By Dustin Serns, Washington Conference church planting director
Our church was in decline. Committed leaders wondered why we had few baptisms, few young people, decreased attendance, and a shortage of volunteers. My family knew Jesus had dreams for us and our church. What could we do?
“We should start a small group in our apartment,” my wife Caitlin suggested. Our plan was simple. We would invite people to come over every Wednesday for 8 weeks. Each night would have three 30-minute segments: 1) Eat, connect, and pray, 2) Watch a Bible study video, 3) Take turns facilitating a discussion to apply what we learned to our lives.
We began praying about whom God may want to impact through our group. We put together a list to personally invite. We figured we should invite 4x as many people as the number we actually wanted to attend. We invited our neighbors, several guests we had connected with at church worship gatherings, and a couple church members.
In order to scale the impact, we invited other church members to launch their own groups during the same 8-week period. We boldly prayed for 4 groups to start. God amazed us by raising up 10!
The first night we felt excited and nervous. What if no one showed up? What if everyone did? Six people came. Only one was Adventist. Over the next several weeks, we became close friends and experienced deep spiritual growth. At the end, the group asked if we could continue for another 8 weeks. Three participants got involved in our church and were baptized.
Some from other groups joined our church and were baptized as well. Multiplying missional small groups became a major focus of the church. Over the next few years, we saw God radically grow our church’s baptisms, attendance, volunteers, leaders, young adults, community impact, and perhaps most importantly… our faith. Heaven was celebrating. Lives were being changed, especially ours.
Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field” (Luke 10:2).
It is amazing what God does when we take a small step of faith and invite others to join us.
Could God be calling you to start a small missional group?
Note: There are lots of great resources for groups to study. A couple of my favorites are https://beyond.info/ (videos) or https://www.apictureofgod.com/ (lessons).