Small Groups Are Weird

We are all a little weird. And we like to think that there is always someone weirder. I mean, I am sure some of you are looking at me and thinking, "Well, at least I am not as weird as you," and I am thinking, "Well, at least I am not as weird as the people in the loony bin," and the people in the loony bin are thinking, "Well, at least I am an orange."

— Jim Gaffigan, Dad Is Fat

Let's go ahead and get this out of the way from the beginning: to the normal church outsider, small groups are weird. Those of us who are tasked with convincing people in our churches that joining a small group is something they should do have an uphill battle. Here are just a few of the perceptions that come along with signing up for a small group in a church:

• Carve out two to three hours a week from your already impossible schedule.

• Spend those two to three hours with strangers in someone's home.

• Be prepared to confess all of your internal struggles to those strangers.

• Don't forget to stop by the store every week to pick up a cheese-and-fruit tray for the group.

Sound like fun? It didn't to me. My journey to being a small-groups pastor was not an easy one. In fact, I pretty much came to it kicking and screaming.

My Journey to Groups

I will never forget my first experience at an early morning men's breakfast. I will admit that I am not by nature an early morning person. At that point in my life (early twenties and a musician), I had no clue there were two five o'clocks in the day. So I was not in the best frame of mind when I walked into the back room of the restaurant at 5:30 a.m. for the breakfast.

Everything about the meeting was great until it came time for the small-group discussion with the guys sitting around my table. The assignment was for each of us to confess to the table our biggest current struggle in our walk with God and then spend a few minutes praying for one another to overcome the sin. I had never met any of the men at my table, so there was no chance I was going to open the vaults to my deepest, darkest struggles. Instead, I silently prayed that no one would look at me to go first. We started going around the table, and it quickly became evident that a couple of the guys did not have the same inner boundaries that I did. They were confessing sins I am pretty certain were illegal in a couple of states. By the time it was my turn to speak, the confession bar had been set pretty high. I could feel disapproving stares burning through me as I looked down at my plate and muttered something about not reading my Bible and praying enough. You know, the adult equivalent of when I ask my kids what they learned in their class at church and they answer, "Jesus." We finished the confessions, and I quickly left the restaurant, pretty certain that I did not want to have anything to do with any future men's small groups.

Fast-forward twenty years and discover that I am now such a big believer in the power of community through small groups that I lead a groups ministry at a church that has over 90 percent of our adult members attending a group somewhere in our city.

Did a few men's group experiences get less awkward? Nope.

Did people's lives get less messy? Nope.

What happened is very simple: I discovered the power of real life change when I dropped the facade of being a Sunday Christian and began to live the raw truth of life with people as messed up as I am.

Until I decided to become vulnerable with a group of people I trusted, I thought I was the only one:

The only one who sometimes questioned if God was real. (I am a pastor.)

The only one who didn't always feel like reading my Bible and praying. (Did I mention I am a pastor?)

The only one who dropped the ball with my family.

The only one who started with a smile on Sunday morning and finished with anger on Sunday night.

C. S. Lewis defined friendship this way: "The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one.'"

That is the secret sauce of a small group. When we help create environments where messed-up people like us are able to look at each other and say, "You too?" it frames the message of the gospel in a whole new way. Suddenly people understand grace in a context they never knew before. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are that brought them to this place. It only matters that someone else understands.

The journey from attending to leading small groups has not always felt like a successful one. After being on staff at Seacoast Church in Charleston, South Carolina, for ten years, my family and I moved to Greenville to launch a campus for Seacoast in the upstate area. I knew the best way to build community for a new church was to start small groups as soon as possible. So we did. We had purposefully picked our new home based on how easy it would be to host a large number of people. The kitchen was spacious for prediscussion time, and the living room had plenty of room to arrange chairs around the outside. We had as many as forty-four people crammed into our house at one time.

Our philosophy of leading groups at the time was to lead a group for a semester and then hand it off to an apprentice leader while we started a new group. Our first couple of groups averaged ten to fifteen couples, so we felt confident that the system was working and we were starting to figure out this small-groups thing. That was true — right up until we opened the sign-up sheet for the third semester and only one couple committed to our group. Even though we continued to invite (or beg) other people to join, our small group stayed truly small the entire semester. It was never a difficult decision whether to cancel a group meeting or not. When the other couple couldn't make it to group night, it was canceled. So much for my perfect record as a successful small-group leader.

