Interview Report on CBC Community Group Ministry

About CBC Community Group Ministry

Chantilly Bible Church (CBC) started her home shepherding ministry (home groups) in 1990. When Pastor Shane Symolon joined CBC three years ago (2015), there were seven English-speaking home groups and ten Chinese-speaking home groups. Today, CBC has thirty community groups, including twenty English-speaking community groups and ten Chinese-speaking home groups.

The Vision

Small Group ministry has been a major part of CBC’s vision. In a recent published CBC mission statement, Christ-centered community is recognized as essential for spiritual growth. It says, “God created us to form intentional relationships that deepen our love for Christ and each other. We prioritize meeting together to encourage, serve, and submit to one another (Hebrews 10:23-25; 1 Peter 4:8-10).” The small group ministry as a CBC vision is reiterated and emphasized from time to time from the pulpit and through annual community group workshops.

Challenges in The Past

Although home shepherding ministry stayed a CBC vision and continued to grow over the past two decades, it didn’t start without difficulties. CBC faced many common challenges shared by other churches, and yet some challenges are very unique to CBC. In the beginning of the ministry, there were only a handful of home groups among English congregation and almost all of them were led by pastors or elders. Once they were couple years into their gathering, it became very hard for pastors to leave or to pass on to other leaders. 

“Three years ago,” said Shane, “English congregation at CBC were not interested in going to small groups, for those who went, commitment was also an issue”. Geographic dispersion was a concern. People who were interested in hosting or leading a home group might not have enough church families living near-by. “Historically speaking, the Small Group ministry was not embraced by English congregation. However, Chinese brothers and sisters liked to go to home groups. It was a cultural thing here”, said Shane.

Recent Changes

Shane changed the name from “Home Shepherding” to “Community Group” to reflect the importance of being in a Biblical community, where people of God came to worship God, read the Scripture, and share their lives together. For people who were interested in starting a new community group, Shane gave them a 6-week training program, which was designed for the whole group, not just for the leaders. Through a constant announcement on the church bulletin and annual community group workshops, CBC members started to feel the necessity and enjoyed going to community groups which had reflected on an increase of attendance, especially among the English congregation.

According to the “be together” teaching in the book of Hebrews, community is essential for spiritual growth. Shane pointed out, “We are not just reading or studying Bible together like what we did in a book club, we want to grow together spiritually with God and with each other, that means we touch every corner of our lives like sin, repentance, struggles, prayers, healing, worshiping, crying, rejoicing, all that messy but good stuff.”, said Shane.

How Are Small Groups Started? How Are the Leaders Selected?

CBC uses a six-week starter program to launch a community group. A pastor or a church leader will spend six weeks with the entire group getting them ready for launching. For new groups with many potential leaders, a group leader is not needed before the six-week program starts. “We can naturally let the group decide their own leader at the end of this six-week period”, said Shane. For smaller groups or groups with no apparent leaders, however, Shane suggested to have a leader identified before starting of this six-week program. Usually the leaders were identified through referral or by knowing them in person from personal contacts. 

The role of the small group leaders has changed. “They don’t have to be teachers or facilitators themselves, but they need to make sure someone will facilitate the discussions,” said Shane, “Also, leaders are different from host, leaders make sure things happening.” CBC has a sign-up sheet on the church website for people to sign up for small groups. Shane connects them to small group leaders and leaders will call and invite them to the meetings. When a group is full (reaches to 14-16 adults), then new people will be introduced to other groups.

Besides signing up on the church website, people may just call Shane to express their interests in either leading, hosting or participating in a community group. Through interviews and conversations, Shane helped them to form the core team in this new community group and Shane sent out emails to church members in that area asking if anyone was interested in joining this new community croup. Once seven people were committed, then it’s the signal to start a new group, which followed by the six-week starter program.

How are Small Group Leaders Trained?

