How one church connected an entire congregation through small groups.
Allen White
"Connect 100 percent of your congregation into small groups."
Now that's a sales pitch.
Our church was stuck: A small number of our adults—only 30 percent—were involved in small groups. After seven long years of slugging it out the old fashioned way—raising up apprentices to birth new groups—we were headed nowhere. Only one leader started a new group. Connecting everyone in a group ...
Small groups can be a great place for learning lessons about life.
by Brett Eastman
Two years ago when I met with my new small group for the first time, I was so reluctant. I didn't know if I could ever find the sense of belonging and spiritual family I had enjoyed with my previous group. But they welcomed my wife and me into their lives with arms wide open, and we soon became family. This group has not replaced my other group (nothing ever will), but it has become another circle ...
Groups should consider whether their requests line up with what God is doing.
by Wayne Jacobsen
You'd have thought I'd just cussed by the way the mouths around the table soundlessly fell open. And all I'd said was "I don't think I can pray that for you."
The woman who had just asked us to pray was perhaps the most shocked of all.
My home group had just finished eating dinner, and we were sharing prayer requests. With obvious distress, Kris had told of her daughter's plan to move in with a boyfriend ...
One of the great stories in the Bible about community involves a paralyzed man and the friends who brought him to Jesus (Mark 2:1-8).
Imagine what life was like for a paralytic in the ancient world. This man's whole life is lived on a mat three feet wide and six feet long. Someone has to feed him, carry him, clothe him, move him to keep him from being covered with bedsores, clean him when he soils ...
A small group's love for two skeptics leads them to Christ.
by Life Together
Two years ago our teaching pastor, Ted, began to meet with a couple with considerable intellectual reservations about Christianity. They agreed to read some Christian apologetics if Ted agreed to read their books. While they read Letters from a Skeptic, Ted read Stephen Hawking's latest, A Brief History of Time.
...
Then this past fall we launched a new six-week small group study: "A Taste of Community." ...
Integrate your relationships to make them more effective.
by Randy Frazee
Lifestyles today make integrated and interdependent relationships hard to create and maintain. The absence of this interdependence makes us hunger for community. Most of us manage "linear relationships."
Randy Frazee, author of The Connecting Church, describes linear relationships as running "from one relational unit to another. As you exit one world and enter another, there may be some mention of ...
The desire for genuine community is the strongest motivator for small group involvement, but you have to be willing to commit.
by Dan Lentz
It seems like small groups are popping up everywhere. And churches that have a recognized small group ministry are becoming more the standard than the exception. Why is that? What's going on?
As director of smallgroups.com, I have a lot of contact with churches that are neck deep in the small group movement. My job revolves around helping pastors and small group leaders keep their small groups active ...
Get tips on how to lead an effective small group even if you don't think you're ready.
by Brett Eastman
Some of you have been leading groups for six years—hosting is old hat for you. Some of you have been doing it for six months and may be looking to become a better host. And some of you just completed your first six-week study and, frankly, are still recovering from the experience.
Some of you may have stories like mine: John, who was a leader of a college group I was in for six weeks, tapped me ...
How one person learned that sharing his faith was about relationships.
by Life Together
Trevor grew up in a Christian home, attending church every Sunday. He knew the gospel, and he believed it. But when it came to sharing his faith with others, he never really gave it much thought. In his mind, explaining the gospel to someone who wasn't a believer was something only "super spiritual" people did.
When Trevor arrived at college, he met guys who were really serious about their relationship ...
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