My Small group Journey

Ask and You Will Receive

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:48:08 -0600

We’ve seen God do lots of cool stuff in our small group lately. Someone’s severely damaged knee went from extreme pain to pain free, another person’s leg was lengthened 1 1/2 inches when they went forward for prayer on Sunday, a friend on our group’s blessing list has come to Christ and is actively involved in the church.

Jesus said simply, “Ask and you will receive.” Praying is one of the most important jobs of a small group leader. How do you cultivate prayer in your life and in your group?

Here are some small things we do to keep connecting with Jesus’ presence and power.

1. Vicki and I have written the names of all of our small group members on 3x5 cards that we often pray through together in the mornings before I leave for work. We pray for five or six cards each time and have specific things written down that we are asking God for.

1. I have a list of the guys on a note on my iPod Touch that I use to pray through once a week or so.

1. We get to bed on time so that we can get up early and take daily time with Jesus at the start of the day.

1. We use a “Blessing List” in our small group each week to pray for our friends that need God. Right now our group has two blessing lists that we use weekly. The men have a list and the women have a list. (See the early blog entry “Pray Weekly, Eat Monthly” if you want to learn more about using a blessing list.)

1. We try to keep our study and worship time relatively short so that we have ample time for ministry time (and snacks!).

That’s it. Nothing profound. But we’ve found we need to keep asking if we are going to keep receiving. What are you doing to keep bringing your small group, its members and friends to Jesus in prayer?

How to Do a Ministry Night

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:32:39 -0500

Vicki and I like to mix up how we do small group meetings, especially in the summer. Most weeks we follow our standard format, the 5 W’s—Welcome (an Icebreaker or Opening Question), Worship, Witness (briefly praying for friends that need God), Word (Bible study), Wind (prayer & ministry), and of course snacks. (I know most of our Vineyard small groups do worship between the bible study and ministry times, but our group does worship upfront to include the children in our group before they are dismissed.) Besides the standard meeting format, we often do a party or fun night like a cookout, potluck, pool party or game night.

This month we are taking several weeks just to do ministry nights. Ministry nights are cool. Here’s how they work. After the usual upfront stuff—the icebreaker, worship and prayer for our friends that need God—we simply ask the question, “Who’s birthday is next?”

Then we put that person in a chair in the center of the room and tell them just to relax and enjoy being blessed and encouraged. (If the person is married, we also put their spouse in the middle.) I then encourage the other group members to get up and stand around that person, to listen to the Holy Spirit, to share any words, pictures or scriptures that are coming to their mind, or just to pray or bless that person with what is on their heart.

It’s fun and very encouraging and refreshing for the person or couple in the middle. After we have prayed for them and shared encouraging words with them for ten or fifteen minutes we ask them if there is one special thing they want pray for. Then we pray for that thing and invite the Holy Spirit to fill them anew with his joy and presence.

Then we say, “Who has the next birthday?” And we minister to that person or couple.

You can do a few people a night. Last night we prayed for two couples and one individual. Depending on how large your small group is, praying for everyone will take two or three meetings. If you have visitors, you simply let them choose whether they want to be included or not. I remember a first time guest saying on a ministry night, “I’m coming back next week, my birthday’s next!”

Last week just before we started this month’s ministry nights, I was a little nervous. I thought, if God doesn’t show up, this is going to be a flop! It seemed risky and scary. He did show up. It was wonderful. I have never had the Holy Spirit not show up for a ministry night. He seems to like these opportunities!

This is just one way to allow more time for ministry. What ideas or experiences do you want to share about doing extended ministry in small groups?

Pray Weekly, Eat Monthly

Sat, 30 May 2009 06:55:57 -0500

Our small group’s outreach is going exceptionally well right now and I thought I’d share with you what seems to be working. It’s pretty simple, really. We pray weekly for our friends that need God and we do a cookout or potluck each month.

Pray weekly: This is really very simple and doesn’t take long in our weekly small group meeting. Right before our Bible discussion, I hold up a laminated 11x17 inch piece of card stock that says “Blessing List” at the top. (Click on the word “laminated” if you’d like to download a PDF of the list. You can also pick up a laminated list at the Small Group table in the Vineyard Commons area.) We have asked each person to add one friend’s name to it—someone who needs Christ and who lives near by. After I pull the list out, we talk about it briefly and I briefly pray over the list and the people on it.

You might ask, “Isn’t the list awkward when you have guests?” Good question. That’s why it’s laminated. So as to not make someone feel put on the spot, we can easily erase someone’s name before pulling it out. Having it laminated also allows us move someone’s name up and down on it’s openness scale.

Several weeks ago a small group member brought on unsaved friend who’s name was not yet on the list. When my wife pulled out the list that evening, the person asked that we add her name to it and begin praying for her. Who doesn’t want blessing prayed over their life? I don’t know exactly where this guest is in her journey, she told the group, “I believe in God but I haven’t been baptized. You could add my name to the list.” We put it near the top on the scale.