Even though not every group we led through the years has felt like a home run, I will forever champion small groups with everything I have. I know they are difficult and far from perfect, but so is my life. I have come to the realization that the sole reason my small group is weird is because I am in it. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Small-Group Models

In my twenty-two years of church-staff life I have run across almost every type of small-group model you can think of. The first version was a Sunday school system in my dad's Pentecostal church in Houston, Texas, which had a predominately lecture format in which different age groups met for an hour before the church service for focused Bible study. All of our Sunday school classes were held at the church, and people graduated level by level until eventually they landed in the senior adult class that met in the auditorium.

The first time my wife and I experienced small groups that met outside of the church building was when we moved to Charleston in 1995 to go on staff at Seacoast Church. Seacoast is a nondenominational church started in 1988 by my brother, Greg Surratt. At that time, all of Seacoast's small groups met on Friday nights in homes across the city, with shared babysitting offered at the church. The meetings were mostly Bible studies, with a few groups digging deeper into the message from the previous Sunday.

After a few years we heard about a discipleship movement that was sweeping parts of the world based on the idea of circles of twelve. The concept was that your church would break into circles of twelve, and a leader was selected to lead one circle, mentor another circle, and belong to a third circle. This system required a minimum of three meetings a week and a whole bunch of interlocking circles on whiteboards. It may have worked beautifully in South America, but it didn't last long in South Carolina.

Ted Haggard's book Dog Training, Fly Fishing, and Sharing Christ in the 21st Century introduced us to the concept of free-market small groups. The basic concept was that small groups have common interests (such as training dogs, fly fishing, etc.). This system allows people to build community around something they are already doing. Versions of the free-market system can be found in churches across the nation today: running groups, fishing groups, softball groups, water-skiing groups, golfing groups, new moms groups, underwater basket-weaving groups (not really underwater basket-weaving, but you get my point). A free-market system is great for assimilating a lot of people into small groups; however, you have to make sure those groups include God. Otherwise they're just social clubs with a theme.

Groups at Cross Point

The foundation for community groups at Cross Point is based on the vision for the overall church: to be a community of believers radically devoted to Christ, irrevocably committed to one another, and relentlessly dedicated to reaching those outside God's family with the gospel of Christ. Each group is expected to pursue all three things: discipleship, community, and evangelism. We see this being modeled for us by the small groups in the early church.

They spent their time learning the apostles' teaching, sharing, breaking bread, and praying together.

The apostles were doing many miracles and signs, and everyone felt great respect for God. All the believers were together and shared everything. They would sell their land and the things they owned and then divide the money and give it to anyone who needed it. The believers met together in the Temple every day. They ate together in their homes, happy to share their food with joyful hearts. They praised God and were liked by all the people. Every day the Lord added those who were being saved to the group of believers. (Acts 2:42–47)

1. Discipleship: Radically Devoted to Christ

It's clear in this passage that the early church spent time not only learning from the apostle's teachings but also living it out together. Our group leaders at Cross Point are asked to simply be one step ahead of those they lead in their journey to be more like Christ, and they should be willing to take someone else along with them. We recognize that discipleship is not a cookie-cutter process. Each person will grow differently and at a different pace than everyone else. The key is to help them identify where they are and what it will take to help them get to the next step. We will dive into this in another chapter, but discipleship is not easy and it's not fast.

2. Community: Irrevocably Committed to One Another

The groups in the early church "ate together in their homes, happy to share their food with joyful hearts." Community is not a difficult value for Cross Point's groups to implement, because it starts with our senior pastor, Pete Wilson. If you attend a Sunday morning service at our Nashville campus (the campus where Pete speaks), you will likely find Pete between services hugging and talking to people in the lobby. At some point someone will have to drag him to the stage for the message. Even though there are thousands of people who now attend on a weekly basis, Pete still takes time to talk to anyone who wants to talk to him.

You will also find worship leaders and band members greeting people at the doors or, on a rainy Sunday, running into the parking lot to walk someone in with an umbrella. There is no green room hiding at Cross Point.

