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Small Groups

Some seeking a closer Christian intimacy with other believers and unable to find this within mechanical-like organizational church systems often try various forms of small groups. This can take the form of house church, cell groups, and even various small groups within a larger church system. These often fail to provide the sought after fellowship for many reasons.

1. Classroom reflex. Often any group over four people will form itself into a class with someone seeking to be or made to be a teacher. This shifts from dialog to lecture and almost always kills the development of relationship and sharing from the heart.

2. Time avarice. Making an investment in other people can seem like a waste of time. Some might want to “help” if they can determine how much money to give, what problem to solve, or what concept there is to learn or teach. Many have ordered their lives such that there is little to give of themselves to their own families much less have anything to give to fellow Christians.

3. Hell is other people. This quote of Sartre seems to encapsulate our intrinsic nature to inflict our selfishness on each other.Just as in families close proximity to each other requires the work of the Holy Spirit to help us transcend selfishness and show love. Our comfortable consumer society makes our threshold of discontent with each much lower than in times of adversity.

4. Being right. Denominational Christianity often presents a “package” of doctrine that is offered as complete and correct. This can lead people to adopt what someone else has concluded as “right”. Differences are then seen as “wrong”. This can lead to contention that cannot be resolved because the individual did not reach his own conclusions, but took in those of someone else.

5. Inhibited inquiry. The public education system often creates people who after 12 years of being told to shut up and sit down seldom exercise critical thinking, analytical assessments, or the pursuit of resolving questions. Many come to the point of even actively avoiding anything that might be considered “controversial” or uncertain.

6. Shooting the Breeze. People can have a degree of relationship poverty such that the opportunity to talk with others is such a welcome event that it becomes dominated with conversation unrelated to anything spiritual. This is not necessarily bad as it can help develop relational depth, but Christians should also seek the deeper things of the Lord and exhort each other to do so.

7. Subject abstraction. Bible study is usually topical, a book study, or a word study. People can lose interest in a group whose format seems disconnected from their daily lives. Theology (particularly that from a seminary perspective) tends to be un-relatable. A person might be more interested in how he can use biblical principles to build a better relationship with his son.

A Christian small group would benefit from an older wiser Christian who could share his wisdom and help the others grow in truth and love. There are few of these available and often unrecognized when encountered. Considering the difficulties, it should not be surprising that small groups seldom thrive.

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