Most Small Groups Can Be Mediocre...

10 Lessons from a Church Whose Groups Are Exploding

I’ve always had a hard time with small groups as a church leader.

In my experience, whenever a church launches a new wave of small groups, you’re really hoping to just keep most of the people that show up on week 1 through week 10.

Usually, you launch with groups of 20 and are happy if you have groups of 8 by the end of the semester.

You might have had a similar experience.

As a result of this, I’ve grown a bit cynical about small group ministries. I’ve even had the thought that…

“Maybe small groups are just a bad idea. We could put people in serve groups instead.”

And I almost gave in to that thinking. But there was one problem with my theory.... Read More

When Dillon Smith refers to groups of 20 and groups of 8, it is not clear whether he is referring to the size of the small groups or the number of small  groups. 20 people is too large a number of people for a small group. With that may people you no longer have small group dynamics. On the other hand, 8 to 10 people is not a bad size for a small group. Some small groups do not jell. So a church may start out with more small groups than it ends up with. We ran our small groups at the Journey for 6 weeks at a time. At the end of the 6 weeks a small group participant might join a new group or stay with the group in which they had been participating. Groups were also encouraged to multiply and form new groups. I was a co-leader or participant in a small group for ten years while I was at the Journey. The reason that I was initially attracted to the church was that it was only 9 months old and had a small group ministry. Our small groups were co-led. We often rotated leadership in our small groups to give everyone an opportunity to learn how to conduct a small group meeting. We offered periodic small group leader training for potential leaders and hosts.  Our small groups were usually hosted by a couple who opened their home for small group meetings; in the case of university students, one or two students.