Churches invest in small groups because we believe discipleship requires more than sitting in rows on Sunday mornings. We want believers to open their lives to one another, wrestling with truth together, and learning to carry faith into the ordinary places where it must be lived. Yet a small-group ministry can grow in participation and community while quietly losing the very thing capable of producing lasting formation. When Scripture moves from the center of the gathering toward the edges, conversation may remain meaningful and relationships may continue deepening, but discipleship eventually begins to thin.
This is what makes the problem difficult to recognize. Biblical literacy rarely disappears through open rejection of the Bible. More often, it fades through displacement. A passage is read and almost immediately followed by a question about how everyone feels about it. Someone shares a personal experience, another connects it to something happening in culture, and another remembers something heard in a sermon or podcast. Before long, the group has enjoyed a thoughtful Christian conversation while spending surprisingly little time understanding the passage intended to guide it. Nothing necessarily feels wrong. People leave encouraged and relationships deepen, yet repeated over time, the pattern can produce believers increasingly comfortable talking about faith while becoming less confident engaging Scripture for themselves.
The issue is not conversation or personal experience. Both belong within healthy Christian community. The problem begins when experience moves from something Scripture interprets to the lens through which Scripture must be interpreted. The question slowly changes from “What has God spoken?” toward “What does this mean to me?” One begins with revelation and moves toward response. The other can begin with ourselves and quietly ask God’s Word to fit within assumptions already occupying the room.
Something will always occupy the center. When Scripture no longer carries governing authority, curriculum, a gifted leader, personal experience, or the most confident personality can begin determining where conversation goes and which conclusions feel persuasive. Even good Christian books, sermons, podcasts, and study materials can become primary voices while Scripture functions mainly as supporting material. None of these things are inherently harmful. The question is whether they continue directing people toward Scripture or slowly begin standing in its place.
This deserves particular attention from pastors because normal measurements of small-group health may not reveal the drift. Attendance can remain strong, relationships can deepen, and newcomers can feel welcomed while biblical confidence quietly weakens. Nor should responsibility fall primarily upon volunteer leaders, who naturally emphasize what their churches have taught them to value. If success is measured largely through participation, connection, and retention, those priorities will shape the room. The deeper question is whether people are becoming more capable of reading Scripture carefully, understanding it within context, and responding with obedience. A group can become remarkably effective at helping people belong without becoming equally intentional about helping them live beneath the authority of Scripture.
Perhaps this is where we need to recover the distinctive purpose of Christian community. A small group is not merely a book club with prayer added at the end, nor simply a support group where Christians process life together. Christian community includes conversation and care, but it exists for something deeper. Believers gather in shared submission to Someone beyond themselves. When Scripture remains central, community becomes more than companionship. It becomes an environment where believers learn together to hear God’s Word and bring their lives beneath it.
This does not require turning living rooms into classrooms or expecting volunteer leaders to become theologians. Small groups offer something uniquely valuable precisely because people can engage the Bible together. Someone notices what another person missed, a question surfaces others were hesitant to ask, or a difficult teaching becomes personal as its implications settle over the room. Faithful leadership does not require manufacturing these moments or providing every answer. It requires enough patience to remain with the text, enough humility to allow silence, and enough steadiness to keep returning the conversation to Scripture. The pattern is simple: Scripture leads, leaders steward, and the Spirit forms.
This order matters because biblical literacy was never intended to end with information. Jesus confronted people who possessed extraordinary familiarity with Scripture and still failed to recognize the One standing before them. In John 5, He told those searching the Scriptures for eternal life the very Scriptures they studied testified about Him, and still they refused to come to Him for life. Their problem was not lack of exposure. They knew and valued the text. Somehow, knowledge had become disconnected from the One to whom the Word was pointing.
This keeps our concern for biblical literacy properly centered. We want Christians to understand Scripture because through Scripture they come to know the God who has spoken, and mature believers should grow increasingly capable of engaging His Word without remaining permanently dependent upon someone else to tell them what it says. Yet knowledge is never the destination. Scripture leads us toward Christ and into lives increasingly shaped by Him. Biblical literacy is necessary, Christ is its center, and transformation is its intended fruit. Without this relationship, Bible study can become religious education rather than formation, while discipleship detached from Scripture becomes increasingly vulnerable to a Jesus shaped by assumption rather than revelation.
This is why small groups carry such extraordinary potential within the local church. A pastor can faithfully proclaim Scripture on Sunday morning, but a small group creates another kind of space. Truth heard in rows can be opened, examined, questioned, wrestled with, and carried toward obedience in circles. People can admit they do not understand something. Assumptions can surface. A difficult command can remain in the room long enough to become uncomfortable. What was heard corporately begins moving into the ordinary places where discipleship is lived. Yet the relational strength making this possible also creates the vulnerability: if Scripture’s place is not intentionally protected, community can quietly become the destination rather than the environment in which formation occurs.
Perhaps, then, some of the most important questions pastors ask about small groups cannot be answered by attendance reports. After someone has spent a year in one of our groups, are they more confident opening Scripture than when they began? When opinions conflict, have they learned to return to the text rather than the strongest voice in the room? And is their growing understanding of Scripture leading toward obedience and a clearer vision of Christ?
These outcomes develop slowly and are difficult to measure, but over time believers who consistently gather around Scripture develop different instincts. They ask better questions, become less dependent upon the strongest voice in the room, and learn where authority rests. Churches do not need to choose between meaningful community and biblical depth. Relationships create the trust in which difficult questions can be asked and obedience encouraged, while Scripture gives those relationships a center greater than chemistry, personality, or shared experience.
The danger, then, is not necessarily a church where the Bible has disappeared. The more subtle danger is a church where the Bible remains everywhere while its authority slowly moves toward the edges. Restoring biblical literacy requires more than putting Scripture back into the room. It requires allowing Scripture to lead again, so small groups become places where God’s Word steadily reshapes His people, knowledge moves toward obedience, and ordinary believers learn together to see Christ more clearly.
About the Author
Dan Ellsworth has spent more than 30 years serving as a lay leader in small-group Bible studies, studying Scripture alongside other believers and seeing firsthand both the challenges and possibilities of biblical discipleship. His professional career has included decades in animal health and agriculture, and he remains connected to agriculture as a small cattle producer in eastern Colorado. In recent years, he began putting into writing many of the questions and convictions shaped through decades of studying Scripture with others. His Scripture-centered studies focus on biblical literacy, discipleship, and helping Christians see Jesus more clearly through God’s Word. His books and small-group resources are available at https://getbacktothebible.com
