Small(er) Groups

Chuck on September 14th, 2009

I have recently been thinking through philosophies of ministry – particularly when it comes to getting people engaged in small(er) groups.  I obviously have developed my own thoughts over time and certainly have reasons why I do what I do, and don’t do what we don’t do.

Picture 4The reality is most of our ministries have some type of small(er) group gatherings.  We know people desire to connect at deeper levels with others.  We also know that this is an avenue by which we can speak more directly to issues.

So now that the school year is beginning, and likely your small(er) groups side of things will be getting off the ground sooner than later, I thought we’d do a series this week on this issue.  My hope is that all of us can glean off one another approaches and ideas.  Maybe we’ll even toss our previous ways out, for what we might think is a better way of going about small(er) groups after reading someone’s comments.

So, to BEGIN the discussion here are a few questions…

  • Do you have small groups?  If so, how are they organized?  Adult leader, peer leader?
  • Do your groups study a book of the bible or go through another book?  Both?
  • Do you have both male and female groups, or include co-ed?
  • If co-ed, what are some of the difficulties you see/have with that?  What are some great things you see in it?
  • How do you find leaders?  Do you have any kind of formal training for them?
  • Do your groups go for a certain amount of time (i.e. semester or school year)?  Campus ministries likely have some type of time frame on them, while church-based leaders may have a variety of ways they go about it.  Either way, what are the benefits of the way you go about it?  

In my ministry I have answered all the above questions as I assume most of us have to some degree or another – or at least are beginning to.  But I’m always up for learning as I hope you are…

Related posts:

  1. Small(er) Groups [2]: 5 Concerns
  2. Small(er) Groups [3]
  3. Fall Retreat(s)
  4. New Article
  5. Top 5 Posts of 2009

Share Discuss (16)

Bob Wriedt at 1:08pm September 14

We don’t really have small groups, because our college ministry is a smaller group of 12-15, so trying to get them into groups of 6-8 would be redundant. I’m hopeful that one day we’ll be able to have different levels of formation experiences (big group, small group), but right now it doesn’t fit for us.

Adam Roberson at 8:06am September 30

At Wiregrass Church, our Middle School and High School are separate environments. Xtreme is 6th – 9th grade. We do a large group production with them on Sunday morning. We start in small groups with a connection activity, then large group considers a band, host that plays games with the students, communicator, and video elements, then the students will end with small group discussion.

We decided to put 9th grade in Xtreme to make a better transition for 9th grade students. Because our Inside Out (High school) is centered around small groups. We do coed small groups during the week on Monday nights. This has been a huge WIN for our high School students. We don’t do a service for them, because when we were, it seemed too much like a competing system for us. We Challenge them to invest n Invite to our Sunday morning service, and then get involved with Student Impact by serving in our other environments on Sunday morning.

Our Monday night Inside Out groups are coed and are led by adult leaders. We start out by eating dinner around 6:00 for about 30 minutes. The students pay for the dinner by bringing $2 a week that pays for the food the following Monday night. Around 6:30 we get everyone together to go over announcements, then we watch a video or I will give a live talk. After the video, small groups will happen gender based. To give the students an opportunity to bring their friends to group, on the first Monday night of the month we will do a Bridge Gathering (an event to get the students to bring their non-churched friends) hopefully to help the students get connected to where they will want to come back to group the following week.

Going back to 9th grade. To help better their transition into High School, they are allowed to do Xtreme and Inside Out. So if you have a student who is not ready to go to just a small group environment and loves the games in Xtreme they can continue to go to Xtreme. But if they are past the messy games in Xtreme, they can go to Inside Out. Or they can do both and get the best of both worlds.

One of the coolest small group Outings that the students will not stop talking about was our 6th grade girls small group got their group together to serve at the local Humane Society. What was really cool about it, was that churches usually don’t help the Humane Society that much and the workers were amazed when the girls told them they were from a church. They washed dogs, cleaned windows, etc. They loved it.

Another thing we decided to do concerning small groups was change the way we do Walking Wisely Weekend (Our spring weekend retreat). Every event that we do (3 big events a year), each of them has to do with one of the three vital relationships: Intimacy with God, Community with Insiders, and Influence with Outsiders. Since Walking Wisely has to do with Community, we decided to make everything about the small group for that weekend. We didn’t do any production sessions, and we decide to make everything about the small group.

We did have curriculum for each group over the course of the weekend, but we wanted them to do everything together from getting their groceries together all the way to playing games together. We went ahead a pre-arranged where the groups would be staying. Some were at the beach in a condo, some were at a Lake house, some were in cabins, some were in host homes in Dothan, Alabama. The cost was $35 and all the money went into the pot for that group. So if the group had 20 students they would get $700. And they would have $700 for their food, activities, etc. It was the best event we have ever done. They built Community like we have never seen them do before. It was awesome!

The most effective training we have done was on the 5 Essentials to being a great small group leader! We laid out the 5 Essentials and we continue to put those things in front of them week in and week out. We do a 10B4 meeting with all the small group leaders before our environments start each week. Each week we share stories and wins, then I will talk about one of those essentials!

For those of you who dont know the essentials, they are:

1) Fill up First (Working on your own relationship with God)
2) Time on their turf (Go to games, activities, etc)
3) Partnering with the Family
4) Keeping it Real (Being comfortable in who you are, Don’t be fake)
5) Realizing it’s a Journey (Building relational bridges strong enough to bear the weight of truth)

They have been able to wrap their minds around these essentials. And our small group leaders are doing them!

As far as recruiting new leaders, we encourage every leader to replace themselves by going to find their friends parents, etc. They are our best recruiters!

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions, and I would love to hear what you guys are doing!

Adam Roberson
Wiregrass Church
http://www.wiregrasschurch.org