*This is adapted from an email I originally wrote to a group of small-group leaders as a reflection on chapter 1 of Cloud and Townsend’s Making Small Groups Work. Context and roles vary from church to church, but I hope the principles here will be useful for anyone thinking about discipleship and community.
I think so many Presbyterians in particular—but really, all Christians of an intellectual bent—feel like if we just learn enough, hear enough sermons, read enough books, get enough lectures, learn enough facts, then we’ll be transformed. “It is knowing our Bible that transforms us, by the power of the Holy Spirit.” And that’s not wrong—but it’s not enough. It’s absolutely necessary and utterly insufficient. It has to be all of that and people.
I think so many people read all the grand doctrines of the Bible—about how amazing our God is (and He is!)—about the wonderful love of our incredible Savior, Jesus Christ (and it is wonderful!)—and they miss that pretty much all the commands in the Bible are about people: how to love people, how to live with people, how to be in community with people. Most of the New Testament is instructions for how to be a community. And those early churches were probably only forty people or so—maybe a hundred at most. When we talk about small groups today, we’re talking about the modern context where the truths we learn on Sundays—in preaching, in classes, wherever—get lived out together.
This is why our small groups have to be more than Bible studies. They have to be people involved in each other’s lives. They have to be led and facilitated in ways that help us really enter into life together—sharing what’s happening, influencing one another, letting God work through those connections. As Henry Cloud said, “Other people are Plan A, not Plan B.”
Many churches use small groups as a primary ministry of discipleship because we live in a commuter culture where we don’t see each other every day. Early Christians actually saw each other daily in the streets, the marketplace, the same neighborhood. We don’t. So small groups are one way we overcome that gap.
Most of the “love one another” commands in the Bible aren’t just general—they’re instructions for how Christians are to love one another within the church community, how we’re meant to build one another up (Ephesians 4:16). “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:10). But that kind of work doesn’t happen in the big preaching room. It happens in spaces where people are relating personally. That’s what small groups are for: spaces where we relate, share life, and work out what we’re learning in community.
You could think of a small group as the social microcosm for living out what the Bible teaches. Small groups are the primary, biblical context for growth. The early churches didn’t need small groups—they were small groups. But in most modern churches, we’re spread out enough that small groups are the most practical way to give each other that relational context for growth.
So this is what small-group leaders are meant to lead. Our groups are meant to be places where process can happen—where change can take place. I love how the authors put it: “We don’t think it takes a PhD to do that! We think it takes some basic skills and processes found in the Bible, plus a little dose of love, a mustard seed of faith, some commitment, and an adventuresome spirit.” That’s exactly right. This is what our small groups can be, and this is what this book helps us lean into.
I’ll leave off with this thought: small groups are the context where we get to live life together with those we’re called to shepherd. It’s where we shepherd people into true life change—whatever change God wants to make in each of us—by His grace, through the power of the Holy Spirit, as He works through people, which is His Plan A for sanctification.
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