The other thing you discover when you use a blessing list or do some other form of weekly prayer is that your members really do care about their unreached friends and family members and appreciate the chance to pray and work together to reach them.

Eat monthly: Everyone likes to eat and it’s very non-threatening for someone to come to a cookout. Last night we had a cookout and our host had invited a non-Christian friend. That person asked if she could bring some of her friends. She came and brought four other non-Christians with her! We perhaps set a record last night. There were 12 adult guests (plus a few of their children), most of them non-Christians.

So, that’s my simple advice. Pray weekly for your unbelieving friends and do something fun involving food each month.

What are your thoughts, questions and advice on small group outreach?

Slow Growth & Fast Growth

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:20:45 -0500

No two small groups are the same. We multiplied our small group last month leaving our hosts and intern to lead a Mahomet group while we launched a new group in our home in Champaign. Our new group is a lot different than the group we left.

We started the Mahomet group 1 1/2 years ago with three core couples. Several other individuals joined us and we had a nice sized group. But then one of the core couples moved to Italy and a several other people left the group. For a looooong time we had five people, if everyone showed up! The group grew very slowly. What do you do when you have a great group but it’s stuck or growing very slowly? For the answer to that question read my earlier blog entry Pray, Invite, Eat, Repeat. I mentioned in that blog entry that we invited 20 different people to a small group potluck one week, literally everyone we could think of. Only one came. The one person that came, however, came back and became our intern in time and is doing a great job of leading the growing group that we left in Mahomet.

Our experience with the new group has been very different. In contrast to our last group, it has grown very rapidly. It’s only met for a few times and already it’s larger than our last group was when it multiplied. We’ve hardly invited anyone but the group is still taking off. This week there were 15 adults, 2 teens and 9 children, even though a few families didn’t make it!

What do you do when your small group seems to be growing too fast? Two things are pivotal. First, you get everyone involved helping. Almost immediately we passed out the helpful Small Group Involvement Sign-up Sheet. Almost everyone signed up to help in some way. (Hint: collect them immediately after passing them out and having people fill them out. Do not let people take them home.) Now we are focusing more on how to involve people than on doing things ourselves. This takes more thought and advance planning but it quickly makes things easier.

Second, you start investing in future leaders. We could multiply the group now if we had a prepared intern but we don’t so I’m taking more time with key people and involving them increasingly in trying out different leadership responsibilities.

It feels a little crazy, overwhelming and exciting all at once when you experience rapid growth. It’s also puzzling because for the most part we are the same leaders doing the same things as when our last group seemed stuck. But there are always other dynamics and outside factors that impact our groups that are outside our control.

Whether it’s slow growth or fast growth our goals are the same—to see a growing number of people connect to God, one another, and Jesus’ mission for their lives.

How is your group doing right now? What is the next step for you to take your group to a new level? What questions or thoughts do you have about what to do when growth is slow or when growth is fast?

Too Many Children?

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:32:05 -0600

For the last 15 years my wife Vicki and I have been in or led a kid-friendly small group. I love groups that include children. When a group involves them, the children are blessed and are a blessing. Right now, for example, we have a 9-year old in our group that comes up with a new icebreaker every week. She puts more thought into it and is better at coming up with great questions than I am! If you use our church’s small group helps, you’ve probably been using some of her questions yourself because I end up putting them in our helps.

Why don’t most groups include children? Because it’s more work. You also need the right type of host home. And it takes thought as the group grows and the number, ages and mix of children changes. It takes effort, but it’s worth it.

Our group and the number of children in the group has been growing. We include the children for the icebreaker and worship and then let the younger children go to the basement where they play, while the teens either stay in the meeting or go talk or do homework. A few weeks ago it got kind of bonkers in the basement.

What do you do when it seems like things are getting bonkers? (Besides sending some immediate supervision.) We have found the most helpful thing is to sit down with the kids and talk about what the guidelines should be and how to improve things. We let them come up with most of them. They’re actually very good at coming up with what the rules should be and if you involve them they own and understand the rules. We did that the following week.

Here’s some ideas they came up with.
* No playing with Nerf guns (I think this was a large part of the problem the week before!)
* Setting up different play stations so kids have various options (like a lego play station, for example)
* No going back to the basement after the kids have come up to have snacks with the parents
* No video games (a parent came up with that one)

We’re also at the point where we are involving the parents in supervising. Previously with the number and mix of kids, the teens’ presence was adequate to help the children.

I wanted to let you know that I think it’s possible to have too many children. Ten preteen children is the max. We are at that point now so we are actually having to tell people with kids that they can come to our group but their kids can’t. :-(

So we hope to multiply our group soon.

The problem is that if you consistently get more than ten kids, you lose your host home! And if you lose your kid-friendly host home, you can no longer include kids at all! So we recommend that you limit the number of kids to ten or so. (When we lived in Texas and the children could play go outside all year round, this number was higher.)

Children are great, but in our experience it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. So let’s keep multiplying kid-friendly groups so that we have plenty for everyone who wants to be involved in this type of small group!

What are your questions, ideas and suggestions for having great kid-friendly small groups?