There is a powerful small group exercise called "Life Map" that helps people recall significant people or moments in their spiritual journey. "Life Map" involves drawing your spiritual journey on a piece of paper. Sometimes people draw graphs with high points and low points during significant life events. Sometimes individuals draw different pictures that represent specific eras of their life. Once the drawings are completed, group members share their pictures with the whole group.
Whenever I have done this activity with a group, the common theme of most spiritual journeys is the impact that key relationships had on people at defining moments in their life. These defining moments usually did not happen within the walls of a church building or even at a church event. This is why I believe the most strategic evangelistic strategy does not involve bringing people to the church (church buildings, special events or even small groups), but taking the church to the people through relational outreach.
Even a brief review of the workings of the New Testament church reveals that the gospel was most life-changing when encountered in everyday life. For instance, the apostle Paul went to where the lost people were. He did not water down the truth but he made the message relevant to people in their context. He described the process as one of "reaching out to God and finding Him…because He is not far from each one of us." (Acts 17:24-28).
In our church, we wrestled with how to apply this strategy in our small group ministry. When casting the vision for small group outreach, we constantly encountered a couple of tensions:
One tension involved those who had the gift of evangelism and those who did not. Small group members who did not have the gift of evangelism became discouraged quickly if those they invited did not agree to come to a small group meeting. Consequently, they would give up on inviting any other new people and just leave it up to those with the gift of evangelism.
The other tension was between the small group member’s desire for group intimacy and the mandate for group outreach. On one hand, followers of Christ naturally long for a committed discipleship group where honest sharing and in-depth probing of the Word occurs and where Christian community runs deeps. On the other hand, Christ-following group members also recognize the mandate we have for participating in the great commission (Matt. 28:18-20), knowing the energy and awkwardness involved in loving new people is part of our calling.
The solution to these tensions for us became know as the "O-group Strategy."
Let me draw you some pictures of what this strategy might look like. Imagine the members of your group arranged in a circle of intimate nurturing relationships with one another. Most of our traditional thought processes about group outreach center on how to bring more new people into the circle.
But what if you change your way of thinking and instead of focusing on getting people into the circle, focus on ways for group members to create small group bonds with the disconnected even before they ever visit the small group?
What if you defined success not by whether a new person showed up at the next group meeting, but by how you were faithfully investing your life in Christ on a regular basis with one or two others outside the group? What if you set up a schedule to have lunch with a non-believing co-worker or disconnected church member twice a month just so you could get to know them? What if you shared a garden plot with your unchurched neighbor where you could routinely work together. What if you regularly car-pooled to a child’s or grandchild’s sporting event with a new family at your church.
Then after you had begun to develop that relationship and establish trust between you, why not make a suggestion that you read a book together about how to become a better parent from a Biblical perspective or share a Biblical teaching on cassette tape and agree to get their reaction to it the next time you get together.
A group member might apply this strategy with one or two or more people they would like to reach out to. Then, rather than defining success as "bringing" those one to three people into the group circle, success is defined by establishing connections to those one to three people outside of regular small group meetings. Now a small group member has established a whole new group that we call an O-group (Outreach-group). See the picture below:
This O-group is not isolated from the main group because while these O-group relationships are being established, you and your small group are praying for these O-group individuals by name. Group members are also sharing with their O-group people about what a great experience the regular small group is to him or her and even invites his O-group person to share a meal with another small group member occasionally. Pretty soon, every small group member has one or two or three they are reaching out to and your small group picture starts to look something like this:
What this strategy has done for us is made successful outreach attainable for everyone. And that has created a whole new sense of enthusiasm about outreach.
The obvious end result is that through prayer and relationship, O-group people move easily into the small group circle because over time other people from the group have also entered into a relationship with them. When the day comes for the O-group person to come to a regular group meeting, it’s almost like they are regulars.
But remember, the goal is not to ask people to come to our small group, we are trying to take the small group to them. We do not define success as someone new coming to our small group, rather, we are defining success as a small group member making an ongoing relationship-based connection to someone who needs Christ’s loving touch in their lives.
So, next time don’t ask them to come to your small group first. Instead take your small group to them by forming an intentional O-group relationship first.
