Due to the pandemic some of our ministries are not meeting as large groups like they were before. We have had to get creative and see different ways of doing ministry. One of these ways has been to meet in small groups (one to three) of students at a time. I have found common ground with one of my students through our mutual love for hip hop. He loves secular hip hop. I love Christian hip hop. I have been able to share songs and artists with him to consider listening to godly influences instead of the worldly artists. I never would have been able to do this kind of discipleship through our large group program!
In network world it was getting frustrating for me to gather a larger group of youth leaders in our network, even before the pandemic. I decided to think smaller: to just meet with one youth leader at a time. I recently met with one youth leader in my network for lunch. We had a great time catching up with each other's personal lives. (I had no idea his wife was a highly sought after dance choreographer). We also shared ministry ideas for this pandemic organically. No program. No agenda. Just relationship. That's the way it was meant to be anyway, right?
Jesus didn't fill big stadiums (although large crowds did come to him occasionally) or promote large programs or even have a giant budget. Some of his best ministry happened in small groups. In fact, in one particular case it happened with only one person. You remember Jesus' interaction with the woman at the well in John 4. His disciples were all gone. He, a Jewish man, finds himself in a situation where he is alone with a Samaritan woman. (So many excuses could have been made for him not to interact with this woman). Because Jesus was willing to cast off all of the culture's reasons to not meet with her big things happened. "Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him...And because of his words many more became believers (vs. 39,41).
I don't know if any of the one-on-one relationships that I have had in youth ministry will ever amount to anything like Jesus', but I do know that real discipleship is happening. We've shared life with each other. Truth in love has been expressed. The rest is up to God.