By Lane Severson

I led the worst small group ever. I’m saying that as an indictment of my leadership and not as a criticism of the group. But they didn’t exactly do me any favors. The idea for the small group was simple: give 20 somethings a place to gather together, study scripture, worship and pray. It seems simple enough. But in reality I was totally against the idea that people in their twenties needed a unique group. Why couldn’t they just do this at church like normal adults? That’s when I had my first stroke of genius: make a church wide announcement that it was a group for 20 somethings, but invite anyone else who was interested to also show up. That way, I figured, the group might have a little perspective and diversity.

My next stroke of genius was that even though I was leading the group I wasn’t really going to lead it. I didn’t want to stick around very long. Honestly, I was hoping I could get the group started and leave as soon as possible. From day one I figured that if I didn’t do the teaching maybe people wouldn’t think I was leading it. So I got a guy I didn’t know very well to do the teachings. I had never actually heard him teach, but I figured it’d be fine. Did I mention I didn’t understand why the group needed to exist in the first place?

The turnout was fantastic for our first night. Basically everyone in the church in their twenties showed up. But, everything after that was bad. I forgot to mention that I couldn’t find anyone to lead worship so I just brought my acoustic guitar and did it myself. My musical talents are poor at best. Also, I decided to just sing several songs that I had written and no one else knew. I closed my eyes and powered through for about twenty or thirty minutes. After that soul stirring exercise in public humiliation, my “co-leader” gave a teaching which we both agreed was not exactly a crowd pleaser. We capped the night off with some prayer that was dominated by a young autistic guy in the church who was prone towards hyperbole and paranoia.

People vote with their feet and the second week we had lost a vast majority of the 20 somethings. In their stead we had what you might call the “misfits”. A recently, maybe-clean, drug-addict, a conspiracy theorist, an older couple who just quit drinking, and the guy who wears cargo shorts with a dress shirt and sports jacket and despite being in his fifties has never had a driver’s license. This created a snowball effect of strange. Within a month these were the only people in our group. I’m not saying Jesus doesn’t love these people. I’m just saying it is a little hard to lead an ice breaker on what the group’s favorite pop songs are when one member insists that, “the Beatles were all about being happy to kill you.” If that wasn’t weird enough he was interrupted by another guy who asks if we want to keep some of his guns in the church for when society starts to fall apart. You know, to protect the women and children.

Looking back on it, if that had been the worst we would have gotten off easy. These guys were a little strange. But I never felt like they were going to hurt anyone. And to be honest, when the formerly alcoholic couple stopped coming I thought I had hit bottom. And asking my Dad, the pastor, to remove the autistic guy in order to allow for productive conversation was yet another low point. But none of that was the worst.

One night, after about two months of meeting, one of our members asked us if we would help him with an intervention he was planning for his co-worker. He explained that he worked nights at a hotel with a young girl in her late teens – he was easily in his sixties. He told us that no one really understood this girl the way he did. They had a special bond. They were, in fact, in love. The intervention, he explained was to help her realize what a jerk her boyfriend was. When we pushed back suggesting that maybe he was just trying to use us to get rid of the boyfriend so that she would see him as a potential replacement he became indignant. He claimed he just wanted her to have some good influences in her life. Furthermore, once she joined our group, which she obviously would, he would stop attending. He didn’t want to be more involved. He wanted to be less involved. But, he continued to tell us that they had a love that no one really understood. He insisted it wasn’t a sexual thing. When we asked what kind of thing it was, things got more heated. On the verge of tears he insisted that we come out to his car to see his big plan that he’d been working on for a long time.

We all all walked into the parking lot with him. I was secretly hoping he wasn’t going to shoot us or something. As it turns out, the “great plan” was a poorly constructed poster board card that a 6th grader would be ashamed to receive for valentines. That was the plan. Give her the poster. We told him we’d think about it and he left in a huff.

Later that night my co-leader wrote my dad, the pastor, an e-mail that he was afraid for the safety of this girl. He said he didn’t want to see our group member end up on the evening news for doing something stupid. I felt the same way. Nothing happened. But we all felt like we were on the edge that night. I can’t remember if we ever officially met again or if we just disbanded after that.

The funny thing about it all is that I spent a good amount of time after that wondering what had gone wrong. I honestly couldn’t put together that not having a plan and not wanting to actually lead this group weren’t going to yield great results. But it is pretty obvious. You can’t subvert the group you are supposed to be founding. What I came to learn is that plenty of other people will be lining up to destroy what you are trying to create. You don’t need to help them.