Evangelism through Growth Groups: long term, low key and relational

Do Growth Groups contribute to the evangelistic efforts of church? Can they? How?

I’ve recently read ‘Gospel Centered Church’ by Steve Timmis and Tim Chester. It’s a short book of short chapters, designed for use in a discussion group (I highly recommend it). It describes effective evangelism as low key, long term and relational. I think this is true most of the time.

As a church gets bigger, it becomes necessary to focus and encourage evangelism in personal relationships. You can’t simply rely on preaching in the Sunday gathering and its natural follow up. Let’s briefly look at two examples.

The small church (30-80 people): Everyone knows the preacher and the preacher knows everyone. Evangelism is not exclusive to preaching. However week by week proclamation of the gospel in this size church is ‘relational’. And there is easy opportunity to follow up on what is preached and how the unbeliever is being challenged as part of the normal relationships people (including the preacher-pastor) have across the whole church.

The large church (400-800 people): Almost everyone has met the preacher, but can’t say they ‘know’ him. The preacher probably will not have met everyone… more than as a formality. He cannot know everyone personally, and is certainly not aware of what is going on for everyone every week. He may know about the crises. However he is probably not able to identify unbelievers each week. Gospel preaching is not ‘relational’. Effective and relational follow up will be done by the preacher-pastor and others (elders, Growth Group leaders, the newcomers friends).

Regardless of the size of a church… Growth Groups are always (should be) low key and relational. And they can be long term (as discussed in my last article here). This makes them prime contexts for effective evangelism: low key, long term and relational. Are Growth Groups effective for evangelism? How? (I’m not going to suggest here we then give up gospel proclamation in the Sunday gathering. I merely want to elevate the importance of Growth Groups in building on that primary word ministry. In this article the focus is on Growth Groups working in partnership with the Sunday gathering/whole church evangelism. In my next article the focus will be on evangelism confined to the Growth Group – in particular the place for evangelistic events within the Growth Group context).

Let’s assume we have a healthy Growth Group in operation. They are a long term group – good relationships have developed among members over several years. They know one another well and are committed to one another. Yet they are also concerned for the network of unbelievers they are in contact with.

How they benefit evangelism?

1. Prayer for specific unbelievers known to group members.

2. Awareness of each other’s unbelieving friends – even knowing names, faces, relationships, work facts, interests.

3. Group members are known to unbelievers as the Christian mates of one Christian they know.

4. Group members are the first to chat to one of these unbelievers if he/she came to church.

5. Group members support and help another group member in following up an unbeliever who came to church.

6. As a group they prayerfully support and partner the church/organisation leadership in church-wide evangelism.

Does this happen at the Growth Groups around your ministry?  What has been done to nurture it?  From my experience of larger university ministry this is especially true.

Next post: Evangelism through Growth Groups: Planned Event v Life Together.

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