Locate your focus in small groups

Bob Whitesel Nov. 3, 2016

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Since large gatherings can create excitement and attention, they often overshadow the key discipleship venue of small groups. To combat this, leaders must ensure that the church’s emphasis upon small groups is highlighted noticeably in official statements.

One of the most important places to highlight your small group focus is in a church’s mission, vision, and personality statements.12 These statements usually include many central and worthwhile characteristics of a church. But if a church is going to disciple people, then small groups are going to be a primary focus, and this emphasis must be highlighted in all three statements.

Locate your newcomer connection in small groups

Churches often have programs to reach out to newcomers. Yet I have observed that the most successful programs focus on getting newcomers into small groups.¹³

Too often churches laud features such as their impressive facili- ties, music, and children’s programs in their newcomer literature and orientations. But really, newcomers are looking to connect with people like themselves, people among whom they can be authentic and open, sharing spiritual hurts and questions. Therefore, newcomer ministries should seek to connect newcomers to a small group where these needs can be best addressed with intimacy and adaptation.

But because existing small groups can quickly become closed (or at least cold)¹⁴ to outsiders, the best tactic is to start new groups for newcomers as soon as feasible. In very small congregations, a newcomers’ small group can be publicized and then started once there are four or more newcomers showing interest.

If a newcomer ministry does not have as its central focus the connection of newcomers to a small group, then at best those newcomers will become just an audience and at worst they will leave the church. Remember, Thom Rainer found that “ . . . new Christians who immediately became active in a small group are five times more likely to remain in the church five years later than those who were active in worship services alone^.”¹⁵

And so, the best approach is to locate small groups as the central focus of your newcomer ministry by three actions:

1. Start new small groups comprised of newcomers if you have a sufficient newcomer flow. Large churches (over 500 in adult weekend worship) can usually start a newcomers’ group every month. Larger churches can start them more frequently, smaller ones less so. The key is to offer a newcomer small group as soon as you have more than four newcomers interested (not counting small group leaders).

2. Provide a clear, convenient path into a newcomer’s small group. Try to have the newcomers’ small group as closely associated in time and location to their visit time and location. For instance, if newcomers primarily visit on Sunday mornings, then offer a Sunday morning newcomers’ small group during your Sunday school hour. Remember, the most distant in time and location your newcomers’ small group is to the time and location of their visit, the less likely newcomers are to attend.

3. Promote small groups in all of your newcomer literature, publicity, and gatherings.

Locate your sermon teaching in small groups

A final aspect of locating small groups at the center of a congregation’s life is to disseminate sermon lessons through your small groups. Larry Osborne, pastor of North Coast Community Church in Vista, California, has been an innovator in “sermon- based small groups.”¹⁶ His key is to provide all small groups with questions for study based upon the previous week’s sermon. This accomplishes three things:

1. Sermon-based small groups allow congregants who missed the weekend sermon to catch up on what the rest of the church learned.

2. This unites the church because all small groups are hearing the same message. Small groups are less likely to become detached and divisive this way.

3. This allows congregants to explore and apply sermon lessons in a more intimate, ask-assertive, localized way.

But this requires some extra planning on the part of the preacher. Church leaders who want to locate sermon lessons as a unifying and local element of small groups must undertake the following four elements:

1. Preachers must write questions for group discussion at the same time they write their sermon, providing copies to the small group supervisors.

2. Small group supervisors must oversee the distribution (usually electronically) of the questions to all small group leaders.

3. Depending upon what the topic of the sermon is, the person in charge of moderating the discussion of the questions can be either the small group’s UP, IN, or OUT leader.

4. The supervisors use the sermon topic and questions as start- ing places to maintain dialogue and mentor small group leaders.

“But,” you may ask, “what if some of our small groups such as boards, sport teams, and music groups do not have a teaching time? How can they locate the sermon in the center of their small group?” The key is for every small group, regardless of function, to be required to have a discussion/teaching time with questions. This location of the sermon message at the core of all small groups can expand the unity and biblical focus of a church.

Potential questions to ask:

• Are small groups an integral part of our mission, vision, and, personality statements? Why or why not? What do you suggest be done?

• Are small groups effectively connecting our newcomers to our church? Why or why not? What do you suggest be done?

• Are sermon teachings an integral part of our small groups? Why or why not? What do you suggest be done?

Excerpted from Cure For The Common Church: God’s Plan to Restore Church Health, by Bob Whitesel (Wesleyan Publishing House 2012). 

For further online notes: See Chapter 4 Complete Notes. 

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Bob Whitesel (D.Min., Ph.D.) is a foresight coach, professor, and award-winning author of 14 books. For over 30 years, he has guided leaders and churches to pivot and engage what’s next. He holds two earned doctorates from Fuller Theological Seminary and teaches on leadership foresight, church health, and organizational change. His website is www.ChurchForesight.com. Learn More »

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