The Power of Small Groups

A year and a half ago I attended an organizing meeting of our 20s/30s group held at a restaurant.  We were brainstorming ideas and the idea of doing a chalice circle came up.  Since I had been attending the church for a whopping three weeks, and I wanted to be a member of a chalice circle, I volunteered to find out how we could get a chalice circle going.

I had no idea at that time I would end up being the facilitator of said group.

Go fig.

After some back and forth with the associate minister at the time, who was going to start a small group ministry program in our church, I received some very basic training, given a binder or two of some, well, bizarre curriculum, and sent on my way.  I emailed out to the group and there were around 20 people who expressed an initial interest – a number that terrified me.  We tried to split into two groups based off geographical location, but that did not work.  My meeting at 8 people, and the other meeting led by a rather unwilling facilitator had about 4. We combined the group the next week and met at church, and we had about 15.  We dwindled to a usual group of 10-12, and after getting locked out of the church one night we started meeting in people’s homes.  And that was the start of our real chalice circle.

We went strong for a year – for the first half I facilitated every week, but I got swamped, and we started to rotate being the facilitator, a fantastic decision in retrospect for a multitude of reasons.  When you facilitate, you not only learn the topic better yourself, you experience something different than when you are just a participant.  The more important reason, in retrospect, was building facilitator qualities in other members.  This comes important later on.

We always had a group of 10-12 that rotated – some left and some joined.  We’re young adults – we had to move to different jobs, and welcome those who just moved into the area.

Over the summer, me and a couple of others (Chutney for one) had the idea to have an open covenant group.  The church was about to launch a big push for people to join covenant groups, and we wanted to let others have the experience of a covenant group and see what its like.  We had a pot luck and about 30 people came – we split into three groups that night and did a sample curriculum.  Everyone expressed interest in starting a group, and we started to brainstorm what to do.

The Stewardship Drive was gearing up, so I took myself out of those conversations due to the immense lack of time.  A lot of people had a problem with what was being presented to us as the rules for covenant groups as dictated by the associate minister – the facilitators HAD to attend meetings, we HAD to follow the curriculum given to us; it was too rules-based.  I got jaded.  One group did start a covenant group under that format.  The rest of us had to start an Affinity group.  That name was dictated to us, and I was annoyed by that, but we did it anyways.  We had about 15-20 people in it, and originally I was going to be the main leader of it but Stewardship took me out, and someone else stepped up.

Soon hope arrived in the form of our Assistant Minister, who took over the program.  The rules were relaxed.  The groups were allowed breathing room, and we were told to figure out what worked best for us, and to go with it.  Finally!  Someone who understood what we needed in order to thrive.

The affinity group grew in leaps and bounds, and we were having 18-20 people attended each meeting.  The group had grown too big to allow the intimate discussion we all wanted.  People weren’t able to speak at all, and everyone started to realize the size was a problem, even those who protested when we split the first time.

Using a catalyst of a falling out between two members, the affinity group split in half on Sunday, and formed two covenant groups…after we came up with a group covenant.  I’m back as Group Leader of one, and I can’t wait for the next meeting.    The covenant making process, and outlining clearly the responsibilities of the group leader, the meeting facilitator, hosts and members was a great process, and went a lot better than I had expected.

Our 20s/30s  /  Young Adult group now has 3 covenant groups going on inside it.  That’s pretty damn incredible, and speaks bounds about the strength of our 20s/30s group.  Our email list has about 190 people and there are a lot of regulars in the big group who are not part of one of the covenant groups.

But why has our original group tripled in size?

Well – a lot of reasons.  Some which I understand, and some I don’t.

1) The conversation topics.  We’ve been doing some pretty awesome topics lately, from gender roles to happiness.  The word spread to other members of the 20s/30s group, and they got interested in being part of the group because of the topics.

2) Deep bonds.  The members who have been it since the beginning are getting pretty close.  We’re forming strong relationships that are existing outside the group, and has brought a rather scattered group of individuals a lot closer together.

3) Deep emotional attachment.  I’ll admit, this caught me completely off guard.  We’ve had members cry at meetings, and they see the group as having a rather huge importance in their life.  During check out, people will talk of what an amazing experience it was, and during check in talk about how they’ve thought about last session’s topic for the past weeks.  Some things are still with us “Do we love enough” being the utmost example, uttered over a year ago and still on a lot of our minds.

4) Connection to the church.  A lot of people in the group see this as their connection to the church.  They don’t always do Sunday service (although most of our members now go, some go now who didn’t go before the group) and this is their chance to get their dose of spirituality.  Our members have stepped up to church leadership, when they might now have done it before the group (I wouldn’t have done the Stewardship Committee probably, another is on the Nominating Committee, and another just got hired by the church and is now the evil man on staff)

Our small groups have definitely influenced our 20s/30s group, and the overall church as well.

It’s been an incredible experience, and this is just from the small groups within our Young Adult group.  I can see why this program is practically essential for large churches.

If your group at church, especially young adult group, doesn’t have a covenant group up and running, get it started.  It will make your group, and your church, a lot stronger as a result.