One of the most important components of a healthy church is active small group life. In this chapter I will communicate what small group ministry is, why it is effective, and that it is NOT a new concept for us Unificationists; in fact, it is the core of what Father has told us to do.

People get lost in a crowd. Leaders burn out when the entire congregation is looking to them for advice and counsel. Just look at what happened to Moses in Exodus 18:18: "Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee," and Numbers 11:14: "I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me." Just as God provided Moses leaders to guide the people group by group, so God provides for every church people with leadership ability. The means to tap this lies in developing small group ministry.

When we were singles, we lived and worked as small groups. Workshops always included teams for group discussion. Deep friendships and personal breakthroughs came about in the context of the team meetings. We organized as small centers, as witnessing teams and as fundraising teams. Our entire life as a church was small group life. What happened? After we started family life, the small group consciousness and structure completely disappeared. With it went a big chunk of our hearts. And with it went the potential to self-organize, develop new leaders and grow as a church. It is time to institute small group ministries in our Family Church once again.

To do so is in line with Father's directions over the years. "You must go through a group-type of family life at some place like an apartment building," he states. "I recommend that you hold home meetings of the trinity unit alternately at the home of each family." Father supports meetings in our homes. This liberates us from buildings. The church is people, not proper-ties. "Educate horizontally related people through home meetings. Newly joined members are to be guided by team leaders, and then be transferred to each region." This is small group ministry 101, something very near and dear to Father. He said, "Have home meetings by local unit. If this is developed more, it should be done centered on the trinity. If this is expanded to 12 people, it should be again divided." (WSL 1, p. 168) All books of guidance on small group ministry agree with Father here. The optimum size for a group is 8-12 adults. Once you go much beyond that, you can multiply the one group into two.

In his book, Reinventing American Protestantism, Don Miller discusses three "new paradigm churches," also called "post-denominational churches" and "mega-churches." Here is Miller's introduction of the community-forming method in these churches:

Small group ministry is attractive because it builds upon the dynamics of the original small group: the FAMILY. From this perspective, a small group church is a family church. The original small group is that consisting of my own family and my children's and grandchildren's families. This is the ideal of the extended family and community.

In the era of restoration, we build small groups of non-related people that function like families, but ideally, True Parents' hope is for us to return to our hometown and gather together our extended family that is there.

Whether with our biological kin or our actual neighbors, colleagues at work or friends at school, we can utilize proven methods to express heart and care to create small groups. The church fosters small groups by training leaders, providing pro-gram support and blessing their creativity in finding ways to serve. There are many names for small groups. They are called Hoon Dok Teams and Kodans. Our Oakland Church under Mrs. Durst was organized as teams called trinities. All members' activities were organized through their trinity. In other churches they are called cells, house churches, mini-churches, small group fellowships, care groups, and so forth.

In Korea, the small groups in Paul Yonggi Cho^'s church center their meetings on study of his Sunday sermon. They now have a school that trains pastors to preach and teach exactly like Paul Cho. The Pentecostals of Philadelphia, led by Rev. Jesse Edwards, fosters "friendship groups." They meet for 40 minutes, once a week. They all have the same weekly Bible reading and agenda. They have a prayer, the Bible reading, and give each person two minutes to offer reflections about the verse. Their groups grow quickly, in part because the meeting is short and leave people wanting more -- and so they come back.

Another method, which can develop side-by-side, is where groups develop according to interests and purposes of the participants. Consider the following partial list of small groups present at a typical new paradigm church.

Vineyard Fellowship in Columbus, Ohio (kinds of small groups):

• Kinship Groups: gather to worship, study the Bible, pray and enjoy fellowship with one another
• Women's Groups and Men^'s Groups
• Bible Study Groups
• Discipleship Groups: designed specifically for new believers
• Prayer Groups: spend their time interceding for people^'s needs and the needs of specific ministries
• Specialty Groups: geared toward people with common areas of interest in ministry. One specialty group follows up on contacting and building bonds with the family and friends of new church members, in order to diffuse negativity or accusation about the new believer's commitment.
• Joshua House Groups: specifically target young adults
• Fellowship Groups: enjoy fellowship while participating in certain activities such as camping and riding motorcycles

