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Here’s the next installment in the Church Planting w/ Small Groups series.

________See also Intro, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4, & Part 5_______

Multiply leaders and small groups regularly.

If a weakness of small groups is their tendency to become inward-focused, the contrasting strength is the potential to give participants numerous opportunities for discipleship and growth. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of leadership development, where the very nature of multiplying small groups promotes the rapid development of new church leaders.

Not everyone can effectively lead a small group, but believers with leadership gifts should be identified and empowered, intentionally given authority within specified boundaries while an established leader maintains responsibility for the ministry.[1] Small groups provide an ideal workshop for the development of emerging leaders-which has been identified as a vital contributing element in the survival of church plants. A study conducted by the North American Mission Board discovered that, “Of those church planters that provided leadership training to church members, 79 percent of their churches survived compared to only 59 percent of church plants survived among those who did not provide leadership.”[2]

While this factor isn’t exclusive to the small group context, small groups certainly do provide opportunities for hands-on involvement in an array of leadership roles: Teaching, mentoring, facilitation, discipleship, prayer–there are few aspects of ministry that don’t surface in the small group microcosm.

[2] Research Reflection: How Many Church Plants Really Survive-and Why?, 3.

In Water from a Deep Well, Gerald Sittser makes the following suggestion:

Never before has the church had such opportunities for influence. The biggest problem it faces is its own complacency and worldliness. Here church leaders must take charge, not by doing more but by doing less. They must surrender all desire for political, economic, social and cultural influence in larger society to devote their energies to enabling the church to become a community of belonging. Church leaders are called to serve the church; the church in turn is called to serve the world. (emphasis mine)

I agree with the main drift of Sittser’s thought here. Leaders in today’s churches will usually be better served by slowing down to speed up, cutting programs and expenditures in order to do a few things well. In the sentence I italicized, I don’t think many people would question Sittzer’s first two entries–political and economic influence. In fact, decrying Christian Republicanism (equating Christianity with Conservative values) and Corporate Christianity (running the church for profit, like a business, with the lead pastor as CEO) is commonplace these days, and rightly so.

However, there’s currently a groundswell of interest in the church exerting cultural and social influence. Consider the social/cultural agendas of guys like Donald Miller and Shane Claiborne, the popularity of Relevant Magazine (and various similar publications), and books like Andy Crouch’s Culture Making. Renewing culture and transforming society are rallying cries in many circles right now–and I’m usually one of the guys yelling.

I think the church does have a mandate to live in such a way that there’s an outward ripple effect. But Sittser’s comment, which I hope he elaborates on, does make me pause. Twenty years from now, will people be shaking their heads at the way the Western church became obsessed with becoming new monastics and finger painters for Jesus? Kind of like the way we shake our heads now at the way an earlier generation became obsessed with politics and successful business models?

We need to remember that whatever effects an honest Christian life has on the surrounding people and culture, our primary job is spiritual transformation. Love and service are the hallmarks of Christian community. To the extent that that job description is embraced, new artistry and social justice will emerge. Jesus changes lives and heals sinners before he transforms society and stirs creative juices.

An anemic artistic subculture and the lack of involvement in social causes are signs of a deficient church. But the New Testament doesn’t equate vibrant Christianity with a Web 2.0 Renaissance or New Urbanism. We have to be careful not to make secondary effects like Art and Activism the primary goal.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

More from Acts for Everyone Part One by N.T. Wright. I’ve quoted and referenced Wright so much that when I actually post a review of this book, it may be redundant. Here he talks about Dorcas, the resurrected widow-heroine from Acts 9. Unfortunate name, but what a story and what a take-away:

Dorcas…stands as it were for all those unsung heroines who have got on with what they can do best and have done it to the glory of God. Had it not been for Peter, she might never have made it into the pages of the New Testament, and we have to assume that there were dozens in the early years, and thousands in later years, who, like her, lived their lives in faith and hope, bearing the sorrows of life no doubt as well as celebrating its joys, and finding in the small acts of service to others a fulfillment of the gospel within their own sphere, using traditional skills to the glory of God.

Luke is right to draw out eyes down to the small-scale and immediate, in case we should ever forget that these are the people who form the heart of the church, while the apostles and evangelists go about making important decisions, getting locked up, stoned or shipwrecked, preaching great sermons, writing great letters, and generally being great and good all over the place. I am privileged to know plenty of Dorcases… When I meet such people I greet them as what they are, the beating heart of the people of God. - N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone Part One

Leaders get the limelight, the book deals, and the wide-eyed acolytes, but the kingdom of God is innervated by unsung heroes. Anyone serious about seeing new churches grow would give his right arm for people like Dorcas.