It's always important to think about the purpose of small groups. Whenever I think about this issue, I almost always go back to examining the New Testament pattern of the church to confirm the "why" of small groups.

Consider some of the history of the early church:
Though there's a lot we don't know about the early church, we can learn a lot from the New Testament, especially the letters of Paul. Paul uses the word "ekklesia," which from pre-Christian days meant "any gathering of a group of people," to refer to a gathering of people before God. The gatherings were usually small, probably 30 members on average, and the people often belonged to the same household or guild.

Sometimes several such groups met together, but this was probably rare before the third century, when special buildings for Christian worship began to be constructed. Small groups of Christians met regularly for worship, encouragement, and instruction as early as the first decades of Christianity. These groups didn't think of themselves as the more personal, relational aspect of a larger church, as many small groups do now.  They were the only church that members knew.

If we could see church not as something that we do, so much as something we are, then the small-group gatherings (or large-group worship services, for that matter) would just be part of the natural expression of "being the church." And with that vision and purpose, small groups don't become the forced add-on to what we now think of as "church." Rather, smaller gatherings are simply an expression of the overall organism of the Body of Christ. Then we can gain freedom from the purpose of "going to church" and replace it with the purpose of "being the church."   --Author Anonymous

EXPERIENCE  Small Groups

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