A few days ago I spoke with Mukesh Joseph, one of our Vineyard pastors who is church planting in two very poor neighborhoods in North Delhi.  He was excited to share that two young men that he is discipling recently led their first “discovery group”.  Each had approached a friend from a different faith background and asked if they would be open to hearing a story from the life of Jesus.  After they shared the story, they were able to lead them through a brief discussion of the story, and how it might relate to their lives.

Mukesh commented, “All of us are excited about using this approach because it is so easy to use and so easy to teach others to use.”

If you think about it, in this one story, Mukesh is combining a simple approach to starting a small group, a simple approach to discipleship, and a simple approach to evangelism – and that is exciting!  You can read more about discover groups in the recent guest post by Jim Egli entitled, THE NEXT BIG THING

After a year or two of research and traveling around the world looking at what God is doing in the area of church planting, Mark Fields recently shared with a group of Vineyard mission leaders his thoughts about simple reproducible groups:

“Every church multiplication leader I talked to had some simple model of reproducible groups that mirrored what we did in the early days of the Vineyard Movement.  I have been particularly fascinated by the powerful simplicity of Discovery Bible Study as one such model. It is easily reproducible and emphasizes helping people hear God for themselves and obey him.”

Take a few minutes to think through how some of these ideas might strengthen your approach to small groups.

• What one or two core values are you trying to accomplish in your small groups?
• Are there any modifications that could help your small groups meet your core values more effectively?
• How reproducible is your approach to small groups?  Is there a way to make your groups easier to reproduce?