COLLISION: 6 Tips in Helping People Encounter Christ in Small Groups

 1.SHEPHERDING: Before you shepherd others, continually abide in the power of the Chief Shepherd yourself. Let your teaching be the overflow of the love, joy, peace and patience that you supernaturally gain when you rest in His presence. Among other things, this will prevent you from making the bible study about your own personal issues. There is a time when every leader needs support, but it shouldn’t be every meeting. A shepherd puts the flock’s needs above his or her own (See John 15, Phil 2:1-4).

2.GRACE: Before preaching the gospel to others, preach it to yourself. Remember you were once lost, blind, broken and dead in your sin. Let your gratitude for God’s grace well up in you and let that reminder of your own lostness shape the way you love lost people. Jesus attracted sinners not only because of his teaching but also because of his compassion. In the end it’s simple: grace attracts, pride attacks (Matt 9:9-13, Titus 3:3-8).

 3.PURPOSE: Why are you doing this? What is the end goal? Is the purpose to convey how much you know or is it to help others know Jesus? Is your purpose simply to convey information (which is hugely important!) or is it to allow that information lead to transformation? If the end goal is transformation, then it is crucially important to ask questions and make applications to people’s daily lives. Sometimes sheep need to go slow and sometimes sheep need you to connect the dots for them (See 1 Corinthians 1:18-25).

4.LISTEN: Pause. Ask. Listen. The awkward silence is ok. Listening not only forces your group to engage with the Scriptures and wrestle with its truths, it also communicates that you value your group as people. While it is crucially important to prevent the bible study from devolving into a superficial support group, the leader should be known as a good teacher and a good listener. As a general rule of thumb, the leader should not be doing more than two thirds of the talking (See Matthew 5:37, James 1:19-25).  

5. AVOID MINUTIA: Keep the main thing, the main thing. The tragic temptation of any small group is for the conversation to go negative - quick. You can sense it when you leave a negative conversation. Instead of the dialogue giving you joy; it robbed you of it. By God’s grace, try to keep your focus on His glory, His grace, His cross, His Word, His Spirit, His commands. Try to avoid gossip, religious snobbery, theological rabbit trails, scapegoating the culture and divisive political issues. Don’t assume your flock has the same views on some of these secondary issues as you. A tragedy would be someone being turned off to Jesus because we elevated minutia above the message (See 2 Timothy 2:22-26).

6.COLLISION: Remember your flock is struggling with sin, doubt, worldliness, apathy and pain. They need the Word of God. Don’t shy away from it. Don’t be ashamed of it. Please get them into the Bible! Workbooks, videos, bestselling books are all well and good – but they are not the powerful, penetrating, inerrant Word of God. As you lead your flock take them to a place to where they don’t want to go. Force them to collide with God’s majesty and mercy as revealed in the Gospel and the Bible (Romans 1:16-17, Hebrews 4:12-13).