles and other resources in the room — a concordance, a Bible dictionary, pens, paper, etc. Even if members rely on digital sources, seeing and using resources like this can set a tone.
And, end meetings on time. If your members leave wanting more, that’s a good thing. If they spend the last half hour frustrated and wondering when the meeting’s going to end, that’s not what you want.
3. Share ministry
Remember that our goal is to train one another. A leader’s role is to lead people to become disciplers themselves. This requires patience; people have different interest levels and different comfort levels. Everyone moves at a different pace. Always, we want to make each member dependent on Christ — not us — and we want them to properly view themselves as necessary and valuable parts of the Body (1 Cor. 12).
4. Emphasize application
In Jesus’ parable of The Four Soils, one infertile soil type is described as being full of thorns. Jesus explains that this soil is when the message of God’s Kingdom is strangled by the cares of this world and the pursuit of riches. Small groups should be a place where we encourage each other to remove these ‘thorns’ from our lives.
In the book Living in Christ’s Presence (Willard and Ortberg, IVP Books, 12/13), John Ortberg writes:
“Information alone does not transform. It’s indispensable – I have to have that information – but it’s not sufficient.”
There are two common errors we make with information. One error is to live our lives based on assumptions. I addressed this one in the the first practice, above. The other error is to collect and hoard information without connecting it to real life. It’s essential that group members see how biblical truth relates to how we live. This can be done in several ways — sharing stories of successes or failures with the truth being discussed, helping a member through a difficult time, discussing hypothetical situations, or sharing how a biblical truth changes our thinking . This is the point of good discussion questions.
5. Love people over facts
Probably all of us have experienced a moment like this: “What I just said sounded like my parents!” There are things we hear in the course of life that seem so foreign and so contrary to our nature that we resist them at first. But eventually we grow into them and they become a part of the fabric of who we are. It can take a while.
Spiritual formation is a lot like that. Some things people believe and say are flat out wrong. And in response it’s important to share the biblical perspective. But let God work it from there. God’s truth is Truth and it’s the work of the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth (John 16:12-15). Even Jesus couldn’t give His disciples everything all at once.
Our goal is to love our group members and to keep them in the process of being trained by Christ, not to get them to believe like us. 1 Corinthians 13 is clear on this point.
6. Pray together
So much of leadership is modeling what’s important. It’s good to say: “I’ll pray for you.” It’s better to pray with them now. Praying together draws people closer to God and in the process draws them closer to each other. Spend time in prayer and encourage everyone to pray. Yes, it may be awkward at first, so be creative. Have people write prayer requests on paper and exchange them for silent prayer. Have two or three members pray for one another. As people get more comfortable praying, you can pray as a group.
7. Serve together
This is another way of saying emphasize application (Practice 4). In Matthew 22, Jesus summarized God’s law and the teaching of the prophets:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
Being trained by Christ will inevitably lead us to loving and serving others. Serving together as a small group can help members take that first step towards having an ‘others’ focus — maybe grudgingly at first, but eventually with passion and a sense of mission.
