Hisalone,

It is funny how people like to pick from the early church what they like and leave the rest. I often hear people (mostly theologians) say that we can't mimic the early church when it comes to matters such as the role of women in the church but at the same time they want to mimic the early church in the house church or the small groups thing.

I am also pretty fed up with the over emphasizing of small groups. There can perhaps also be a positive side about small groups, eg. that people care for each other. But do you need formal small groups for that? Shouldn't we care for each other in any case? In our church there was a special effort using Rick Warren's PDL to establish small groups. The motivation for this was that everything centers around relationally driven ministery. Our pastor's idea is that all in life involves relationships with other people. Of course that is correct. We interact with other people from the day we're born.

We used to have a ward system in our church. Traditionally wards had geographical boundaries. That later changed to let people decide with whom they want to be grouped in a ward, and now it is a mixed system with wards and small groups. But it is clear that the emphasis in the ministry is on the small groups. Special meetings are being held just to keep the small groups going. Since I know a lot of people in our church and know more or less who belongs to which small group, it is clear to me that the small groups are nothing else than groups of friends. When we had wards with geographical boundaries, I knew which church members live in my area. Now I don't. So, if it is a large church, you may not even know that your neighbour goes to the same church because he or she or the family may belong to some small group with their friends.

Somewhere on the internet I read that research has shown that churches where the ministry revolves around small groups are also the fastest growing churches.

At the moment there are some practical reasons why we don't belong to a small group. But I also don't feel the need to belong to a small group either. My son and his family are also in our church and initially belonged to such a small group. They told us that very little real Bible study is being done in the group. People rather would like to see these meetings just as a get together. So when they criticized how things are going and decided to leave the group, the rest of the group also sort of ignored them. So, is this how it was with the house churches in the apostolic times? I guess they had their ups and downs but I am pretty sure they were not closed groups of friends.

Johan