Small Groups are a big thing

Yesterday evening, I met with our elders and discussed the establishment of a ministry of small groups within our church. Small groups are old news to most ministry-active churches, but I am always a little slow on the uptake.
Small groups is such an old idea in the Church that it is found in Acts 2 (especially verse 46). Even Martin Luther (in the German Mass, 1523), the patriarch of "alternative church," made a case for the small group meeting in the home:

[Those] who want to be Christians in earnest and who profess the gospel with hand and mouth… should sign their names and meet alone in a house somewhere to pray, to read, to baptize, to receive the sacrament, and do other Christian works. According to this order, those who do not lead Christian lives could be known, reproved, corrected, cast out, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ, Matthew 18. Here one could also solicit benevolent gifts to be willingly given and distributed to the poor, according to St. Paul’s example, II Corinthians 9. Here would be no need of much and elaborate singing. Here one could set out a brief and neat order for baptism and the sacrament and center everything on the Word, prayer, and love.

In an excellent web article on small groups, R. Neighbour gives five essentials for a small group (http://www.christianitytoday.com/smallgroups/articles/5essentials.html); they are:

· Relationships must be a priority.

· Leaders need adequate training.

· Everyone should be viewed as a leader.

· Healthy groups divide and multiply.

· The focus of the group should be living out the Gospel.

This obviously does not describe a home Bible study, but it does describe church in a very real sense. Tracy Grace Brethren Church will start with one small group and we will practice for a month until we feel ready to start groups two and three and beyond.
What an exciting opportunity to reinvent church the way Christ, the Head of the Church, originally designed it.