Dale Galloway, in The Small Group Book, calls these two types "geographic districts" and "specialty districts." The latter includes the Task district (ushers, parking lot attendants, etc.), Positive Singles district, Children's Ministries district (includes all children nursery age through sixth grade as well as the staff who serve these ages), New Life Victorious district (rehabilitation oriented), Youth district (like Children's district for teenagers and the staff who serve them), Young adults district, Creative arts district (includes choirs, orchestra, drama, staging, lighting and writing), Restoration district (recovery from family crises, illness, etc.) (p. 47)

We have all kinds of small groups. As singles in America, we fundraised as small groups, witnessed as small groups, created bands, did restoration and ran centers as small groups. In Korea small groups are called Hoon Dok Hae teams. In my experience, they meet in members' homes, read Hoon Dok Hae, sing, pray and fellowship and have a meal. In Japan they are called district churches. The Family Federation in America has varying degrees of small group activity in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Jersey, Chicago and other cities. Often we call it a community system. In New Jersey we call them Hoon Dok teams. We have the traditional name "home church," as well as a name Father gave, "Kodan."

Father has given encouragement to organize as small groups on many occasions, including at True Children^'s Day, November 20, 1998:

The FFWPU, as set up originally, is a small group ministry, pure and simple. The direction was to make small groups that meet twice a month to do Hoon Dok Hae, beginning with one's own family. Put out the Family Federation flag. Invite your relatives, friends and neighbors. At least have your own children there. Build from a foundation of love. Adjust the for-mat it until it works for you. It doesn't need to be a long meeting.

On September 7, 1994, Rev. Chung Hwan Kwak shared that each blessed couple is the family-level church leader based on the tribal messiah providence, and that each family-level church should grow to include 160 families. Soon thereafter we received the following statement of purpose for the Family Federation:

1. Education in True Parents' tradition and realization of the ideal of blessed families; guidance for the fulfillment of the Family Pledge.
2. Education and guidance for tribal messiah activity.
3. Tribal messiah meetings (twice a month).
   Time: Evening time every first and fifteenth of the month.
   Place: Members' homes. Content: Guidance through reading Father^'s speeches and Divine Principle.
4. Witnessing through tribal messiah activity.

The Family Federation is the same, in many ways, as home church. It is local and decentralized, relying on lay-leadership. There are no requirements for buildings. Everything begins in a house or apartment and builds from there. Success comes not through bureaucracy but by service. It is personal, adaptable and responsive to local concerns. The authority to do ministry is given to us as parents. The overarching providence still factors into our lives, but our context now enables us to unite our attendance to True Parents with authentic local ministry.

The Kodan system is a small group ministry. Their structure of lay leadership, education and communication is similar in structure to strategies used in the fastest growing Christian churches. The Kodan nationally is a network of small groups. In 1997 or thereabouts, True Father clearly stated that he wants to make the Kodan system universal in America.

Some Americans object to the name Kodan, which means ^"platoon^" in Japanese. I was sympathetic with this objection until I read Bill Hybels, founder of Willow Creek Church, use the term "little platoon of believers" to describe the small groups at Willow Creek! Truly, the name is secondary. The heart and commitment are primary.

• Composed of small groups (3 - 7 families)
• Lay leadership
• House-based
• Affinity-based (respectful of mission/business affiliations)
• Local initiative with national coordination
• Election of local leaders
• Leader as coach
• Emphasis on good vertical and horizontal communication (personal on the local level, and by fax, e-mail and video nationally)
• Stable, unchanging, beyond campaigns

Presently the Kodan under Mr. and Mrs. Hiroshi Inose is gradually trying to include American members in their groups. I heartily support this and I think that as long as it is under the auspices of the church leadership, it should include all members, including Koreans. Eventually, small groups are our infrastructure, our only real organization, serving multi-dimensional purposes.

Through small groups we can develop our hearts as brothers and sisters by creating communities beyond race, nation and culture. But they have to develop through local initiative. The underlying dynamic -- if it is to endure -- is joy in fellow-ship with God, True Parents, our families and our community.

A small group can be people who work together, organizing by office or company. Our building manager is doing that here at 43rd Street. Or a small group can organize by interest or friendship. One small group in Manhattan Family Church is all brothers from South or Central America. Teams can be composed of people from a specific background. In Chicago there was a group of people with a lot of resentments. It was a big group. But they still prayed and started with Father's words.

