Small Groups and the Mission of God

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Alan Hirsch talks about the untapped potential of individuals and small-group communities.

Alan Hirsch | posted 2/20/2008

Topics:	Community, Growth, numerical, Missional, Multiplication, Organic
Filters:	Coach, Director, Group Leader, Train
Purpose:	Evangelism
References:	Acts 2
Date Added:	February 20, 2008

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

Alan Hirsch is an experienced church planter and the founding director of Forge Mission Training Network. His most recent book, The Forgotten Ways, represents an contemporary interpretation of the missional explosion of the early church and the recent house-church movement in China.

What does the term missional mean to you?

Well, that's one of those very difficult terms because it's so widely used. But for me, it primarily refers to a church that organizes itself around the mission of God, or the misseo dei, which refers to God's involvement in the world—his redeeming it to himself. In The Forgotten Ways, I say that it's not so much that the church has a mission, but that the mission has a church. So when I think of the term "missional church," it's in that order—that a church has somehow bonded itself or identified itself as a primary agent of the mission of God in the world.

What about the term organic?

Of course that one has been made famous by Neil Cole, but organic for me is the idea that human organizations—just like living systems—are made up of very complex structures, and they have a life of their own. It's a term that's in contrast to a more mechanistic view of organization. So when I refer to organic systems, I'm thinking of a type of leadership and organization that is closer to the rhythms and structures of life itself.

An organic church goes with the natural flow of things. It doesn't try to perpetuate its life beyond what it's meant to be, which is different than most organizations. Most organizations tend to assume that once they've been started, they need to be perpetuated continually.

In a general sense, how have you seen small groups fit into missional churches, or into communities with a more organic structure?

It's interesting, in a number of the situations I know of where you've got very large churches beginning to adopt the movement ethos laid out in The Forgotten Ways, almost inevitably they see their small groups as a leverage point for a number of things. Discipleship, for example, can be best facilitated in a small group—if it's well done—as can the idea of mission. Also, missional capacity and missional reach are very much higher in a small group than in a large building that requires people to come to you.

But I think the big switch for us will be to stop thinking of small groups as prop-ups to the "real deal," weekend-based church. In reality, small groups are major elements of the church. In fact, they are themselves churches. And that's the big switch. When people are able to see small groups as churches in and of themselves, therefore fully capable of doing all the functions of an ecclesia, then the revolution is on.

But if we keep them as just back-ups to keep people associated with a large church, then I think all we will do there is facilitate community and Bible study and prayer, but there can never be a multiplication movement at that point, because mission isn't featured. Discipleship doesn't really cut in very deeply there.

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joy Borum

March 03, 2010 3:55pm

Yes. And as we are promised that the Kingdom of God is within so let "Thy Kingdom come"...think/believe bigger or, as my husband says when folks are quibbling, questioning, or denying, "Perhaps their God is too small."

Michael Chen(Registered User)

September 10, 2009 2:38pm

I agree with what you say here: "The nice thing is that it was all non-professional ministry, of course, because small groups don't require preachers and sound systems and all that kind of stuff. We wanted to diminish the reliance on the professional class of ministry. I'm a deep and profound believer in the ministry of all believers, and so we wanted to empower our people and wean them away from a dependence on the church. It's ironic. When you "do church" well, you create dependency, because then people can't reproduce it themselves. We had to break that. We had to communicate that all disciples carry within themselves the potential for world transformation. We wanted to communicate that you have the power to do this, so don't outsource it to other people. That's the Faustian bargain at the heart of many churches—that people outsource their primary gifting, calling, and function to the institution..."

Renee

May 01, 2009 10:36am

Wow, great article!

Brian Hofmeister

April 29, 2009 1:28pm

I love the outreach potential of small groups