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.