My experience has been that churches that rely on small groups to be their sole source of connection and in-depth Bible teaching end up disconnected and largely biblically ignorant. At least that is the case here in the United States. In other countries that have a different sense of community and individuality, they may actually flourish under those same conditions.

While it’s definitely possible to be on the outside looking in even in a small church, it’s far less likely, all other things being equal.

Communication and connection are both two-way streets. You can’t have communication in a church where most people can’t even get a meeting with senior leadership. And you can’t truly connect when the sheer numbers of people overwhelm the 500-person personal interaction limitation in each of us. Plus, while some responsibility lies within the individual, I believe the greater responsibility lies within the church and its leadership. Ideally, if you walk into someone else’s turf, THEY are the ones who have the obligation to connect and communicate with you. That’s how the Church must work. The opposite is typically a dictatorship or communist-style state, where the individual is nothing and the collective state holds all the cards. In that case, the individual must plead his case because the state doesn’t recognize him unless he speaks out. And even then, what he has to say is usually regarded as trivial because he is not usually part of the system. (Having been in many megachurches, I can attest that most follow the dictatorship model no matter how they “democratically” they structure their hierarchies. Of course, YMMV.)

Some of those mega-churches that beam satellite uplinks actually require members to attend local weekly small group meetings to get connected. I attended Andy Stanley’s mega-church in Atlanta when I was there over the weekend on business. I was actually impressed. They have two satellite churches as well as the main church in Alpharetta, GA. They have around 22,000 attendees per week. Andy Stanley always presents a biblically-based message, and you are encouraged (possibly required) to attend a local small group if you join as a member. People who want to grow, can. I have also attended small churches (under 200 members) where a person can still get lost “in the crowd”.

Communication and connection is still the responsibility of the individual whether technology is involved or not.