Lessons from Transformational Church: Small Group Revolution

I have been reading the book Transformational Church by Ed Stetzer and Thom Rainer. This book is the Good to Great for church leadership. The chapter on small groups titled “Community: Connect People with People” has been particularly convicting.

See the paragraph below:

The fourth small-community obstacle is a segmentation of the mission of God. The mission of small communities is not to teach the Bible only. Every expression of the church owns all the mission of God. Your smaller community owns the mission of God. You have been called and empowered. The danger of segmentation is great. The smaller communities say that is not their role. Our purpose is to get through the study, they think. (p 191)

Don’t miss this:  Every expression of the church owns all the mission of God. This includes my small group!

I realized when reading this chapter, that my experience attending small groups has been terrible, especially in adulthood.  With one wonderful exception, the small group was where a lesson was taught before real church got started.  All of the following behaviors have happened in small groups I’ve attended in the past:

• Women have competed for who can bring the best breakfast
• The wife of the small group leader declared,  “I hate the Old Testament”
• Senior adult ladies complained about the arrangement of furniture in the sanctuary
• Prayer time has turned into gossip hour

My terrible experience attending small groups has led to a misunderstanding of the purpose of a small group.  As a leader, I’ve tried hard not to repeat the bad behaviors I’ve seen in the past, however I’ve missed the mark in guiding my group to own the full mission of God.

It’s the time of year for small group restructuring in our church.  As we make changes, I’m going to develop a plan to better lead my small group to express the full mission of God.  This includes deeper personal spiritual growth for each of my group members, but expands to having a mission in our community.  I must lead our group to engage people far from God and foster times of genuine fellowship with one another.

What have you done or experienced in your small group that has contributed to expressing the “full mission of God?”

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