There was a faithful pastor who every morning, six days a week got up early in the morning and spent time in prayer and reading God’s word before heading to work on the building site.

He spent long days digging the massive foundations for his big vision knowing he has a BIG God. He spent long days putting brick upon brick with cement in the middle in order to build the building bigger knowing it was what God was calling him to do. He spent many hours praying for workers, not only to be saved but to help in the building work. God was faithful and answered his prayers, sending many people to the building site. When they got there, one or two of them took off their suits and ties and got into work clothes and started helping the faithful pastor to put bricks on the building and making up new cement and carrying in new bricks.

But most of the people God sent, didn’t really know what to do and seeing that everyone else was doing so, they all congregated around the outside of the protective fence of the building site and with their new found faith, prayed for and encouraged the few that were working inside. They sang worship songs from the outside and raised up holy hands but still the pastor and his co-workers were very few and the big vision for the building (knowing the BIG God we have) was coming on very slowly and in fact was a LONG way off completion.

The pastor was becoming discouraged. Then one day, someone gave the pastor an idea about how to get all the people from outside the fence, inside, and helping with the building work. He immediately appointed someone to oversee this idea. That person started to train a small group of people who could in turn take groups of the people from outside the fence and train them. Once the people had been trained they automatically started venturing onto the building site and started laying bricks with some of their time while also taking small groups of people from across the fence and beyond to train them to come onto the building site as well.

Before the pastor knew it he had 30 people helping him on the building site whereas for years it had only been 3-5 people. Once the small groups leaders trained new people and they came onto the building site, they were able to train other people who could train other people (because in fact, building the building is very easy with God’s help). After one year there were 100 people side by side with the faithful pastor building the building and the number was growing every month. Now when the pastor got tired or sick he was immediately helped out by countless others, before he had been too busy to be ill.

Now the building is coming along very nicely indeed and all the faithful pastor could think was, why on earth didn’t someone tell me about this small group system before!!!!