Small Groups Are Missing Something
Groups do 80% of what I would like to see done in discipleship. I’ve seen them be more effective at building relationships, including new people, developing leaders, fostering a connectedness in the body, serving together, and a host of other positive things in the life of an ordinary Christian. However, I’ve yet to see small groups in general become especially effective at the one thing that adult Sunday School classes were most effective at: and that thing is teaching the Bible…”
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Labels: Leadership, Small Groups
12 Comments:
You are right on target with "the missing 20%" here Dave! I've wondered what this says about the (current churchs's) conviction concerning the "value" of the Bible as a tool for bringing life change. We thump our chests and say we believe the Bible but in practice we turn to a variety of other tools for effecting life-change. You did a great and helpful revision of some of that material!
Dave,
Loved this article and adapation of the teaching tools. I am intrigued by your process of selection from the 15 skills down to 8. Of course, some are obvious classrooom processes that don't transfer to small groups. But I am specifically interested in how you went about deciding which ones to use.
A related question is whether small groups can really accomplish all the outcomes acheived by sunday school. The non-transferability of paricular processes doesn't necessarily imply that the outcomes won't be there, but it does raise a question about their comparable effectiveness. How have you reflected on this issue?
Good questions, John.
On narrowing the list... I was choosing the ones that transferred the best. Some on the old list of 15, like "role playing", CAN work in a small group but can be difficult for a run-of-the-mill small group leader to attempt in a living room.
On the second question, of whether groups have the potential for the same outcomes... I would say that Lecturing is one of the few skills from the Sunday School model that is unable to be transferred to a small group trying their hardest to dive into the Word more effectively. However, everything I'm hearing, even in the education/teaching realm, shows that lecture is less and less effective in teaching adults.
Perhaps that's simply because we've had less and less effective lecturers, however.
Whatever the case, my intent is not to suggest that sunday school has been outmoded by small groups, only that for churches that are primarily small group oriented, there are some benefits to letting the best of sunday school "cross over" in these teaching methods.
Our crew of leaders was trained in these 8 skills and a variety of other things last Saturday (about 125 leaders)... so ask me in a year how it works! :-)
Having been a preacher, Sunday school teacher, and small group leader in my various lifetimes, I believe leading a small group is the most challenging of the three formats for teaching.
I think that's because small groups generally don't come together in order to learn. While most attendees say that they want a 50-50 balance of relationship building and Bible study, they choose relational activities (eating, talking, praying, completing a task) over study at every opportunity.
I believe I motivated people most effectively through preaching, taught most effectively in mid-sized group settings (15-50), and accomplished most spiritual development (not nesc. instruction) in small groups.
Nice twist on Keith's teaching methods ... and they do work, even in small groups.
Dude so be honest with me...when are you going pick up the chalk and the lecture podium and lay down the full-time preaching gig? You are a phenomenal and natural born teacher...but the problem is you are a dang good pastor as well. You shepherded me more than once that is for sure. Great article bro...I like your layout here: advantages, cautions, tips...especially love the challenge for a time of total silence...funny but I had Joel Yo ask me for that this week in our college service...a college student asking for silence in a service...how about that in our Ipod, multi-tasking generation!
Larry - I like your breakdown of "motivation, teaching & spiritual developent" categories. In our setting I think we get the motivation for sure and the spiritual development in many ways but lack the teaching forum (like many growing churches, it's a space issue and a need of space for children's, which we always give to children's--with the priority that is here.) So my goal here is to see if we might incorporate more of the teaching element in group life for those churches that only have the two forums for growth (services and small groups). Perhaps they've never done it because I've never asked them to... I'll find out this year.
Thanks for posting your excellent thoughts, Larry!
Brian - Hey there, friend! I e-mailed you privately too I hope you saw. Thanks for posting here too. Keep giving me feedback... A new post is up now in "The Intangibles" Series on "Taking the Risk and Trying the New"
-David
Keep me posted on the integration of teaching into one of those two settings (large group/small group).
Like yours, our church is facing that same dilemma. Let me know if you find a solution.
For sure. I'll do a follow-up post on the progress and I'll e-mail you when it's up.
We won't have much hard evaluation of success till January, I expect.
-David
I appreciated your thoughts, I oversee discipleship classes and small groups at my church and felt the same way about small groups, they lack a little to much bible for my liking and thought through some of the models that exist and how to intergrate more bible teaching in a small group setting as well.
Part of my struggle is finding people who feel confident about teaching the bible, people feel confortable leading a small group but teaching the bible is intimidating for them.
Have you thought about doing any video teach for small groups at all and implamenting more bible that way?
Hello, Rob.
Yes -- we even thought of doing the video teaching thing this fall for our Matthew series but it became too cumbersome of a project.
We've had the best success at shorter term video teaching as we did with The Fruitful Life and other all-church programs. But those were 6 weeks only... and we're looking for a longer term change.
Have you found any longer term video cirriculum that you liked?
thanks admin
We won't have much hard evaluation of success till January, I expect.
jesus
sohbet
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