Small Group Discipleship: How to Lead a Group That Actually Makes Disciples
Who this is for: You've led a group — or you've sat in one — and something felt off. The conversations were nice but shallow. People shared, but nobody changed. You walked away thinking, We're doing Bible studies, but we're not making disciples. Or maybe you've never led and the thought terrifies you because nobody showed you how.
This is for you. Whether you're an ordinary person who wants to disciple someone for the first time, a small group leader looking for more than social hour, or a pastor trying to build a discipleship pathway that produces leaders instead of consumers — start here.
Small groups are the primary vehicle for making disciples. Not programs. Not Sunday services. Not conferences. Groups.
Jesus started with twelve ordinary men. He preached to crowds, sure. But the deep, life-changing work? That happened in a group. Robert Coleman's classic study The Master Plan of Evangelism makes the case that Jesus' entire strategy hinged on investing deeply in a few — not programming for the many.
The early church followed the same pattern. Acts 2:42–47 shows us what happened after 3,000 people were baptized. They didn't just show up on Sundays. They devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer — gathering in homes, sharing life, and adding to their number daily.
That passage is the blueprint. When the church is actually being the church, it looks like a small group.
Here's what I tell pastors all the time: groups are the tide that raises every other ministry ship. When your groups are strong, your volunteers are better, your marriages are healthier, and your mission has more momentum. Groups overflow into everything else.
Why Most Small Groups Don't Produce Disciples
The short version: Most groups default to socializing or studying without a clear path toward transformation. A real discipleship group runs on three things — content, community, and contribution — held together by relational trust.
Let's be honest. A lot of what we call "small groups" are social clubs with a Bible on the coffee table.
The American church model loves open groups where anyone drops in anytime, or semester-based groups that reset every few months. Those are fine for socializing or Bible literacy. But they don't drive transformation. Without an intentional discipleship process, meeting in a circle means nothing. Research from the Barna Group's State of Discipleship report confirms what most of us sense: the majority of Christians say their church offers programs, but fewer than one in five feel they're being personally discipled.
Many churches don't actually want a pastor for their groups. They want a Park and Rec Director to plan hangouts, or a Professor to deliver lectures. Real discipleship lives in the overlap of deep relationships and serious theology.
A healthy discipleship group needs three things working together:
Content — Engaging with the Word of God. Community — Building trust and real fellowship. Contribution — Serving others and mobilizing for the Gospel.
Miss one, and the group limps. Hit all three, and people start becoming who God made them to be (Ephesians 2:10).
You Have to Earn the Right to Speak Hard Truths
One of the biggest mistakes I see: leaders who come in swinging "spiritual 2x4s" before they've built any trust.
You have to know if Andrew is on a mountaintop and needs celebration — or in a valley and needs someone to sit with him. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.
That relational work — the "under the hood" stuff — is what makes the content actually stick. It's the foundation of any real discipleship training.
The Four Qualities of a Discipleship Culture Nobody Talks About
We've surveyed over 10,000 group leaders and members with one question: What's one quality of a healthy group?
Almost everyone says the same things — transparency, humility, love, connection. Those matter. But there are four qualities that come up less than 1% of the time. And they're the ones that define a discipling culture.
1. Grace
Acceptance says, "I'm okay with you being here." Grace says, "I love you and have favor toward you — and you've done nothing to earn it."
There's a reason Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned against "cheap grace" in The Cost of Discipleship — the kind that asks nothing and changes nothing. In a healthy group, grace is the soil. Not soft. Alive.
2. Repentance
Confession is airing your dirty laundry. Repentance is actually changing. A healthy group empowers people to turn away from sin and toward Jesus.
3. Admonition
Almost nobody thinks of a small group as a place for correction. But if we aren't willing to sharpen each other and call out drift, we're not doing biblical community. As Jared Musgrove and Justin Alfriend put it in their work on discipleship culture at The Village Church, a group that avoids conflict avoids growth.
4. Growth
Here's the strange part: group members rarely list "growth" as a quality of a healthy group. Pastors see groups as a place to thrive. Members see them as a place to survive. That disconnect is a problem.
