When Small Groups Replace Sunday Church Attendance

The church already had small groups in the form of SS classes. Then they started switching out Sunday night corporate worship for in home small groups. If pastor's de-emphasize corporate worship like that, why are they surprised when the flock follows suit?

I would guess that the ancients may have had this issue to a degree. Churches were by and large house churches, some large, some small, and a huge portion of members were servants who might be called to work during ordinary Lord's Day services. Some pastors were great, some mediocre or worse, some fellowship was great, some (1 Corinthians 11) boiled down to cliques based on socioeconomic status.

So in my view, while I value and enjoy the weekly meetings at church, I realize that this is not an option for some, and thus one of the biggest things for both settings is "is this really fellowship in the Word?".

When the church is large enough that it’s difficult to know everyone (a problem also faced by the early Jerusalem church, which was much larger than most of even the large churches we attend today), I think a mixed model that includes both a corporate worship service with the whole church and small group meetings works the best. The first church met house to house, although of course, it wasn’t like they could rent the local colosseum for a large worship service.

Most SS classes are not really a replacement for a good small group. There is barely time to get through the material, let alone get to know anyone very well in the class (and a 1-minute handshaking artificial fellowship time doesn’t cut it). Having a word-centered time in a small group with fellowship afterwards is a way to really get to know people better than what will take place in a typical corporate worship service where there are more than about 300 people present. I don’t think the small group should replace the corporate worship where all can be simultaneously present (minus those who have to work, etc.), but I’ve seen the morning corporate, evening small-group model work quite well. And if the early church could meet house to house, we should be able to make that work as well.

Those who think Sun Sch is not as good as small groups have been to the wrong Sun Sch classes.

Dave, I feel like people get to know each other pretty naturally in SS settings, just by talking with each other while the class is gathering before it starts and then when prayer requests are shared, and then again after the class when we walk to the main church service and often talk about life or the lesson. We also have occasional SS get-togethers.

Small groups are a poor substitute for a full blown worship service. The teaching you get is of necessity pretty shallow and if it is not run well, often a breading ground for very poor theology. I've never understood the draw, other than not having to drive to church.

Andy, I won’t claim that I know much about SS classes at your church. However, unless the class runs about 1.5 hours, and you use about 30 minutes for fellowship, it usually just reduces to surface-level conversation for about 5 minutes as everyone comes in, and then maybe 5 or 10 for prayer requests, without much person-to-person interaction during that time. And since it’s just one more part of the typical morning schedule, you have people in and out for service in nursery, choir, greeting, parking, etc., not to mention never really getting to know those who are running the other SS classes or nursery, etc. As someone who sings regularly in the choir, I do get to know some of the people there very well. However, much of the other “empty” time is used for practice, organization, etc., so I miss out on a lot of the interaction with others before and between services.

As regards how small-groups are done, I’ll admit I’ve seen it done poorly as well, and as I said, I wouldn’t want them to replace the weekly (morning) corporate worship service, but rather work in addition to it. And that despite that from what I can see in scripture, the early church used the meeting in homes model most of the time. I’m all-in on the advantages of everyone meeting together for worship and time in the Word.

As to small groups being a breeding ground for poor theology, that is really a function of how they are set up and the church leadership. If the SS teachers can be kept from poor theology, the same can be done (and has been) for small groups as well. (Of course if your point on theology is that the lecture model is always preferred to dynamic interaction, I would disagree, given how Jesus interacted with his disciples in between his sermons.) And BtW, sometimes the small groups I’ve been a part of not only meet in different homes (which for me, means driving usually at least as far as to church), but sometimes use the church fellowship hall, etc. It’s not like those fellowships would always be at my home.

It's worth noting that the origins of Sunday School are not ancient, but rather date back to the 18th century in England as a way of teaching the children of workingmen how to read. There was a Bible component as well, but it was when literacy became more widespread that it began to take on its current character as primarily about religious formation instead of literacy and numeracy.

In the same way, small groups probably have their greatest origins in Methodism (and at about the same time), where the Wesley brothers used the techniques developed in the original "Holy Club" to Methodist "societies" which then became churches when the Methodists were expelled from the Anglican church of the day.

Practically speaking, I'd argue they're about equivalent, with the same challenges and blessings, with the major difference that small groups generally meet outside the church building, while Sunday Schools generally meet inside. Both also have the tendency to develop into independent churches--really (as I noted above) as we would infer from the small gatherings in ancient times that became house churches and, after Constantine, finally got property and buildings a few hundred years later.

Long and short of it is that I think there is a very large danger in debating whether a church ought to do one or the other, because it will tend to lead to needless squabbles where rightly there ought to be a lot of "sharpening of iron" by admitting "these are places where we're really blessed, and these are places where we ought to do better". Each setting needs a competent & Godly leader, each one needs to pay attention to the dynamics of interpersonal interaction, each needs a reasonably safe setting, and of course, there really ought to be coffee and snacks. (just kidding on that last bit, though I do appreciate that)

People often tell me that they don’t like organized religion. I tell them our church is perfect for them because we aren’t that organized.

There is a certain amount of organized church culture, coming from large eastern churches mostly, that many have felt obliged to replicate. I’ve consciously tried to steer away from that. I wanted our church to just develop with an emphasis on Bible preaching and fellowship. By God’s grace, I think that’s what we have. We don’t have a choir, we don’t add on things we can’t do. I can’t imagine trying to add on small groups to that. I think it would destroy the body dynamics of our church