jeff gibson

My Father of the Bride cup

This one's a keeper...

Why I Stopped Recruiting Leaders #smallgroups

Over the years whenever I've gotten together with other small group ministry leaders the conversation always seems to come back to "how do you get more leaders?"

Two years ago we began holding connection events where we would utilize mentor-coaches to launch a "leaderless" group with nothing more than a night of the week and a host.  The mentor-coach would be with the group for four weeks, the result of which would be strangers that he that had learned how to be a group.

They will have ownership of the group.

One great thing about this method is that the time that you've spent recruiting is now reusable as the mentor-coach will help another group get started.

The other great benefit I see is that leaders emerge that my myopic vision cannot see.  I say no for a lot of people who might otherwise be leaders.  "They're too busy", "they won't do it", "he or she doesn't look like a leader".  

Is it foolproof? No. Do groups fail? Yes. Do leaders fail?  Yes.

But at least they have the chance to try.

What I Did Hear at the Right Now Conference #RN11 #smallgroups

My last post talked about how the two things that groups ministry stress over, getting people into groups and finding leaders to lead groups, was not present at the Right Now Conference in Dallas last week.

What was present was two themes that I took away from Dallas:

Mission.  Our groups need to have a culture that has a bias toward action, where if our groups are not serving someone, then they feel a hole in their group and need to fill it with action.  We want our groups to be about community and discipleship, which both can be fulfilled through serving others.  In the not too distant past, we equated time at church with discipleship, but being a disciple of Jesus is found in the going and the doing, not just in the being.

The mission has to heart driven. Too much of discipleship becomes a check off sheet or a to-do list. So we have to manage the tension between giving the groups too much instruction so that the satisfaction comes from completing the task and not setting in place key components that will guide the groups to a heart change that will result in a compulsion to be on mission.

We have to create a culture that leads to heart-driven mission.

Next Post: Why I Stopped Recruiting Leaders

Last Post: What I Didn’t Hear at the Right Now Conference #RN11

 

What I Didn’t Hear at the Right Now Conference #RN11

Last week I was able to spend some time at the Right Now Conference, which is heavily littered with Group Ministry nuggets.  Over the course of three days there were a couple of themes that I didn’t hear:

How to get more people in groups.  I looked at the program really hard and didn’t see any workshops with that title.  There weren’t any workshops on connection events or whether groups should be open or closed.  There was plenty of discussion about groups having a mission.  I heard the term “Missional Communities” a bazillion times, which has always been kind of buzz-wordy to me, but now I like it.    For some churches, Missional Communities is their group ministry.  In other churches, their church’s groups are intended to move to a missional focus.

How to find leaders.  There were no workshops that were concerned with teaching you how to find leaders for your groups ministry.  There were, however, several sessions on developing a leadership culture and having a leadership strategy.  There was talk on having disciple-making disciples and empowering everyone in your groups to be about discipleship, teaching them to feed themselves and to not have to depend upon a leader to impart Biblical knowledge.

 

Next: What I Did Hear at the Right Now Conference