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Small group haters - Read this

Orginally published on Monday, February 02, 2009 at 7:42 AM
by Todd Rhoades

Dave Travis writes, "I saw some comments recently in some blogs from some fairly prominent church leaders that said: "Any pastor that tells you they have more than 35% of their people in small groups is a liar." A lot of folks chimed in agreeing with them.

From the source of the comments, I would describe most of their churches as very focused on the weekend services and getting folks "in the door."

At the recent innovation3 conference my buddy Larry Osborne, totally unaware of those recent blog and twitters came up to tell me that North Coast had really hit a growth edge again. Up 1000 people since last year at the same time. (They added three new more venue opportunities this month) But more importantly, the small group launch had 86% of their people enrolled right now.

What percentage of your church is involved in small groups?

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There are 2 Comments:

Posted by

Tuesday, February 03, 2009 at 8:17 AM

We are a small church of about 200-250 in southern WV. We run a small group for the weekends of February, and then in the summer as a replacement for Sunday evening services. This past weekend (Super Bowl weekend), we had nearly 140 people signed up and engaged in the studies.

Our goal is to touch everyone with small groups in some fashion - whether through weekly Bible studies, Sunday evening meeting times, Wednesday night formalized “college-style” classes, or even Sunday School. We anticipate reaching this goal in roughly 2-3 years, Lord willing.
Posted by Kevin

Tuesday, February 03, 2009 at 10:26 AM

I pastor a couple locations in a multi-site church here in Chicago. For 5 years I had tried to solve the small group puzzle with little success. We hovered at around 40% all the time and never seemed to add groups. Then one night after a location leadership team meeting where I had tried to get one of our leaders to lead the small group ministry to new heights (again), our lead pastor called me. “Hey Kevin, here’s a thought… when I look back on the most successful seasons of small group ministry, it was when I took personal responsibility to lead the charge. Maybe you should consider that.” I did and I did.

From that point on I’ve made it a key personal investment of my leadership energy to fit the small group ministry to our cultural context, bang the drum for small groups, lead a small group myself and train our small group leaders. We’ve gone from 40% to 70% involvement which is where I hope to hover we maintain.

I think one of the biggest barriers to small group involvement is lead pastor distraction. Lead pastors, particularly in the multi-site setting, stop having any personal handles on small group ministry and as a result it often slips off the radar of the average uncommitted attender who hears from him each week.

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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.