The real essence of small group ministry: becoming a part of each other's lives and allowing God's loving presence to melt hearts. The small group is where we practice True Parents' four points for a leader to take care of with the members: 1. Resolve their dissatisfactions; 2. Embrace and care for them; 3. Provide solutions for their difficulties; 4. Give hope for the future. (see WSL, part 2, p. 25) Here are two testimonies I picked up recently.

I recently encountered two couples coming home from a Kodan meeting. They had such a feeling of life that I asked about their meeting. Their Kodan is made up of the families of one office. Their meeting started after work. At 7:00 p.m., spouses arrived and they spread out the light refreshments that they snacked on throughout the evening. They had an opening prayer and 5-10 minutes of Hoon Dok Hae. The leader then presented some points from the recent leaders conference. The seven families in the group had recently held a joint garage sale, and they discussed how it went and reflected on other ways to fundraise. They are considering sharing a booth in a mall. The leader told me, "It is surprising how the activity encourages everyone to think for the sake of others." No one criticized others for not donating so much. They evenly divided the result of the garage sale ($900 gross for seven families), even though the contribution of materials was different per family. The focus was very much how they could help each other raise funds. They have not met much in the past, but now want to meet twice a month. Some brought children and one wife took care of them. They closed at 9:30 p.m.

In Manhattan Family Church, a new small group shared a testimony about their first meeting. "As we entered the Chibuisi's residence, we felt a very heavenly and holy spirit in the room. Mr. Theophilus Chibuisi offered the opening prayer after he read a section of Life in the Spirit World and on Earth. Then Mr. Christian Nseka read the first paragraph of Level 4. We spoke about the relation between husband and wife, God and us, God and the big figures in human history, True Parents and us, the group and the church, the group and us.... Then we concluded that the purpose of the group is to help each other revive the hope that our True Parents have brought to humanity.... (Dinner time) Let me tell you that this was a delicious meal. Maybe that's why we could have the energy to hold the meeting very late.... John Magoola shared his life experiences of 21 years in the church, referring to God's Will and the World, p. 440.... We watched the heart-rending video tape of the Little Angels in North Korea. At moments, this video brought many of us to the point of tears.... I read the names and prayed for all the Manhattan Family Church members, and then we prayed together....We did not feel like leaving each other that night."

If you are at all interesting in developing small group ministry, I recommend that you read Dale Galloway's The Small Group Book: The Practical Guide for Nurturing Christians and Building Churches. Kevin Thompson gave it to me, and it is by far the best book I've read on the subject. To get you started, I'll pass on a few tidbits. The following is the checklist for the leader of a new TLC ("Tender Loving Care") group.

Plans For Forming And Building Your TLC Group

• Group leader
• Assistant group leader
• Host/hostess
• Place where your TLC will meet
• The regular time your meeting is going to be held
• Build your prospect list
• Pray your prospect list
• Work your prospect list

The first three positions, group leader, assistant group leader and host/hostess are equally essential for each small group. Galloway provides the job descriptions for each position, emphasizing the need to avoid burn-out.

The last three points, building, praying and working the prospect list, is very valuable. The leaders, together with their supervisor, build the list from friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers, new visitors at worship service, and other church members who are not part of a TLC group. Once the list is made, serious prayer is invested, and on that foundation, they call, visit, write to and by any means invite the people to the first meeting of the group. Galloway goes on to discuss the design of the first meeting and of all the meetings thereafter.

Commit yourself to attending the training session every week where your pastor will teach you and help you develop and where you will be accountable to your pastor with written reports and assignments.

Give people a choice or assign them to a group? I think one of the worst things you can do is assign people to small groups. We have had much better results offering any help and guidance we can to assist people in finding the group best suited to their needs and then allowing them to choose the group they will attend.

Provide lessons or leave leaders on their own? Years ago we just let leaders do whatever they wanted to in their groups. We have since found that we see much better results when we provide a lesson for them. Also, these lessons are based on what's being taught in the Sunday celebration services, so everybody is heading in the same direction. Providing lessons also keeps the leaders coming to weekly training to pick up their lesson plans.

Include children in the groups or keep them separate? Again, we allow each group to decide whether to include children, have a separate program for them (in another room of the house, or at an entirely different location), or get babysitters.

Goals of pastoral care or evangelism? Our groups see both pastoral care and evangelism as their objectives. Although each group may fulfill those objectives differently, both are being accomplished.

These may or may not be your questions. Whatever your questions are, I would bet that this book answers them. One more bit of advice from this excellent resource:

It's hard to stop copying text from this book. Again, I recommend it highly.

