Should A Church Focus More On Structured Meetings Or Spirit-Led Gifts?
I wrestle with how church leans on structure and pastor-led teaching versus the Spirit’s simplicity and shared gifts in Acts. How do we honor gathering while guarding faithfulness and true participation?
I have seen the kind of fellowship structure that you’re talking about most effectively carried out in smaller groups. A smaller group could be a Sunday school class meeting at church, or a home group that meets at a certain time during the week, or even a house church. If you have a group of even 80 people that are meeting together, let alone 800, there is no way that everybody’s going to be able to contribute. But if you have eight people together in a room, they can.
The Christian world has seen and noted this limitation of large group gatherings. In response, many churches have built up a small group ministry in some form, whether it be a Sunday school class, home group, house church, or whatever it would be. I just say, God bless it. That’s a great arena for the sharing of gifts and contributions of each member of the group.
It’s important to notice that Jesus exercised both kinds of ministries. Jesus had ministry to the multitudes, and He also had ministry to what you would call His small group, his twelve disciples. The two don’t contradict each other; in fact, they can be very complementary towards one another. If this is something you’re hungering for, then I would encourage you to find a way to get it into your life. Join something already happening within your church, or start your own home group or small group, if you need to, and build it along these lines that are on your heart.
I think that the mix of a larger church gathering and various smaller group gatherings is very important. In Acts 2, we see that the believers met for the apostle’s doctrine in the temple courts, and they also met from house to house to share bread, pray, and fellowship.
We’ve both been in pastoral ministry a long time. We know what it’s like to be the pastor or leader of a small group, or house church. We know what it’s like to be pastor of a small church. We know what it’s like to be the pastor of a medium-sized church, and we know what it’s like to be the pastor of a larger church. In my experience of all these different-sized gatherings, I don’t think that any one of them is inherently better than the other. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages, and we have to be real about that. Instead of bemoaning the disadvantages of your particular group, I encourage you to lean into the advantages and rejoice in them.