A few years ago I heard a story of a church that looked as though they were really thriving. They had about 500 people attending, had many outreach ministries reaching their community, and many people were coming to Christ and to church through their ministry. The problem was that the church was not growing in numbers. People were leaving as quickly as they were coming in. They found that the majority who left were not attending another church, they just stopped going to church altogether. Those who were leaving were almost impossible to bring back into any community of faith.
The senior pastor realized that something had to be done, so he called up the last 12 people to be baptized and invited them to supper at his house. These were all new Christians and very excited to be invited to the Pastor’s house. After supper, he sat them down and asked if they wanted to know the future. They all said “yes!” So he said, statistically speaking in the next two to three years, two of your marriages will have broken up and the shame will cause you to leave the church, three of you will have a conflict with someone in the church and you will leave the church, one will have a tragedy and lose faith and leave, two will have a moral failing and leave, and two will lose interest and drift away. In two to three years, out of this group, only two of you will be attending church and only one of you at this church. There was dead silence in the room. All these wide-eyed Christians were about to say “surely not I, Lord.” When one of them spoke up and said, “What can we do to change the statistics.” The pastor said, “you can get together and as a group decide that you are not going to let anyone go.”
That is exactly what they did. These strangers formed a small group and supported each other through the tragedies, divorces, conflicts, and failings, and in four years, only one had left the church never to come back. The church went from losing 10 out of every 12 converts to losing only one. That church that was so great at evangelism learned the hard way that Small groups are essential for the growth, encouragement, and perseverance of any Christian.
(From an illustration by Mike Wilkins, 11/30/2004, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermon-illustrations/19053/church-small-groups-by-mike-wilkins)