SMALL GROUPS AGAIN
About thirty years ago I read a book on small groups by Paul Yonggi Cho, Pastor of the largest church in the world - both then and now (he must be old!).
I became convinced of the value of small groups and considered that they would probably help me building the second biggest congregation on the planet. Back then I hit a brick wall trying to get the concept across to the board of the fairly traditional church I was pastoring in the north east of Scotland.
Over the decades since that board and I parted company, I have always been a firm advocate of the benefit of doing church on two levels - the celebration when the whole congregation comes together on a Sunday and the cell meeting where a smaller, relational group gathers mid-week.
Truth is that I've also spent almost twenty five years now trying my utmost to make small groups work and never seeing the level of commitment to them that I would really hope for.
Whatever I've tried and however we have structured them, we've only ever had a limited percentage of the Sunday crowd involved in small groups. I have even heard complaints about not getting enough teaching from people who don't bother to make use of what's provided for them in a small group schedule.
Here's where I'm at right now.
Small groups are what we do. If people don't want to go to them, I'm not going to drive myself insane trying to convince them and I'm not going to lose any sleep over their determination not to participate. That's their choice.
I'm just going to concentrate on making the best possible options available for those who do value building relationships, strengthening their faith, studying the Bible and doing other fun stuff together. There are actually quite a lot of them.
Pastors sometimes ask me how we get small groups to go well - seems they struggle too. I tell them I'm too old to drive myself nuts, so we just set it all out there and those smart enough to take up what's on offer do. Whether that's 10% of our Sunday attendance or 100% - it is what it is and that's good.
Having said all that, we have a great line-up for our fall groups. Lesaya has done an excellent job there. You can check them out here http://www.churchatthemovies.com/smallgroupnews.htm
and email Lesaya if you want more info - lesaya@churchatthemovies.com
I became convinced of the value of small groups and considered that they would probably help me building the second biggest congregation on the planet. Back then I hit a brick wall trying to get the concept across to the board of the fairly traditional church I was pastoring in the north east of Scotland.
Over the decades since that board and I parted company, I have always been a firm advocate of the benefit of doing church on two levels - the celebration when the whole congregation comes together on a Sunday and the cell meeting where a smaller, relational group gathers mid-week.
Truth is that I've also spent almost twenty five years now trying my utmost to make small groups work and never seeing the level of commitment to them that I would really hope for.
Whatever I've tried and however we have structured them, we've only ever had a limited percentage of the Sunday crowd involved in small groups. I have even heard complaints about not getting enough teaching from people who don't bother to make use of what's provided for them in a small group schedule.
Here's where I'm at right now.
Small groups are what we do. If people don't want to go to them, I'm not going to drive myself insane trying to convince them and I'm not going to lose any sleep over their determination not to participate. That's their choice.
I'm just going to concentrate on making the best possible options available for those who do value building relationships, strengthening their faith, studying the Bible and doing other fun stuff together. There are actually quite a lot of them.
Pastors sometimes ask me how we get small groups to go well - seems they struggle too. I tell them I'm too old to drive myself nuts, so we just set it all out there and those smart enough to take up what's on offer do. Whether that's 10% of our Sunday attendance or 100% - it is what it is and that's good.
Having said all that, we have a great line-up for our fall groups. Lesaya has done an excellent job there. You can check them out here http://www.churchatthemovies.com/smallgroupnews.htm
and email Lesaya if you want more info - lesaya@churchatthemovies.com
posted by Roger Blackmore | 9:43 PM
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