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Recovering Small Groups as Agents of Spiritual Transformation
By Dana Preusch
I have served in ministry with small groups for over a
decade. Unfortunately I have observed that most groups are ineffective
at producing significant spiritual growth in the lives of participants.
When I consider the small group movement started by John Wesley, however,
I see a system that appears successful in producing persons of mature
Christian character. What can contemporary small group ministries learn
from Wesley’s model to be more effective agents of spiritual transformation?
While small groups have catapulted to the forefront of
programming in most North American churches, statistics tell a story
of decline in commitment and in spiritual fervor in the church overall.
In his book Forming Christian Disciples, David Lowes Watson documents
the anemic state of the church with these figures: only 15% of the 70%
of persons who say they believe in Jesus practice any kind of spiritual
discipline (prayer, Bible study, etc.) and only 10% of Christians believe
their faith should impact how they live.1 Watson notes that the trend
among churches has been to water down membership requirements so people
are comfortable and are offered programs that focus on perceived needs.
Thus, “. . . members are presented, not with the cost of Christian
discipleship, but with the benefits—a direct inversion of the
invitation which appears in the New Testament.”2 Consumerism runs
rampant in the church while any mention of suffering or sacrifice is
muted. My contention is that most small groups have succumbed thoroughly
to this mentality. Believers approach their involvement in small groups
mainly as consumers looking for what they will get out of the experience,
versus how it might change and transform them and their community of
faith.
The frantic pace of modern life is another culprit. Attendance at the
weekly worship service is often the maximum commitment persons are willing
to give. The pressures of extended work hours and extended commutes
combined with voluntary commitments to extracurricular activities all
make time a precious commodity in our society.
So we are left with a small-group movement—indeed
a church at large—making very little difference in the lives of
the persons who are a part of it. Pastors and church leaders are painfully
aware of this reality. What is to be done about the anemic state of
the church and small groups specifically? What will enable us once again
to produce persons of radical commitment and spiritual maturity?
Passion for the practice of small group life and accountability
certainly appears to have been a theme for Wesley throughout his life.
As a young man, he received spiritual training in his home that would
be predictive of the structures he would later erect. His parents “.
. . stressed the importance of orthodox Christian doctrine, regular
public worship and private devotions, and the need for a sincere transformation
of the heart and a deep love for God.”3
At Oxford, the brothers eventually teamed up and gathered
a small group of friends around them who met regularly for prayer, study,
and the taking of Holy Communion. In due course, these ‘Methodists’
began performing acts of mercy that became a major facet of the group’s
identity as well.
The class meeting appears to have been John Wesley’s
practical answer to his overriding theological (and orienting) concern:
how to keep God’s grace and our necessary response to it in balance.4
Not only did the meetings afford members the opportunity to talk openly
about their journey with Christ (grace received) but it was also a place
of mutual accountability (grace made responsible). It was a place where
members gave an account of what they had done (acts of piety and mercy)
and a place where they would receive correction if necessary. It should
be noted that Wesley also held the small group gathering in “delicate
balance” with the larger church. He was a faithful Anglican who
believed the Methodist movement was a way to revitalize the church,
not fracture it. The benefits of the small group gathering, which allowed
for fellowship and accountability to the disciplines of piety and mercy,
had to be held in balance with the benefits offered by the larger church—primarily
the means of grace including worship, liturgy, and the administration
of the sacraments.5 One could not be sacrificed for the other.
Why didn’t Wesley’s model endure? The pervasiveness
of individualism that came to prominence during the Enlightenment was
certainly a huge factor and remains a significant problem. Salvation
came to be regarded as very much an individual event.6 Personal testimonies
began to usurp spiritual conversations and examinations among members
of a class or band.7
Yet despite the decline of the class meeting, the anemic
state of the church in general, and the ineffectiveness of many modern-day
small groups, there are some positive trends and new developments, primarily
in churches where components of Wesley’s original model are being
utilized.
Covenant discipleship groups hold in balance acts of piety
(loving God) and acts of mercy (loving neighbor), and follow the pattern
of the early Methodist class meetings in that they meet weekly for a
time of mutual accountability based on a covenant each participant creates.
Another small group movement, which has been on the rise
for the past two decades, is Renovare. The leaders of this movement,
including Richard Foster and Dallas Willard, pull from a variety of
streams of thought in historical Christianity and attempt to coalesce
the best each tradition has to offer—bringing these traditions
in delicate balance much like Wesley did with the strands of Moravian
and Anglican thought and practice.
Another movement incorporating critical aspects of Wesley’s
small group philosophy and structure is the Connecting Church movement
led by Randy Frazee, pastor of Pantego Bible Church in Arlington, Texas.
Frazee’s model is ground-breaking in that it is an intentional
and planned ‘whole church’ strategy to coordinate large,
mid-size, and small group gatherings in spiritual concert with one another.
Worship services are designed to inspire people to become fully devoted
followers of Christ while community groups—midsize groups composed
of persons in the same geographical area—offer further teaching
based on what is preached in the services each week. Finally, small
groups provide an even more intimate setting where persons are held
accountable to what is preached and are challenged, in turn, to respond
in acts of compassion and mission. Much like Methodism’s covenant
discipleship groups, Connecting Church groups also ask their members
to complete a “Christian Life Profile” each year, which
assesses spiritual progress in a number of areas including regular practice
of the disciplines.8
Like Wesley, Frazee’s model is based on geography.
Frazee takes seriously the frenzied pace of modern life that has been
so detrimental to the small group’s ability to produce persons
of mature Christian character. He encourages parishioners to simplify
their lives and compress their ‘worlds’ by building spiritual
relationships with persons in their own neighborhoods. Frazee concludes,
“The simple fact is that in all places of effective community
people live in close proximity to each other . . . [community] does
require being geographically close enough to be available to each other
spontaneously and frequently enough to feel safe and loved.”9
Although small groups have not been effective agents of
spiritual transformation in recent decades, signs of hope are pervasive.
I believe those movements incorporating vital aspects of Wesley’s
original class meeting structure hold the most promise. New emphases
on the value and necessity of mutual accountability, the regular practice
of acts of piety and mercy, and a renewed appreciation of how the small
group should (and can be) intimately connected with the mission of the
larger church are all positive trends. They bode well for the ability
of the modern-day small group to become once again an effective means
of spiritual transformation. And in the end, well functioning small
groups have the potential not only to contribute to the spiritual maturity
of individual Christians but also to improve the church’s ability
as a whole to impact the larger society.
1 David Lowes Watson, Forming Christian Disciples (Nashville,
TN: Discipleship Resource, 1989), 11-12.
2 Ibid, 13.
3 Thomas Albin, “‘Heart Religion’
in the Methodist Tradition and Related Movements,” in Pietist
and Wesleyan Studies, No. 12, ed. Richard B. Steele (Lanham, MD
and London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2001), 38.
4 David Lowes Watson, Accountable Discipleship
(Nashville, TN: Discipleship Resources, 1986), 34.
5 John Wesley, “Prophets and Priests,”
in John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology, ed. Albert Outler
& Richard Heitzenrater (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1991), 545.
6 Randy Maddox, “Social Grace: The Eclipse
of the Church as a Means of Grace in American Methodism,” in Methodism
in Its Cultural Milieu, ed. Tim Macquiban (Oxford: Applied Theology
Press, 1994), 139.
7 Ibid, 138.
8 Randy Frazee, The Connecting Church (Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing Company, 2001), 100.
9 Ibid, 132-133.
