The Purpose of Small Groups

Judd L. Robertson

I’ve been involved in Bible studies since my freshman year in college, and have led them on and off since my junior year. Their success is hard to judge, if that is even the right language. Do people keep coming? Are they learning? When the former was true, I’d often walk away wondering how much people really got out of the time, questioning the effectiveness of my teaching, and criticizing myself for not knowing enough. At times I wished for a Matrix-like infusion of raw Biblical data—not only for me but for the whole group.

In my mind, the purpose of the Bible study was, obviously, studying the Bible. Like the sermon on Sunday, the measure of Tuesday’s gathering was how much we learned about the Bible—and, by extension, about God. Fellowship before and prayer after, though important, were the crescendo and decrescendo. In this way of thinking I found knowing God got easily confused with knowing about God, and learning was mistaken for growth.

When I moved to DC, I got involved in a “small group” through Kairos, the young adult service of The Falls Church. This group felt similar to the college studies of which I’d been a part . . . and it petered out after six months.

Around the time it ended, I was asked to serve as the first “small groups coordinator” for Kairos. My predisposition to the “back-row Christian male” mentality pulled me away, but my theology, particularly the communal emphasis in learning and life at the Academy, pushed me to say yes. Kairos at that point had fourteen groups: four of men, eight of women, and two coed. Four dropped to three around the New Year as my second group dissipated and I found myself a “coordinator” without a group.

That winter and spring I reflected on my eighteen months in the “real world,” on church, and on life in this young and transient city, filtering them through my collegiate and Academy experiences: “What’s going on here—in me, in this church, in this city?”

I’ve come to believe that the greatest problem of my generation is loneliness. This includes the church. I’ve seen in others—and at times felt myself—varying degrees of a deep sadness coupled with an intense but poorly expressed longing to be known. People smile loudly in the often vacuous urban busyness: at work, exercising, at happy hour, driving, after church . . . you name it. But the silence that follows these smiles—the silence from which we run—weighs heavier each day it is avoided. Forget our highly touted e-connectedness. Presence matters now more than ever, and in a distinctly new and more urgent way than it did to my parent’s generation.

But presence, this thing most needed and desired in this age, is something we in the church already have—or ought to have: the presence of people and of God, of places to know and to be known in an ever-deepening way.

Responding to aloneness and absence begins as we consider how to offer this presence to those of us already in the church, and then how to welcome others into it. In any church the prime place for fostering presence is in small gatherings, consistent and persistent in time and people—a reliable place for members to know and be known. I began to see that fellowship and community, those amorphous things, usually only happen in the context of other things, and these things began to take on new and paramount importance. Names and semantics began to matter.

The purpose of “small group” in my mind, and later in reality, ballooned beyond Bible study to include meals, nursing home visits, talking, meeting at a bar, helping organize a Christmas party in Anacostia, movie-watching, baking, foosball—did I mention eating together?—listening to music, hosting Thanksgiving dinner, and reading the same book. And the list goes on. Study remained a group essential, as did prayer. But hopefully in the midst of other activities for their own sake, relationships and trust could form, in the context of which study and prayer, growth and healing, service and invitation, accountability and rebuke, all could more effectively and naturally take place.

This shift in my thinking and approach has proved particularly meaningful for our men’s groups. I’ve realized that sitting in a circle for an hour in conversation, study, or prayer with guys I don’t really know just doesn’t work for me. But playing darts with the same guys changes everything—the group I’m in has been keeping score since we started in September. After spending this sort of time together, we somehow can talk better about 1 & 2 Samuel, Eugene Peterson’s Leap Over a Wall, the day, or the prayer we need for our work/family/girlfriend (or lack thereof). Six months in, my experience is as day to night compared with every other group I’ve been in.

My group’s experience is consistent with what I’ve heard from people in other groups. Though I strongly hesitate to quote numbers, in this instance, I must. Six months after we began to emphasize small groups within Kairos, and to accentuate the significance of fellowship within small groups, we now have eight men’s groups, over ten women’s groups, two coed groups, and a married and engaged couples group all meeting regularly.

A rigorous intellect is central to our faith, as is the study of the Bible. If my mind could not find my faith reasonable I would worship elsewhere, or not at all. But I don’t believe that what my generation, particularly those outside the church, needs most is intellectual reasons for belief in God, demonstrations of the consistency of science and faith, or even systematic interpretations of Scripture. Though all of these continue to be of importance, they are responses to yesterday’s pressing questions . . . and they are discussions better addressed, as they arise, in the context of community.

We must first remind ourselves of the extent to which we are known by God—fully—and then pursue as well as receive the possibility, the reality, and the primacy of such deep knowledge of him, which by his design happens largely as we come to know each other in the same way. Who would have thought this breadth encompassed Johnny Cash, darts, and chips and salsa on a Thursday night?  

Judd L. Robertson, who hails from Wisconsin, has lived and worked in the Washington, DC area since graduating from the Academy in June 2004. He earned an AB in History in 2002 at Princeton, where he spent 2003 working with Athletes in Action. For more on Kairos Small Groups—still a work in progress—check out their website.

2 Responses • Alumni, Tue 20 Mar 2007