LIBERTY UNIVERSITY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
Analysis Paper I
Submitted to Dr. Gary Waller, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the completion of the course
DSMN 630
Small Group Ministries
by
Halley Nguyen
November 12, 2017
Introduction
Every human needs community and the healthy Christian lifestyle seeks for the need of
belonging in a community.1 It is hard for Christian to live out the Christian lifestyle and value in
this world nowadays. However, small group community can help every Christian not to walk
alone in this world. We are created to work together.2 Recently, small group ministry has become
a trend in churches on over the world. They call it cell group, small group, Bible study group or
even house church in some places. Churches has started to develop this model because they
understand that small group community is essential for the growing of believers/Christians.3 The
purpose of small group ministry is to equip and strengthen members through relationships by
sharing and doing life together. There is a level of accountability to each other that allows
members to share, pray with and confess their sins to the group. The idea of having small groups
in the church is good because it follows and replicate the model that Jesus did in the New
Testament when He spent most of the time of His ministry to develop and train His disciples.
Primary Passages and Principles that form Small group Ministries
It is true that recently small groups are developed at churches as a trend. However, it is
not just because churches look at others and try to do effective things that others do. Small
groups ministry is developed because God had showed us the model of small groups in the past.
There is Biblical basic for why we should develop small groups in our church? First of all, the
first small group was found in the Bible in the very nature of God Himself in the manifestation of
1 Rod Dempsey, Leading Healthy, Growing, Multiplying Small Groups (Lynchburg: Liberty University Press, 2015),
20. Kindle
2 Ibid
3 Ibid
God as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit also known as the Trinity. Genesis
1:1 and 1:26 shows the working of the Trinity. They were working together in a group or a
community. Comiskey writes, “The Trinity dwells in perfect unity and community. God is not a
lone individualist, and this fact should stir God’s people away from rugged individualism to
community-oriented living.” 4 He dwells in a community to portrays a model that it is necessary
for His children to live in community with each other. We are not created to live in isolation or to
pursue individualism. Human beings are relational because we are mage in the image of a
relational God.5 Moreover, in Genesis 2:18, God said it was not good for man to be alone. This
verse is usually used to teach about marriage but it also describes that relationships are a
fundamental need people have. He brought the animals to Adam, but eventually created Eve, so
man could also live in community, just as God does.6
Secondly, there are many places in the New Testament the church of believers is called
“the body of Christ”. The phrase “the Body of Christ” is a metaphor for the church and parts of
physical body are used to illustrated members of the church. Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:22-23,
“He [Christ] put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church,
which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” Therefore, members of the body of
Christ follow Jesus Christ as their Head. In 1 Corinthians 12: 12-30, Paul describes that
Christians are part of the body “the body is not made up of one part but of many”7 and each part
4 Joel Comiskey, Biblical Foundations for The Cell-Based Church: New Testament Insights for the 21st Century
(Moreno Valley, CA: CCS Publishing, 2012), 43.
5 Ibid, 26
6 Ibid
7 1 Corinthians 12:14 (ESV)
has different function but we all need other parts “the eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need
you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”.”8 Therefore, the principle of 1
Corinthians 12:12-30 is Christians need each other and the whole body need every part of the
body working together in unity to be its most effective. Every part of the body works for the
benefit of the whole body and the benefit of the other part. When we are able to understand this
principle, we know that we need relationships and are willing to work for the good of the whole
body. Verse 18 shows that God has different purposes in the way He made everyone, “God has
placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be” so we still can
come together in a community even though we are different in genders, ages, society positions,
etc. And because we are parts of the body, we depend on each other. Verse 26 mentions we
should help others, share and suffer with each other, “If one part suffers, every part suffers with
it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” Small groups provide an environment
where people can be known and they can be encouraged in specific ways. People can share what
they need so they can be helped by others. Dempsey sums up the idea of the body of Christ
which is the church needs every individual part of it working together, “We are the body of
Christ, and as such every part of the body in important to the proper functioning of the whole
body.”9
Finally, the Great Commission of Jesus calls us to go and make disciples and it was said
that the process is completed when the disciples are able to make new disciples. Small groups
empower the process of growing and multiplying disciples in a church and then encourage them
to continue making disciple.
8 1 Corinthians 12:21 (ESV)
9 Rod Dempsey, Leading Healthy, Growing, Multiplying Small Groups (Lynchburg: Liberty University Press, 2015),
20. Kindle, 20.
Current church and Small Group Structure
My home church in Vietnam does not fall completely into any one category. It is a mix
between traditional church and hybrid church. In Vietnam, we do not have many established
churches. The population of Christians is just 1% of the whole country population. My church
has 1500 members on the list but we have around 650 church-goers and just around 300 people
truly involve in the church. Our church is led by only one lead pastor. Larking of pastors is an
issue of Vietnamese church as well. Therefore, we are not able to have more pastors in the
church. In Vietnam, people especially youngsters do not want to go to mission field or become
pastors because of financial issue. Pastors in Vietnam are normally old so their main task is
preaching at church on Sunday. They could not involve in Youth ministry or Children Ministry
because they do not have experiences in that field or they could not fit in those ministries. Young
generations may not understand what my pastor teaches because there is a big gap between the
old and young generations in Vietnamese society. We have ministries according to people age:
Youth ministry (from 13-30 years old), group of people from 30 to 45 years old, group of 45 to
60 years old. Each big group has small groups but our pastor does not take care small groups. We
value relationships so that we have small groups in church but most of Vietnamese church do not
understand the process of discipleship. I believe the Youth Ministry in my church are led by good
leaders so they are doing better job in discipleship for young people in my church. We are lucky
because of those good leaders but pastor do not care for discipleship. It can be said that
discipleship is carried out through small group ministry in my church but we do not intentionally
raise up new leaders so we sometimes do not have new leaders to lead or too depend on the
current leaders. In Vietnam, we do not have title for Youth pastors. All the leaders are volunteers
who are solid believers in church.
The small group structure of my church is probably the mix between “with” and “of” in
terms of our goal for the small group program. I think my home church is considered as in a
sleeping mood which I think most of established churches in Vietnam are experiencing the same
thing. Maybe because the pastors and leaders are too tired of dealing with the government for not
losing the physical church but we are losing our spiritual church.
