There’s a gap between what pastors see on Sunday and how people express their faith during the week.
As the Life Group coordinator for his home church, Ephraim Schoephoerster gets to see and hear the weekday side in a way we need to know about. (Relax, it’s better than you think.)
In this guest article, Ephraim writes about some of those issues, including how the healthy small church is uniquely suited to do the kind of discipleship that he sees every Tuesday night.
— Karl Vaters
I coordinate life groups at a small church in Abilene, Texas. I recruit the leaders, train them, check in with them mid-semester, and sit with them when things get hard. I have done some version of this work for over a decade, first in youth ministry and now with adults.
And because of that role, I get to see something most pastors do not get to see. I get to see what actually happens on Tuesday nights.
Not what gets reported on Sunday morning. Not what shows up in a metrics dashboard. What actually happens when eight people sit in a living room, open the Bible, and start talking about their real lives.
And what I want to tell you, if you pastor a small church, is that what is happening in those rooms is probably better than you think.
The Gap Between Sunday and Tuesday
Here is something I have noticed after years of doing this. Most pastors evaluate their discipleship efforts based on what they can see from the pulpit or the office. Attendance trends. Sign-up numbers. Whether the curriculum is getting good reviews. Those things are not nothing, but they do not tell you what is actually happening in people’s lives.
On Tuesday nights, I see things the pastor never sees.
I see the guy who has not missed a single group meeting in two years, but who told his leader last week that he almost did not come because he and his wife had the worst fight of their marriage that afternoon. He came anyway. And instead of pretending everything was fine, he told the room what happened. And the room held it. Nobody flinched. Nobody tried to fix it. They just sat with him.
That is discipleship. And it did not show up on any report.
I see the woman who joined a group because her friend dragged her there, and who barely spoke for the first three months. But last month she texted her leader at 11 p.m. on a Wednesday to ask for prayer about a decision she was facing. She did not text her pastor. She did not text a counselor. She texted the person who had been sitting across from her in a living room for sixteen weeks.
That is also discipleship. And the pastor probably has no idea it happened.
Why Small Churches Produce This and Do Not Even Know It
The reason I am writing this for a site about small churches is that what I just described does not happen in spite of your church being small. It happens because of it.
In a church of 75 or 150, the life group leader is not managing a program. They are shepherding people they actually know. They notice when someone goes quiet. They remember what was shared three weeks ago and follow up on it. They are not rotating through a system. They are building something that looks a lot more like Acts 2 than anything you would find in a church growth textbook.
I have talked to life group coordinators at larger churches. Many of them are managing logistics. How many groups are running. Who needs a new leader. Which curriculum to roll out next semester. The work is important, but it is administrative.
My work is different. Because our church is small, I am not managing a system. I am walking with leaders. And those leaders are walking with people. And the chain stays short enough that when something real is happening in someone’s life, I usually hear about it within a week.
That is not a program. That is a church being a church. And your small church is already doing it.
What I Wish More Pastors Knew
If I could sit across from every small church pastor reading this and say one thing, it would be this: your people are being discipled in ways you may not be measuring.
The transformation happening in living rooms and coffee shops and around kitchen tables is real. It is just quiet. It does not announce itself. It does not produce a stat you can put in a report. But it is there, and it is the thing that Jesus modeled when He pulled away from the crowds to invest in the twelve.
I know the pressure you feel to build something bigger or more structured. I have felt it too, from my side of the work. But the most Christ-shaped thing about your church might be the thing you are most tempted to apologize for.
You are small enough for people to be known. That is not a limitation. That is the Christ-sized community Christ intended.
The Best Thing You Can Do
If you want to strengthen what is already happening in your small groups, here is what I would suggest from my side of the work.
Do not start with a new curriculum. Start by asking your life group leaders one question: “Do the people in your group know each other’s real struggles, or just their Sunday morning versions?”
If the answer is the Sunday version, the fix is not better material. It is a leader who is willing to go first. Ask them to open the next meeting by sharing something honest from their own week. Not a devotional thought. Not a polished lesson. Just something real.
I have watched this shift transform groups more times than I can count. It does not require a budget. It does not require a staff hire. It requires a leader who makes it safe to be known, in a room small enough for that to actually work.
And if your church is small, you already have that room.
(Photo by Steve Delamarter | Flickr)
