Seven Advantages of Sermon-Based Small Groups

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The lecture/lab model is great for both small groups and Sunday mornings.

Larry Osborne | posted 5/07/2008

Topics:	Application, Dialogue, Discussion, Sermon based
Filters:	Director, Train
Purpose:	Discipleship
References:	Deuteronomy 6:6-9
Date Added:	May 07, 2008

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Note: This article has been excerpted from the SmallGroups.com training tool called Sermon-Based Small Groups.

At North Coast Church, where I serve as senior pastor, we've had a long and interesting journey with small groups. We had no groups when we first started out. But after a while, I began to realize that our congregation was more of a crowd than a living, breathing community. So we launched small groups, and things began to change immediately.

For a number of years we hunted down the best curriculum available and provided it to our groups. They grew, and people's lives did change. But when I put together a sermon series called "The Company of the Committed"—in which I wanted to paint the picture of what a committed Christian lifestyle would look like on a day-to-day basis—we experimented with our first sermon-based groups. The response was off the charts. It was so positive that we never looked back.

Over the years, I've noticed that tying the study guide to the sermon has several advantages over a curriculum-based model. Here are seven of the most powerful advantages.

They Increase the Educational Impact

A number of years ago, I heard about a study that Harvard conducted for one of the military branches. Apparently the military was sending people to different conferences and training sessions, and they wanted to maximize the educational impact of those sessions by figuring out what helps people learn—and most importantly, retain and apply—the information they receive.Â

Some of the best minds at Harvard tackled this study, and they uncovered three ways to maximize the benefit of any training experience. The first was maintaining a high sense of expectation. The study showed that if people went into a training experience with high expectations, they generally learned and retained a lot more. Obviously, this one is common sense when it comes to churches. If people are coming to your church thinking, Oh, this is going to be boring, then you can probably understand why they're not retaining what you say.

But here's the second ingredient. The Harvard researchers also discovered that if people took good notes during the training experience, the educational impact and the life-change upon returning home would accelerate measurably. The third key had to do with discussing the material with others. If they got together and discussed the notes—and the broader training experience as a whole—their education impact and subsequent life-change was significantly increased. .

Strangely enough, those last two things are exactly what using a sermon-based small group model forces people to do.

They Pull in the Marginally Interested

The second advantage of sermon-based small groups is the way they can pull in the marginally interested. All churches have marginally interested people—people who come in late on a Sunday morning and slump onto a chair in the back of the sanctuary, waiting to see if a funny story or a good joke can pull them into a higher level of interest.

But it's a different story when a marginally interested person enters a sanctuary full of people who will be discussing the sermon later in the week with their small group. That's because a much higher percentage of the people will be taking notes and paying close attention in order to be prepared for their small group. There's a different feeling in the air. And so that marginally interested person—who doesn't want to stand out—tends to sit up a bit straighter and pay more attention simply to fit in. I see it at North Coast all the time. And since everyone else seems to be taking notes, they start doing that, as well.

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Marie

February 16, 2010 1:19pm

In our church, we have been doing a sermon study in the week before the sermon - having folks wrestle with the scriptures before they hear the "official" version! I am not sure which works better and think I may try "the week after" mode. However, I've found my sermon changing considerbly at times as I hear the insights of excited and engaged fellow-searchers for truth - and they love it when a key idea they've come up with shows up in the sermon - especially when they are credited with the idea. I suspect there is something to be said for both ways of doing it. What I do know, is that the scriptures have opened up for folks in rich ways that they have never experienced before. Thanks be to God!

Aaron