support groups?
Small groups puzzle me.
I know the arguments for them—they make big churches seem smaller, provide accountability, encourage ministry of the group to its members rather than a few ministers to the whole church body, promote learning in safe environments, build community.
But therein lies the problem—I already HAVE my community, and groups often attract those who don’t. (A favorite was the group I joined—and quit—a few years ago; at our first meeting one of the women started sobbing 15 minutes into it and didn’t stop for the rest of the night.)
It’s not that I don’t care about other people’s hurts; the church should be where all of us find healing and acceptance. But “life groups” and “cell groups” always seem to have a touch of the sorority about them—“I’ve never met you before tonight, but let’s share our deepest feelings and be sisters.” So when my small group started back up last week, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
On one hand, I already have the friends I can call at 3 in the morning. I have single friends to prowl with on Saturday nights and married friends with small children to spoil on Sunday afternoon. I have friends in ministry, friends in business, friends who stay at home and friends who are never home, friends who share my faith, friends who challenge my faith, and friends who reject my faith. What I didn’t have were friends who hadn’t read The DaVinci Code but nevertheless declared that seeing the movie was “spiritual adultery.” Thanks to my small group, I now do.
On the other hand, and to be fair, I also didn’t have a lot of friends my own age at my very large church, and I now have those as well. These new friends attended my 30th birthday party, accepted me with all my own considerable faults, and pray for me regularly. Many of them are a lot of fun, and it’s nice to see some familiar faces each weekend.
But when I’m faced with a crisis, these probably won’t be the first people I call. Our weekly meetings, while enjoyable, do not challenge me.
So tell me what you think. How many good small groups have you been part of? What made them work? Is my experience typical, and is forming a few casual friendships reason enough to participate in a group? If not, how do we build real community, something more organic and less artificial?
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Jennifer Taylor
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4-6 months ago Christian Standard published an article by Mandy (Mandie?) Smith. I believe it was called “The ‘In’ Crowd” or something clever like that. It was about introverts.
It’s the best article I’ve ever read about introverts (maybe that says something about how well read I am
). Of course introverts have a thorough distaste for forced or unforced confessions among forced (or strongly encouraged) small group formations, whether in the local church or elsewhere. “Let’s all be vulnerable.”
Introverts also have tremendous difficulty dealing with strangers who unload on them in very intimate settings. What do I say? Of course the thoughts that race through the mind are unspeakable: Uh, it’s not really that bad is it? Could, you please control yourself? Would anybody mind if I leave?
Sometimes we lack compassion. But not necessarily. Usually we lack the ability to express it. We lack the “neither do I condemn you” type arrows in our quiver. And we’re just plain uncomfortable with the whole situation.
For some, small groups are heaven on earth. They are needed for that reason alone. And they are also needed sometimes to stretch us introverts.
You don’t have to be an introvert though to struggle with small groups. Small groups are full of people.
One of the problems we run into when talking about small groups is defining exactly what a small group is. Just like when we fail to define what “missions” are then anything can become a “mission” in need of support without a definition any small group of people could be a small group.
I think one reason people feel frustrated or uncomfortable in a small group is that they go expecting one thing and it turns out to be something different. So the purpose has to be clearly stated.
Small groups can benefit a Church Family, but I don’t think programed small groups is the best way to build community. It is what we would like to happen, but I think too often the relationships feel forced and not very natural.
How do we build community? That is a good question. You can’t leave it to chance because then it won’t happen. I think it starts be giving people a chance to interact in environments they don’t feel pressured to share the intimate detials of their lives: Service projects, missions trips, sports teams, scrapbooking sessions. Give people a chance to find common ground and create friendships.
The one good small group I was a part of came out of the friendships I already had with three other youth ministers. It wasn’t forced but something which came to us naturally. We were willing to share our struggles and problems because we already had a trust built with one another.
[...] the conversation included a discussion of small groups. I’ve shared my views on this before; while these groups might (might) be pleasant, they seem artificially intimate and spiritually [...]
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