Small Groups Discipleship and the Church Beyond the Building
This article reflects on lessons from Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, Idaho, and its emphasis on discipleship through small groups. The author describes how intentional leaders, relational environments, and reproducible processes can help churches move people toward maturity. The piece challenges attractional models by focusing on coaching, spiritual growth, and reproducible discipleship.
- Real Life Ministries grew rapidly while emphasizing discipleship through small groups.
- Effective discipleship requires an intentional leader, a relational environment, and a reproducible process.
- Spiritual maturity is described in stages: infant, child, young adult, and parent.
By Jerry Harris
“What would happen if, for whatever reason, you no longer had the use of your building? How would that affect your church?” That was a question Jim Putman, senior pastor of Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, Idaho, asked me. I was there investigating the incredible growth I’d heard about in that church under Jim’s leadership. Real Life had grown from just a few families at its birth in 1998 to just under 9,000 after 10 years. That in itself is amazing, but what takes it over the top is that Post Falls is a micropolitan community of about 40,000.
Since I’ve always considered myself to be an evangelist, small groups have always seemed more like a necessary chore than a great opportunity to me. It has been difficult to get them going and even harder to keep them going. You are constantly required to police whatever book or study they’re going through. Getting people to lead them or host them has always been hard. Often people don’t like others in their group and want to move or quit going all together. Many successful groups might tend to be exclusive. New people are not invited in, and the group won’t establish new leaders and new groups. Definitely out of my element.
Discipleship Through Small Groups
But there I was, in a church with over 800 small groups, making it work without much concern at all for attraction. As I recoiled from Jim’s insistence on the primacy of discipleship, I felt myself continually backed into corners. Jesus got far more accomplished through 12 committed guys than he did with any of the large crowds he attracted. As Jim began to explain to me a different and better way of discipleship, I began to realize how we had missed the mark. In order for real discipleship to happen, there has to be three things present: An intentional leader, a relational environment, and a reproducible process.
An intentional leader is someone who has made it his business to reproduce disciples for Jesus. He does this more by watching and listening than by teaching. Jim compared this to a coach interacting with a player in practice, correcting him, watching him do it again and again, and adjusting and readjusting until the player is able to reproduce what the coach wants. The attractional model reduces potential players to spectators or fans coming out to watch the professionals play.
A relational environment is one that allows the kind of individual attention to take place so that meaningful one-on-one dialogue can happen between a group member and a coach. Parents know that larger class sizes at school are never preferable because individual attention is critical for teachers to know the progress of their students. Small groups at Real Life work because they are relational environments where this intentional leadership and coaching can happen.
A Reproducible Process for Spiritual Maturity
A reproducible process is a means of coaching that makes the process of discipleship measurable. Having some sort of metric to track spiritual growth has been elusive in the church. We tend to put lots of options in front of a congregation and hope they find something that fits them so they can grow. The process that Jim started at Real Life was revolutionary to me. He divided spiritual maturity into 4 stages: 1) infant, 2) child, 3) young adult, and 4) parent.
Those in the “infant” phase may or may not be a Christian. If they are, they are only attending as a spectator. A person in the “child” phase is involved in a relational environment (small group) and is starting the process of being coached by that group’s intentional leader. Someone at the “young adult” phase is putting what he is learning to work in ministry. His small group is a place where he puts what he is learning into the context of his ministry and his intentional leader is looking for ways to move him into a coaching role. Someone at the “parent” stage has become the intentional leader, reproducing what has been done in him and looking strategically at how to move individuals under his coaching forward.
Coaching That Moves People Forward
Coaching happens by listening to the questions and comments from the group. The coach then drives the question or comment deeper into the person who shared it. As the person explores the comment on a deeper and more personal level, the coach is watching, listening, and getting a bead on the stage of his group member. Jim calls this “the phrase of the stage.” A typical comment might be made about the story of Jesus washing Judas’ feet. The group member might say, “I would never wash that jerk’s feet!” (Infant). He might answer, “It is so awesome that Jesus washed his feet!” (Child). He might say, “We all need to figure out ways to wash the feet of others” (Young adult). Or he might say, “George, how does that hit you in the context of your divorce?” (Parent).
The answers the coach hears will let him know what stage his people are in. That can’t happen in a preaching environment. The dialogue requires it to be relational. The leader is being intentional. His intention is figuring out where they are in order to move them forward. Look back at the “accept” stage answer. The coach would drive the comment back into the group member with something like, “When have you ever felt betrayed? How did you respond to it? How do feel about your response?” When one group member starts getting transparent, it gives the whole group freedom to open up. Before long the intimacy level is rising, and the coach is getting a great read of the stage of each group member.
Author: Jerry Harris
Jerry Harris is publisher of Christian Standard and former teaching pastor at The Crossing, a large, multisite church located in three states across the Midwest.
