Why Christian Formation and Empowerment for Discipleship Happens Best in Small Groups
by Steven W. Manskar, Director, Accountable Discipleship, General Board of Discipleship

. . . O Lord, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
  (Isaiah 64:8, NRSV)

Christian formation and empowerment for discipleship happens in many diverse ways and places. Worship, Sunday school classes, Bible study groups, prayer groups, mission and service groups, covenant groups, and even church committee meetings are some of the places where people may be formed in faith and empowered for discipleship in the world. I will argue in this article that Christian formation and empowerment for discipleship happens best in small groups.

Certainly, people are formed in faith through large-group experiences such as Sunday morning worship. But if Sunday morning worship is the only time or place a person experiences prayer, confession, Scripture, singing, and testimony, then he or she will not experience the fullness of God's grace to form and transform his or her life. The grace that draws us into relationship with God and that forms us into the human beings God created us to be is relational. In other words, God comes to each of us and forms each of us through relationships in which we share the lives and love of other human beings.

One way to understand this is to consider the image contained in the Scripture quote above. The prophet says that we are like clay in the hands of God, who works us like a potter. Have you ever watched a potter work on a lump of clay? She carefully throws the lump onto the center of her wheel. Then, as the wheel spins, the potter forms the clay with her hands. An experienced potter knows just the right places to put her hands to get the shape she wants in the clay. As the piece takes shape, the potter uses her fingers and various tools to make fine adjustments until she gets the clay to take exactly the shape she wants — the shape she imagined in her mind when she began working the clay. The end product is a beautifully formed piece of useful pottery and a work of art that gives joy to its maker and to others.

The Scriptures tell us that God is like a potter and we are like the clay in the potter's hands. The way God shapes and forms us into the human beings God intended us to become is through the relationships of love and forgiveness with other human beings, whom God is also forming. We are the hands and fingers of God. Because grace is relational, God forms and shapes each human life through love given and received in human lives. Of course, in the life of the church, the place where such relationships are possible is the small group.

Another way of understanding why small groups are the most effective means of Christian formation is to think of a small group like a family. Families are small groups in which each member is formed into the person he or she is. For example, my family formed me. Through my relationship with my father, mother, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, I was formed in the Manskar-Tallakson way of living and being in the world. My family taught me the Manskar way of walking, talking, eating, loving, fighting, forgiving, and playing. My family formed within me patterns of behavior and understanding the world that have shaped the way I live my life and how I relate to others. My family formed me to be the person I am today. Your family formed you to be the person you are today.

The church is an extended, global family. Just like the families that brought us into the world and form our personalities and attitudes, the church — as a family of God — has the task and mission of forming us as children of God and brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. Throughout the history of the church, small groups have been the places where Christian formation has taken place most effectively. It is in small groups that we learn the basic practices and habits of the family of Christ: prayer, worship, the Lord's Supper, searching and studying the Scriptures, confession and forgiveness, fasting and abstinence. In small groups, we experience relationships of love, forgiveness, trust, and true intimacy. Through the formation of habits and sharing relationships of love and forgiveness (through this grace — given and receive), God is able to form us into the people God created us to be.

God is the potter, and we are the clay in his hands. Our task is to yield to God's touch and allow him to form and shape us into the people he intends us to become. God has given us families that, for good and for ill, form our habits, attitudes, and expectations. In baptism, God makes us part of a global, universal family known as the church that has the task and responsibility of forming us as members of the household of Christ. Like a potter, God takes that which our families have placed within us and begins to re-shape and conform us into the image of Christ. Our part is to surrender, to yield, to stop resisting God's grace. And that is where small groups play such an important part in Christian formation. In the relationships of love and forgiveness experienced only in small groups with other Christians who share our journey, God gives us what we need to begin to yield to his gentle and powerful touch. In small groups, as we learn and practice the means of grace, those holy habits through which we learn and live "the mind of Christ" (Philippians 2:5), grace wears down our resistance and makes us more pliable in God's hands. In the relationships that happen only in small groups, God makes us vulnerable to grace and helps us to yield to his will for our lives.

God is the potter. We are the clay. Relationships of love and forgiveness are God's hands and fingers seeking to form us to become fully free human beings and channels of grace for the world. By grace, given and received in small groups, we are the work of God's hands.

posted 2-10-03