As a leader, you set the expectation. Define the purpose together. When you do, even your most "mature" people will realize they need the group. That's when the snowball effect starts.
What You Model Is What They'll Do
You have more influence than you think. What you facilitate during your gathering is exactly what people will replicate during the week — in their homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods. This is why the discipleship programs that work are the ones built on modeling, not lecturing.
Stop Talking About Prayer. Start Praying.
I'm going to step on some toes. Too many groups spend 30 minutes talking about prayer requests and three minutes actually praying.
Try this: skip the list. Say, "We're going to pray whatever's on our hearts, right now, directly to God." It'll feel awkward the first time. That's fine. You're building a culture of actually talking to God instead of talking about Him.
Make Scripture the Main Course — Not the Video Curriculum
Resources like Right Now Media are great. But they're dessert, not the main course. If your group spends all its time listening to a professional teacher's interpretation, people miss out on their own encounter with God's Word.
Use a Discovery Bible Study approach. Read a passage — say, Mark 1:16–20 — and ask three questions:
What stands out to you?
What does this tell us about Jesus?
How do we obey this?
Don't fear the awkward silence. The Holy Spirit works well in quiet rooms. Your job isn't to lecture. It's to facilitate discovery. When people voice truth themselves, it connects with their soul in a way a discipleship curriculum alone never will.
Consider adding a simple graphic here showing the three Discovery Bible Study questions as a shareable visual — ideal for group leaders to screenshot and use.
The Lifecycle of a Discipleship Group
Key takeaway: Groups aren't meant to last forever. A two-to-three-year arc with clear stages — forming, norming, storming, performing, adjourning — keeps the mission moving toward multiplication.
A healthy group should last about two to three years. But by the 9-to-12-month mark, you should be mobilizing people into service. Lifeway Research found that groups actively engaged in service together reported significantly higher satisfaction and spiritual growth than those focused on study alone. Here's the natural progression:
Forming (Months 1–6) — Feeling out the room. Building basic trust.
Norming — Getting comfortable. Sharing more deeply.
Storming — People get comfortable enough to step on each other's toes. This is where the real work happens.
Performing — Moving into mission and service together.
Adjourning — Ending the group intentionally so people can multiply.
Close the Door to Go Deeper
Sometimes you need to close your group to new members for a season. If you're always adding people, you're constantly resetting trust. You can't have deep confession and correction with someone you met five minutes ago.
This isn't about being a clique. A clique is a cruise ship of consumerism. Your group is an aircraft carrier — you come in to refuel and get repaired so you can go back out on mission.
Deployment Is the Goal
Every group should end with multiplication. As you approach the sunset of your group, lead your people through a deployment process:
Have them make a list of names — people they want to disciple.
Help them identify their sphere. Workplace? Kid's baseball team? Neighborhood?
Pick a simple starting point. The Gospel of John. A focused discipleship curriculum.
We don't want people hunting for the next Bible study to consume. We want them to realize they're equipped to lead. That's the heart of what we do at Ordinary Movement — whether it's men's discipleship or women's discipleship.
You Don't Need a Seminary Degree to Start Discipleship Training
The number one reason people don't lead a group is they don't feel equipped. But if you're waiting until you feel like a professor, you'll never start.
God isn't looking for lecturers. He's looking for people who've been with Jesus.
"When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus." — Acts 4:13
You don't need all the answers. You need to be someone who's been with Him. Set healthy expectations. Rely on the Holy Spirit as the primary discipler. And watch what He does through your ordinary faithfulness.
About the Author: Adam Ehrman is the founder of buildgroups.net and a discipleship consultant who has trained thousands of church leaders and small group facilitators nationwide. A bivocational church planter with years of hands-on experience among Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist communities, Adam brings a practitioner's perspective to the Christ-centered work of making disciples through groups. His mentors include Pastor Jeff Scott (Lynchburg, VA), and his approach has been shaped by leaders like Jared Musgrove and Justin Alfriend at The Village Church.
