ONE CHURCH MAKES MISSIONAL STRIDES THROUGH SMALL GROUPS

Changing a heart is one thing.  Transforming a whole community for the sake of Christ’s mission is another.  But that is exactly what Solana Beach Presbyterian Church, in Solana Beach, California, is trying to do…and it is making strides.  How?  Part of the answer to that question has to do with what happens when people gather in small groups and practice telling their stories—stories that testify to why they have put their trust in Jesus Christ.

The small group way of life is not new at Solana Beach Presbyterian: the church has been syncing small group studies with particular sermon themes for the last several years.  (Now more than 900 members of an approximately 1,200-member congregation participate in such small groups.)  But last fall, as Minister of Discipleship Paula Taylor describes, the church leadership conspired to try something totally new in the life of the congregation.  With a view to exploring how, practically speaking, to live into their identity as messengers of the Gospel in their community and world, they designed a ten-week series devoted exclusively to evangelism as storytelling.

Senior Pastor Mike McClenahan opened the series with a look at the first chapter of 1 Corinthians, where the apostle Paul writes that God will use even our afflictions so that we might comfort and share in the suffering of others.  The next six weeks comprised hearing sermons featuring various stories from Scripture and then practicing transparency through the simple act of sharing stories and with the help of a few clear guidelines and parameters.  Bill Hybels’ curriculum, “Just Walk Across the Room,” finished out the remaining weeks of the series.

One of the goals of engaging the congregation in this way was to try to eliminate what Taylor aptly calls the “patio face.” By “patio face,” Taylor has in mind the superficial or less-than-transparent talk that takes place on the church patio after Sunday’s service and has at times earned Christians the reputation of “fake,” in Taylor’s words.  Instead, the aim was to convey “that even the parts of our stories that we are least likely to tell- that carry the most shame or guilt or pain for us- are the very parts where God has met us and can meet us to bring comfort, so that we can bring that same comfort to others…If we skip those stories, then we become a community in which is everything is okay…but the way that God has been at work in our lives to bring healing and redemption is the story that will connect with others and the premise is that everybody has a story.”

The results of this experiment in the “A, B, C’s” of personal evangelism are yet to have come in:  “we don’t have the end of the story yet,” Taylor remarks, but she does see evidence of transformation occurring.  Last year, something unprecedented happened:  300 members of the congregation went to Mexico to build houses and serve the disenfranchised communities there.  This year, the congregation is planning a day to “infiltrate our community” [in various local ministries] and “come back with stories.” 

“So we’re changing our identity but that doesn’t take a preacher—it takes a whole community,” Taylor goes on.  Taylor’s advice? 

“There is no formula to what we have done other than catching the next wave, and not shying away from it; and that takes courage and a willingness to risk, and that’s the kind of thing that our sermons have been able to lead…It’s a whole pathway to transformation that we have been walking on for years, and on that pathway we were able to get preaching and discipleship connected so that they had a greater impact, so that people weren’t just making friends, but so that there was a transforming-a-community strategy…So I call it our discipleship strategy, but for the purpose of transforming a community, not just individuals.  The individuals get transformed- that’s for sure- but the more profound thing has been that we feel like we are on a journey of discovering a new way to do church and to be Christians in our culture in order to make an impact.  The goal is the impact that God will make in the world, not the church being a great church.”

To learn more about small groups and small group curriculum, come to the 2008 PGF conference in Long Beach, California (go to www.pgfconference.org for more details).  If you have other questions, contact Paula Taylor at paula@solanapres.org, or Mike McClenahan at mike@solanapres.org.