"People tend to focus on the past rather than the present," said Elder X of a township church in Eastern China. He observed that believers often testify about grace during their first years of faith—sometimes decades ago—while accounts of their recent experiences with God that happened "this week" or "recently" are rare.
Since 2020, his church has introduced small group ministries. Elder X found that these groups encourage believers to focus on the present by sharing their daily lives, expressions of gratitude, challenges, service involvement, and spiritual experiences from the past week. He emphasized that this is the essence of small groups: through weekly sharing, guided by pastoral insight and reinforced over time, the concept of "Immanuel" is made tangible in the daily lives and spiritual experiences of believers.
Since 2020, his church has introduced small groups. Elder X found that these groups help believers focus on the present by sharing daily life, gratitude, struggles, service, and spiritual experiences from the past week. "This is the essence of small groups," he said. "Through weekly sharing, guided by pastoral insight and reinforced over time, the reality of Immanuel becomes tangible in the daily lives of believers."
Such indifference to daily grace, he said, reveals a faith that is conceptual rather than lived. For instance, when asked to explain "Immanuel," many long-standing believers can recite the textbook answer, "God was with me then, is with me now, and will be with me forever," but struggle to provide concrete examples.
Elder X also highlighted a change in practice: before sharing personal reflections, small groups first discuss lessons from the Sunday sermon. This approach has transformed the worship habits of many believers, who previously listened to sermons without reflection or practical application. The shift, he said, reflects Elder X's clear understanding of the church's previously stagnant development.
Located in a tourist town in East China, one of the nation's top 100 economically developed counties, the church traces its roots back more than a century to missionary efforts and now has about 300 members. Elder X explained that the congregation reflects typical traits of a traditional church, relying on Bible study, the choir, prayer meetings, and Sunday services to sustain its life. "Internally, it is not as vibrant and revitalized as it may appear on the outside," he remarked. Evangelistic outreach is minimal, with little time, energy, finances, or personnel investment. Although new contact information is collected during Christmas evangelistic gatherings, the lack of follow-up results in few newcomers joining the church. Within the congregation, faith is shallow, biblical grounding is weak, and commitment and a sense of kingdom mission remain limited.
Before the pandemic, three full-time staff members were responsible for pastoring the 300 believers, and inadequate pastoral care was already a longstanding issue. When the pandemic forced a sudden shift from in-person worship to online services, the church struggled to adapt. During this vulnerable period, heretical teachings infiltrated the community. Though quickly stopped without lasting damage, Elder X recognized this as a wake-up call that change was necessary.
He acknowledged that the church had once split over ideological differences, and the move toward group-based ministry required a shift in both pastoral approach and management style. For traditional churches, he cautioned, changes to long-established gathering patterns must be dealt with great caution.
"Core staff must share a common vision," Elder X stressed, calling this the essential foundation for transformation. In 2020, despite the disruptions of the pandemic, the church retained a stable and trustworthy leadership team: Elder X and his wife, a young preacher. Together with Elder Z from a neighboring church, they researched and developed a systematic small group model tailored to the local context and collectively decided to carry out the transformation.
Elder Z's church is relatively small, with a membership of only 100 to 200, having developed from a single meeting point in the 1990s. Although he is the only core pastor, this preacher, who relocated from another province to settle in the area, has gained the trust and support of the church's leaders and congregation.
With 10 to 20 years of pastoral experience, Elder Z emphasized that small group transformation begins with leadership foresight and the establishment of a unified vision and philosophy among both full-time staff and key volunteers. The next step, he explained, is to communicate this vision to the congregation and secure their support. For Church X, a century-old congregation comprised largely of middle-aged and elderly members, the shortage of qualified leaders made a full-scale transition impractical. Instead, they launched a pilot program, first inviting willing believers to form small groups. Through training courses, the church raised its initial group of leaders, gradually instilling a sense of pastoral responsibility and adjusting the process along the way.
By the summer of 2025, 40 to 50 percent of Church X's members had participated in small group training, with 60 to 70 group leaders and volunteers involved. The church's small group structure includes weekly care groups and nurturing groups, focusing on sermon reflection, connections, Bible study, and prayer, as well as a series of discipleship courses. Leaders are joyful to witness the members' spiritual growth.
Elder Z noted that one brother makes a three-hour round trip from another city each week to attend his small group. Likewise, Elder X observed that Sunday worship has become more solemn, with congregants taking notes during sermons, and one believer has read through the entire Bible eight times since joining a group. "In today's economic downturn and amid growing external pressures, the church must help believers experience inner transformation. This is the church's calling today," Elder Z affirmed.
In addition, the commitment of migrant believers has also grown. Sister Wang and her husband, originally from Wenzhou, and Sister Li, from Henan, came to the city a decade ago to run a business and began attending Church Z. After small groups were established, their faith practice was no longer limited to a few hours on Sundays but gradually became a "priority" in their lives, fostering a deeper sense of belonging to the church. Today, both sisters serve as group leaders, gaining personal insights into how to care for members, encouraging those with different personalities to share and connect, while also offering visits and support. Reflecting on her experience, Sister Li noted that midweek gatherings in her hometown resembled small groups in form, but the closeness there stemmed from natural community and neighborly ties as "you see each other everywhere you go." In contrast, the connection forged in small groups through intentional sharing of truth, she said, is "more genuine and profound."
