Community Groups

For those of you who have moved away from here, I'll update you on a change we have made in our church. For quite a while, our Sunday evening service has not been very well attended, averaging about 20 people. Our pastor noticed that the once a month Sunday FOLD groups were getting about that many people in each one, and thought it would be a better use of time and would reach more people if we just made every Sunday evening a FOLD night. It was a hard decision to stop the evening service, but the church elders agreed to try it for a while. We started doing this in January, and all groups are watching a DVD series called The Truth Project, which is put together by Focus on the Family, and teaches on having a Biblical worldview. There are 12 different sessions, covering topics like what is truth? Who is man? Who is God, science, history, sociology, etc. (that's as far as we've gone, so I don't remember the rest). They are well done and a lot of information is covered in each one. Afterward we have a time of discussion. Our group has really enjoyed it, and there are people from Matthew's work who are watching it.
Our pastor also wanted to change the name of our groups from F.O.L.D. (Fellowship Of Local Disciples, which is where the church breaks into smaller groups and meets in homes) to something that would be a little more recognisable to new people joining our church. He said for a long time he didn't know what FOLD meant, until someone explained it. So they came up with Community Groups as the new name, since many churches in other places use the name community group or small group for their Sunday night home meetings.
I think it's been an ok change, especially for families with young children to be involved. I think what people miss is the testimony time. It can happen in the groups, but then you don't get to hear from other people in the church, only those in your group.