A new church member, who had been attending for a couple of months, asked me during a lunch, "How do you guys create community as a church? As soon as you walk in the doors you feel it!"

The answer starts with leadership. Pete models and the church follows. This translates all the way through our community group leaders. Community is essential, but it's easy to stay there and not move on to number three.

3. Evangelism: Relentlessly Dedicated to Reaching Those Outside

From the passage in Acts it's obvious that evangelism was essential to the early church groups: "Every day the Lord added those who were being saved to the group of believers." Of the three building blocks for groups, evangelism is the most difficult one to continue practicing. It's easy for groups to slip into the "us four and no more" mentality. As soon as a group becomes inward focused, it becomes a holy huddle and not the Great Commission. At Cross Point, we train our leaders to look at the example Jesus gave us. Jesus had his small group of twelve, but discipleship was accomplished through the mission. They were consistently taking the words of Jesus and putting them into practice. James 1:22 says, "Do what God's teaching says; when you only listen and do nothing, you are fooling yourselves." Our group leaders need to know that the curriculum is important, but it's worthless without living it out.

Groups Are the Option

Because we believe sustained life change happens best in the context of community, we make small groups the priority option for spiritual growth in our church. Many churches offer a variety of classes for people to choose from to help them grow in biblical knowledge. While I don't believe there is anything fundamentally wrong with offering classes, we see the group-learning format as the best direction for our church. Here are a few reasons why it works for us:

1. Offsite groups solve space problems. As a growing, multisite church, on-campus space will always be an issue for us. Even if we wanted to offer a more traditional Sunday school format for classes, we would not have anywhere to put them. A few of our campuses are portable, and they are allowed to use just enough rooms to pull off a Sunday morning experience with worship and kids. Even our permanent facilities are completely packed on Sundays with what it takes to create an effective environment for families. We could build more buildings and continue adding rooms, but there will never be enough space. Small groups in homes all over the city are the best answer to space problems for us.

2. Small groups provide accountability. The only way to continue growing spiritually is through honest accountability with another person. Proverbs 27:17 says, "As iron sharpens iron, so people can improve each other." This level of sharpening happens best in a small-group setting with other believers.

3. Small groups limit choices. It seems reasonable that the more options we have, the better, but the opposite is, in fact, true. Recent studies show that people are paralyzed when they have too many choices. One of my favorite restaurants in the world is In-N-Out Burger. They offer four things on their menu: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, shakes, and drinks. That's it. It helps that their burgers are really, really good, but I love that I don't have to think about it when I go in. I just order a cheeseburger and fries. I also love the food at the Cheesecake Factory, but the twenty-page menu of options frustrates me. Apple recognized this early on and created products that are simple and obvious. One button is all you need. When new people visit our church and ask us what they should do next, there's only one button: join a small group. If small groups are just an option on a long menu of choices, they will lose every time.

4. Small groups broaden the span of pastoral care. We could never hire enough staff to facilitate spiritual care for every person who attends our church. Starting a small group gives people opportunities to discover their God-given gifts and abilities through leading. Instead of hiring more staff pastors to keep up with the growth, we have commissioned 250 leaders to pastor their small circles of community. Our group leaders are the first line of care in the church. If one of our pastors is required to make a hospital visit because of an emergency, the person's small group is almost always already waiting there.

5. Small groups create a natural pipeline for leadership. Most churches are asking, "Where do you find leaders?" A small-group system is an ideal incubator for potential leaders and future staff members. If you want to find out if people will follow someone, ask them to start a small group. If you want to find out if someone can build teams, ask them to coach three to five small-group leaders for a semester. Looking for your next campus pastor? Look for the small-group leader you keep encouraging to start new groups because their own group has grown to the size of a small church.

6. Small groups make a large church feel small. We all want our churches to grow, but the downside to growth is the loss of personal intimacy. After the church grows beyond three hundred people, it's impossible for attendees to know everyone. This is exasperated when a church turns to multiple services, and it is completely lost when a church becomes multisite. The only way to keep people from falling through the cracks is by creating a system to catch them. Small groups help the church keep people who would otherwise drift back into anonymity. We all long for the feeling that someone knows our name on Sunday morning. Small groups provide it.