Elder Z observed that believers typically chose to stay and commit after attending a group three or four times. The core reason, he explained, is that "people feel this church is loving and warm," despite its humble facilities.
"Every believer can serve as a bridge between God and others," Elder X added. "In small groups, each person can guide and support others within their ability. The group is like a family: even if you cannot be a spiritual parent, you can still be an elder brother or sister, walking alongside those who are just beginning."
This approach reshapes pastoral relationships within small groups. Rather than a one-on-one, teacher-student model, the dynamic becomes one of equal exchange among close friends. A crucial element in this transformation, Elder X emphasized, is learning to listen. In an age marked by loneliness, people need the chance to speak. For this reason, group leaders must first learn to listen attentively, avoiding the tendency to interrupt or adopt a counseling posture.
In 2021, one sister in the church who suffered from depression and despair joined a small group after being invited. Over time, she opened her heart, shared her struggles, and gradually grew more positive. X reflected, "Healing and curing happen in the process of speaking and listening."
Another practical expression of the principle that "every believer is a priest" is the idea that "every believer can provide counseling." Elder X categorized pastoral counseling into three types: one based purely on social psychology; another that blends theology with psychology but, in practice, remains essentially psychological and risks undermining the authority of biblical counseling; and finally, biblical counseling itself. With the growing demand for psychological support in today's society, he noted that churches often place this burden on pastors. Yet, in his view, every believer, equipped with biblical knowledge and life experience, can offer biblical counseling to those around them, without the need for ordination or advanced theological training. On this basis, mature groups of believers can provide effective "micro-counseling."
On the one hand, the spiritual and psychological needs of many believers have not yet reached the point where specialized pastoral counseling is required. On the other hand, church members, because of their age and professional backgrounds, often have richer life experiences than pastors and can show deeper empathy. Elder X recalled visiting a young woman who had just experienced a miscarriage. He remarked, "This is truly a very sad thing, and God knows it all." Such comforting words and even his prayer at the time were inadequate. But an elderly sister who was present took the young woman's hand and said, "I know exactly how you feel. I lost three children when I was your age." Elder X reflected that this kind of companionship, more than any teaching or promise, provided the most direct comfort to the grieving believer.
Since shifting to a group-based model of pastoral care, the church has made notable progress in discipleship, particularly in nurturing believers and grounding them in truth. However, the two elders acknowledged that the church's evangelistic ministry has not yet experienced significant growth.
To pursue a more comprehensive transformation, they carefully examined various group models and identified two primary approaches currently practiced in Chinese churches. The first, represented by the "Happiness Group," is driven by outreach to newcomers and integrates discipleship with evangelism. Originating from Kaohsiung Blessed & Blessing Church, the "Happiness Group" is an evangelism method led by two or more church staff, including icebreaker games, worship and praise, testimony sharing, sermons, communication, and interaction.The second approach takes a bottom-up perspective, prioritizing care and discipleship while gradually aligning with the church's vision, group philosophy, leadership development, and the spiritual lives of believers. Once stable, this model introduces effective evangelistic tools such as Fishers of Men, the Happiness Group, and Grace Encounter.
Given the high demands that dynamic models like the Happiness Group place on believers' quality, manpower, and financial resources, and following the advice of the church committee, the leaders opted for the second approach. They sought to avoid implementing an evangelistic model without sufficient pastoral follow-up, which, as they put it, would amount to "giving birth but not raising." Instead, they devoted five years to building up the faith and maturity of existing believers before focusing on outreach.
Although evangelism has not yet been fully launched, Elder X observed that the small group model itself carries a natural advantage for outreach. "Group members are already embedded in their families and communities, giving them greater contact with both seekers and those on the verge of faith. This makes the spread of the gospel more effective," he said. The church is now preparing to incorporate evangelistic efforts into the existing framework, with the expectation of achieving a multiplying effect within three to five years.
"The church must be living water to stay alive. Closing the doors and only tending to the flock will lead to decline, because maintaining the church is not the same as pursuing growth." This conviction, Elder X explained, is what drives his dedication to developing small groups.
He often recalls an experience from more than 20 years ago, during a theological training class, when an elderly pastor stood in the pulpit and reminded the students that the city's population exceeded three million, yet there were fewer than 30,000 believers. The words left a deep impression on him. Later, as he entered ministry, he found that shepherding the flock was not easy. Many of his former peers gradually drifted away or lost their strength due to various hardships, with some treating ministry as mere employment, others simply waiting for retirement. Yet he could never forget the tears of that elderly pastor, because, as he put it, "I realized there was such a vast gap in the spread of the gospel.
(Elder X, Church X, Elder Z, and Church Z are pseudonyms for safety reasons.)
Originally published by the Gospel Times
- Edited by Karen Luo and translated by Poppy Chan