The six-week launching program is the first and the fundamental training, not only for leaders, but also for every participant. CBC also conducts an annual “Community Groups Summit” planned for current and potential group leaders. Through the teaching, workshop, and break-out sessions, this annual summit provides opportunities for leaders to share experiences, obtain visions, and take partnership with other leaders. Between the launching and the Summit, training materials are widely available for any training need. Sometimes, the training can be on a personal, one-on-one level. When a group leader identifies a unique situation or need, Share keeps a close contact with the group leaders through frequent visitations and consultations.

Shane identified three things that are quite different now. First, the way that people get connected has changed. New technologies are involved. For example, the rolling out of the Realm software, an online church-wide communication system, gave group leaders a new venue to communicate with their group members in addition to the traditional social medias. Second, the leadership in small groups has changed. Church pastors are no longer leading the community groups. Third, new course materials are added. People used to obtain or develop their own teaching materials, now sermon guides are made available for every community group. With these new changes, leaders are presented to different training needs.

Challenges

While Chinese Pastor Isaac Huang still oversees Chinese-speaking home groups, Shane oversees CBC’s community group ministry within the English congregation. Each ministry faces a different set of challenges, but both ministries are seeing certain common issues. Lack of sufficient training among group leaders still amounts to the number one challenge. The need to equip leaders is to make them disciples, which is drastically different from training them to lead effective Bible studies or to share more Bible knowledge. What leaders need is to live out a Godly life for others to follow – a devoted heart to love God, love each other, and love neighbors. “We need to train our leaders to bring the groups together and to lead the groups by example, that’s how we grow in our spiritual maturity toward a Christ-like life”, said Shane. 

High turn-over rate is another problem. Although only one group was completed dissolved since the community group ministry started three years ago, people had difficulties committing to the small group gathering. It seems that busyness is the major contributing factor to the high turn-over rate, especially in the Northern Virginia region. Priorities, conflicting schedules, and competing activities drew people’s attentions from faithfully attending community groups. However, “it is still coming back to the heart issue,” commented Shane. 

Cross-cultural interaction between community groups remains a difficult challenge. Each cultural group (English, Chinese, Spanish, Indian) has its own unique activities within its own cultural settings in their own time frames. For example, more than 200 Chinese brothers and sisters gathered together every year to attend a summer Chinese retreat. Their shared experiences stay within their own space. As a result, the “be together” teaching in Hebrews 3 remains superficial and occasional. The vision of “going deeper” and “growing together spiritually” is still a long way to go across the cultural line. “Should I send a new English-speaking person to a Chinese home group? maybe not a good idea,” said Shane.

Advice to Small Group Ministry

“Don’t follow a specific model, follow what fits in your own small group ministry in your church”, said Shane. He added, “No two small group ministries are the same, so following a specific model may not meet the needs of your ministry.” Another advice was given regarding the starting of a small group ministry. “Don’t start a small group ministry without a good buy-in,” said Shane, “Get consensus, get inputs from everyone before making any changes. A good approach and a prayerful preparation before launching a small group ministry with everyone involved is always a good idea.” 

Recommended Reading

Shane strongly recommended to read and follow the CBC Community Groups Handbook for launching community groups, which “will help the entire group understand the importance of discipleship, community covenant, self and group identity, grace and acceptance, accountability to each other and guide to encourage and support each other,” said Shane.

Additional books are also recommended for further readings: “Community is Messy” (Zempel), “Sticky Church” (Osborne), “Spiritual Multiplication” (McNabb), “Making Small Groups Work” (Zondervan), “Field Guide for Small Group Leaders” (O’Neal), and “Small Groups with Purpose” (Gladen).

Additional Questions to Ask

When asked if he has a preference on an open or close group for CBC’s community ministry, Pastor Shane responded firmly, “Close groups! so we can go deeper.” Another question was brought up about whether CBC would launch Interest Groups. Shane also replied with a firm negation. The third question to Shane was about the relationship between the church and the small groups regarding which one a new church member should go first. “Did you think people should go to community groups first, then go to church? or go to church first and then go to community groups?” “I guess it’s both”, said Shane. “Chinese brothers and sisters tend to go to small groups first before they go to church, but English brothers and sisters like to join the church worship first before going to small groups. Maybe that’s cultural thing as well,” smiled Shane.