Churches all over the nation are recognizing a need to get small groups going in their congregations. As people sense a desire for deeper relationships within the body of Christ, interest in the movement is rising. But getting small groups started in a church and keeping the groups healthy are two completely different jobs.
As head of Touch Outreach Ministry, my job is to look at churches that have ...
Okay, so that may seem obvious, but one of the critical roles of a small group leader is to shepherd the people in your group. Does the word "shepherd" scare you? It shouldn't. God has provided you with the gifts and abilities to care for those in your small group.
In a healthy small group, the members, as well as the leaders, must be "healthy." In fact, I would ...
Have realistic expectations about what small groups will be like.
by David A. Womack
Note: This article has been excerpted from the SmallGroups.com training tool called Healthy Small Groups.
After more than three decades of promotion in books, magazines, seminars, and classes, the fact about small groups is that not enough churches can testify to success. Among the reasons are:
1. We have few role models, at least in our own culture.
2. The literature on the subject has promoted the ...
How to make prayer a central part of small groups.
by Life Together
Click here to download free job description for Small Group Leaders (Word document).
One of the most powerful aspects of small groups is the opportunity to offer prayer requests, to pray together, and then to see how God follows through on those prayers. It's amazing to see how God works over three months or six months or a year. Prayers gets answered, situations change, hearts change—your group ...
The initiative of some church members led to amazing results.
by Kenneth L. Bemis
As a pastor, I know the feelings of frustration and helplessness that surround the counselor who attempts to assist the chemical-dependent person toward sobriety. Counseling the alcoholic is a time-consuming and often discouraging project.
I groped about for a solution to my dilemma as a busy pastor with an increasing number of alcoholics and their families to counsel. I attended seminars and read ...
We wrapped up our small group as we usually do, with a time for everyone to share their prayer requests. After we closed in prayer, Tom approached my husband and me. He was considering dropping out of our small group because he felt overwhelmed by the prayer requests. It seemed to him as though everyone's problems were insurmountable, and although we'd been praying for the same things for months, ...
Use well thought out questions to make a lasting impact.
by Dave Arch
"Do you not yet understand?" —Jesus (Matthew 8:21)
Whether in a public gathering, a confrontation with his enemies, or a private conversation with his closest friends, Jesus consistently used questions to produce change and growth. In the eighth chapter of the Book of Mark, he used eight types of questions.
1. Answering with Questions (Mark 8:5)
Rather than merely answering a question (and thereby ...
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." ...
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