Say you are monitoring NASA's Martian rovers on the surface of Mars. To your surprise, a recent transmission of pictures, instead of showing an image of reddish colored dirt and rocks, shows the clear image of a "being"—not a human being, but a being more like E.T.! He is holding a sign, which when translated reads as follows: "Welcome earthlings! We have been studying your people and your ways. One thing we cannot figure out. What is this thing called Christian small groups?"
This scenario is obviously ridiculous, but the question is not. If someone with little or no prior experience with small groups asked you, "What is a small group?" what would you say?
Before you answer that, let's think about the beginning of the church.
Consider this … When Jesus left the earth (Acts 1:1-15), the disciples stared in wonder and confusion into the sky as their leader, Jesus, ascended. Rather than going their separate ways, those disciples gathered back together in a room in Jerusalem. Being together was the one thing they knew to do after spending these last few years with Jesus. It was while the disciples were together in the upper room that the next part of God's mission was set into motion. This mission would transform them and serve to take the message of Jesus across the face of the earth. Now, here is the key question: What did Jesus leave behind for the fulfillment of His mission?
Did He leave a headquarters building? No. The Israelites had a Temple building that was the center of their worship of God, but Jesus said before He died that He would tear the old Temple down and build a new one in three days. This temple would be spiritual rather than bricks and mortar. And besides, within a few years, Christians weren't even welcome around the Temple area.
Did he leave New Testament writings for churches to read and study (be careful)? No. The Old Testament scriptures were widely available and read by early Christians, and some writings about Jesus life were no doubt in existence, but the earliest New Testament writings weren't circulated widely among churches until 20+ years after Jesus ascended. I am thankful we have God's Word in the form of an abundance of printed Bibles. We should take advantage of that, but most of the world's Christians do not have an abundance of Bibles they can read. Neither did the early Christians.
During that first 20-30 years of rapid church growth and multiplication, what was the method Jesus committed to for the message of salvation? It was a community of people! It was not a very large community of people. In the beginning, it was a dozen or so who had spent a lot of time with Jesus and were in close relationship to Him and one another. Beyond that, there were maybe a hundred or so in the extended network of believers.
What made this handful of folks so unique compared to other "religious groups" of that time? Then, as now, a Christian small group is different from any other intentional gathering of people outside the church. Why? Consider those early disciples—what transformed a few sinful and sometimes confused people with individual agendas from staring into the sky to changing the world? It is Christ's Holy Spirit. When Jesus left the limitations of his earthly body behind to go back into the presence of God the Father, he once again allowed Himself, through His Spirit, to be everywhere at once, including in the heart and mind of every one of His people.
At its core, a small group is simply a group of people who have Christ's Holy Spirit inside of them. This group is able to spend enough time together that they have relationships with one another and spend enough time with Jesus to have a relationship with Him. The essence of small groups is not much more complex than that! The temptation is to initially try and wrap a lot of other parameters around it: recommending the maximum number of people who can be in a group, establishing what the group agenda is, writing leadership criteria, determining the optimal frequency of small group gatherings, building a leader support/coaching structure, etc. These criteria are very useful to helping a small group ministry grow and sustain spiritual health, but until you can embrace the simplicity of the early church pattern that a small group is people in relationship to God and to one another, then there will always be confusion about the nature of small groups.
If we miss the fact that all Jesus really left behind was a few Holy Spirit indwelt people to be the church and carry the gospel story to the ends of the earth, we are all prone to look at buildings, organizational charts, leader training, curriculum, and even the gaining of Bible information as the essence of small group life. Instead, the essence is people in relationship to God and one anther. Missing that central point can lead to much of our time and resources being invested in things that are less central to our mission of making disciples of all people. The secret of the church's impact is not in a church's knowledge, but in Who it knows. It is in a Christ-following community (Col. 1:27-2:3). That's what makes "church" life-changing and reproducible.
Now we know what a small group is, but what does a small group do? The simple answer is that it lives in community with one another. God's Word dedicates a great deal of its content to this community—how Christ followers should interact and relate to one another, and even to those who are not yet Christians. When the Holy Spirit is working in Christ-followers to create this community, it becomes a picture of Christ to people everywhere (John 17:21). That, in turn, attracts more and more people to Jesus.
A wonderful summary statement for the process of community in a small group is this: "I regularly share my life stories with you. You regularly share your life stories with me. Together we will look at the life story of Jesus Christ as it is told in God's Word, and over time, our life stories begin to look and sound a lot more like Jesus' life story."
Yes, there needs to be much prayer, intentionality, training, leadership development and structure building for community to have sustainable and healthy growth in churches. That is partly why resources like www.SmallGroups.com exist. But make no mistake, the real goal of the current small group movement is simply to provide the context for authentic Biblical community. We should not settle for anything less.
The next time you explain your small groups to the man from Mars or the gal who just visited your weekend worship service, simply invite them to join you and a few others in your small group to experience this community for themselves!
