A long time ago my dad posted on his blog about the importance of critical thinking in an organization. His point was simple: don’t confuse critical thinking with negativity. You can read his post here: http://tinyurl.com/6d9al2d . We were having a conversation about this recently, and after I explained my opinions on the issue he said, “there’s a blog post”. So bouncing off of his post, I’ll give you the rest of our conversation about this.

I follow a lot of pastors and ministry leaders on Twitter, and throughout the week it’s common to see lots of tweets like, “getting ready for (insert name of ministry) on Sunday, it’s going to be amazing, you don’t wanna miss it! (insert link of church website).” Then on Sunday afternoon tweets like this start flowing in: “Incredible day at (insert name of ministry) today! We have the BEST volunteers in the world!”

Now, on the surface, that’s probably a really good thing. They’re building momentum for Sunday, which is very good, and then they’re celebrating afterward because what’s celebrated is repeated. Here’s what sometimes irritates me, though: If you say that every single week is “amazing”… then you belittle the standard for “amazing”. The reality of life is that some days are better than others. Church services are no exception. If after every single camp, student retreat, worship service, small group sign-up, service project… etc. the church staff is saying it was “amazing”, then pretty soon “amazing” is normal, which isn’t amazing.

In order to accurately evaluate and critique, an organization has to be open to the fact that some things aren’t amazing. In church world, that means that some services aren’t amazing. It takes some boring strikeouts and singles to make triples and home runs so exciting. If the same person posts on Facebook  about how great church was every single week, I don’t believe them anymore. If Christmas was everyday it wouldn’t be a big deal.

Claiming something to be amazing as a routine is the same thing as mediocrity. Application: Commit to being amazing, but admit when something’s not amazing, in order to add credibility to what is amazing.

How do you manage this tension?

Like most people my age and older, I grew up going to Sunday school. It was all I knew. Then when I got to middle school and my dad began talking to me about starting a church, I started hearing about these things called “small groups”. Once we launched the church, my experience with Sunday school ended, and I haven’t been to a Sunday school class since.

I hear from all kinds of adults that small groups are a much better model for life-change. “Life-change happens in the context of community” everybody says. Churches with small groups are generally much cooler than churches with Sunday school. If I heard that a church had Sunday school, I would probably assume that their music wasn’t very good either.

But if I’m honest, my experience with small groups hasn’t been any better than my experience in Sunday school. I’m not discounting what you’ve seen God do in your life or in the lives of others because of small groups, I’m just saying I’ve never had that experience.

What’s worked for me is having older, wiser people speak into my life. My dad, Michael Bayne, Ben Reed. I’ve also experienced growth from being on a floor full of godly guys as we all mature together. I think that’s the goal of small groups, but the small group environment just never did that for me.

Here’s my hunch: there’s something coming that will replace small groups. It will be more intentional and relational. It will have more rigorous study of Scripture. It will be more effective. I don’t know what it is yet, but I think it’s coming. In the meantime, I think we need to accept the fact that not everybody benefits from small groups, or even likes them. This is not meant to be a slap in the face to small groups or small group pastors/leaders, it’s just my opinion.

For a cool article about a church experimenting with this, here’s a link: http://tinyurl.com/3rbnfs7

Thoughts? What has your experience with small groups been?