By Dave English
The Small Group Mandate:
The main Christian callings to love and personal relationships are central to our task. It is impossible to have meaningful, loving relationships with large numbers of people. Loving means rolling up our sleeves and serving. We can’t truly love the masses if we don’t first love individuals. Small groups have always been the central arena of Christian ministry.
Your fellowship is a network of personal relationships. The richness or poverty of love within those relationships determines the fellowship’s growth, beauty, and effectiveness. The only way to produce godly, loving disciples is through a loving relationship with them.
But simply having small groups won’t do it. We Americans tend to organize everything (both a strength and a weakness). We tend to formalize our relationship networks into clear-cut small groups and that’s good. But unless we consciously identify and commit ourselves to a small group within the family, we never get around to genuinely loving and serving. We are guilty of “sloppy agape.”
Committing ourselves to each other in small groups is the beginning of “laying down our lives for our friends.” On the other hand, we tend to think something has happened because we’ve organized it. What folly. Structures can only enable and express love. We must do the loving.
The Small Group Mission:
What loving must we do? What is our task as a small group? We band together for only one legitimate purpose — to serve Christ together. This involves three aspects: 1) pursuing God — growth in loving and enjoying Him in every area of life; 2) building each other up in Christ; and 3) seeking to draw non-believers to Christ. The valid small group bands together for mission, Christ’s mission.
A note on the four small group components. Worship, fellowship, nurture, and mission as activities are merely means to the end. The end is Christ’s mission. Dismiss the concept that your small group needs to choose some little mission as one of the four components. The reason for your group’s existence is mission. Christ has laid that mission on your shoulders, not on your chapter president, your staffer, or even your church.
Your fellowship has a mandatory mission on campus — pursuing God and proclaiming Him to the campus. Make this part of the overall task — one hall, one frat, one dorm — as well as making godly disciples of all who respond.
The Small Group Method:
The key to effective small groups is godly leaders. Godly leadership is not the place for just any warm, fuzzy volunteer. The vision, godliness, and love of the small group leader make things happen. Small group leaders must model Christ’s mission.
Secondly, they must work as a team to maximize campus-wide impact. Each leader must know his or her part in the fellowship’s growth and outreach. A small group leader can’t work alone.
The small group leaders and the Exec should work together as a leadership team. However, the Exec members do have the final say; small group leaders follow them.
Exec members should set vision, divide the campus task, and hold small group leaders to standards. If you follow this pattern, your chapter will be more effective.