Small group meetings can happen any time and can do anything they feel confident to do, with the pastor's blessing. If a church has a very effective small group, it even could run its own half-day workshop or two-day workshop. Thus, education can be delegated to small groups. Some Christian churches rarely have workshops. They provide their advanced education in evening classes and weekend half-day sessions.

Small groups can serve as an environment to help each other economically. It is up to each group, as it is up to each family, to decide how to approach this. In building God's kingdom, we have several request/opportunities for offering donations, that we can balance as God guides us. The first offering is our local church tithe of 10% of our income, off the top, so that God might bless the other 90%. When our life as families and communities are one in tune with God, our financial house will prosper. As I write this, a small group called "FAITH" is expanding in WestRock Church. FAITH stands for Fourth Adam Investing and Trading House. All profits go to members' personal ministry of tithing. Gail and Gary Veith, the founding couple, explain that when they meet they pray, read Hoon Dok Hae and then talk about the stock market. This is the hobby life approach to the small group ministry.

The strategy of small groups and home church is not new for us, but when we have tried it after starting our families, it has not brought membership growth in America. Why should it do so now? Having done some research on this, I'll put forth some characteristics of successful small group strategies.

• One, working with the pastor, groups set their own purpose within the church culture OR completely unite with the uniform method established by the church as a whole.
• Two, groups set their own goals.
• Three, membership is voluntary.
• Four, the groups are self-organizing. That means that the group members feel ownership and control of the life of the group. It is pertinent that when Father established Kodan, he said that each team should elect its own leader.
• Five, the groups are the environment for personal ministry. That is, people can develop their Tribal Messiahship vision in the context of the "mini-church," not getting lost in the larger group.
• Six, we work out the conflicts and problems within the small group. When the difficulties are worked out and the group is full of God's spirit, then we can naturally attract others to join our group, and it grows and eventually gets too big to meet in one place. So it divides. This is how small group ministry serves evangelism.

If and as our community develops our spirituality in these directions, we too will have success in small group ministry. Plus, we need training, ongoing training.

The ideal is that more and more happens within the small groups, and less and less is controlled and organized from above. Paul Yonggi Cho is the leader of a church with hundreds of thousands of members in an effective small group system. He said that he had to rummage around his office to find something to do.

• The small groups can work flexibly for all kinds of providential purposes, participating in all kinds of organizations to which any of the members belong (PLA, WFWP, FFWPU, ACC, etc), raising funds, counseling, raising up spiritual children and new families.
• The small group system represents the family system until the substantial Kingdom of Heaven on Earth appears.
• The authority of the church leader is delegated to the small group leader couple. The church leader provides guidance continually. Each group can have a leader and bookkeeper and whatever else it feels necessary. Jobs should be delegated.
• It does not have to be geographical (although members obviously have to be within driving distance). Groupings can be affinity-based, interest-based or activity-based.
• The small group should grow to include 12 families and then divide.
• Sundays all the small groups gather for worship service.
• The members are accountable to meet regularly.
• The groups offer up their activities to their pastor. Pastor Galloway's church uses weekly report forms that are presented and discussed at a weekly meeting. (From them, the church secretary compiles a total report form for the entire church each week, and that church includes almost 7,000 people meeting in small groups. A husband and wife team began the church twenty years ago, with no members but each other.)

• In my experience, small groups require continual investment. At Manhattan Family Church I gave a series of sermons on community building to generate interest and then called a meeting for people interested. Few showed up, but these people were dedicated and we had a series of warm, spiritual meetings, and from among those who attended we got some groups started.
• It requires leadership that is committed to the strategy, and then someone has to do it.
• The greater the senior pastor's involvement, the greater the chances of success. Pastor Edwards in Philadelphia trains his care group leaders, then goes to their home to conduct their first meeting. He returns the next week to observe and support the new leader guiding his own meeting. From that point on, the new leader is responsible.
• Expect to take months, even years, to create a successful small group ministry. But remember, even the successful Willow Creek Community Church hit a roadblock -- they called it a train wreck -- on its path of growth. What turned the church around, structurally, was the transition into a complete small group ministry.

It is absolutely imperative that we make the same transition. It is proven historically. It is the way we succeeded in the past. It is the mandate of the Family Federation. And it is the essence of our Kingdom theology.

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