By Pastor Kessia Reyne Bennett

It's incredible that you can have the same conversation with the same people at the same church over and over again.

"Happy Sabbath!" / "Hi, how are you?" / "I'm good. How are you?" / "I'm good!" / "Good." / "Good."

Generalities and small talk certainly have their place, but if our church relationships never get beyond the superficialities, we are missing out on the very best context for our spiritual growth: intentional spiritual friendship. At Pleasant Valley Church we're trying to encourage those intentional spiritual friendships by experimenting with a model we're calling "micro groups."

I joke that micro groups are “like small groups but smaller,” which is cheeky but also true. Based on the Life Transformation Group model, micro groups are 2-4 people that meet weekly for spiritual companionship, and they’re designed to create spaces the right size for authenticity and transformation. During their weekly connection time, each person reflects on the Scripture they’ve read in the week, update names on their prayer lists, and answer a question they’ve asked the group to ask them—something they want to be paying attention to or be accountable for (e.g., "Where have you found your comfort this week?"). Throughout the week each member of the group reads an agreed-upon passage of Scripture every day and prays over the names brought by the other group members. Thus, we are being shaped by a shared spiritual rhythm of Bible reading, intercessory prayer, and confession and exhortation, what some spiritual communities would call a “common rule of life.”

Through years of working with small groups in various contexts, I have come to two beliefs about them: They work, and they are a lot of work. Recruiting and training leaders and co-leaders, finding hosts, coordinating sign-ups and group sizes, organizing by zip code or interest or age demographic, finding or developing the curriculum… It’s a lot of hard work and there’s a reason that churches often have a staff position partially or wholly dedicated to making it all happen. In contrast, micro groups are low-budget and low-admin. They are multiplying the discipling activity in our congregation, as everyone in a group is in a peer-discipleship relationship.  

We’re new at this, but with 20 groups currently meeting, we're already seeing encouraging signs of life. "The micro groups get you beyond the superficial Sabbath morning conversation," shared one participant. She was grateful to be getting beyond the usual pleasantries and down to the matters of the heart. Another participant recounted to me all the Bible he's been reading now and the comfort he's found in it. A third person said, "I've experienced more spiritual growth in the last six months in my micro group than maybe any other time in my life." (That last one was me; I said that!) We're all excited to see what God will get up to next, doing big things in our small, small groups.

Learn more about our micro groups at pvclife.com/groups.