Allen White's Blog, page 15

Keeping Your New Groups

Forming new groups is one thing, but keep your new groups is a different story. A church asked for coaching a few years ago. They were in a desperate situation. Having just completed their first 40 Days of Purpose campaign, the church was left with a result they didn’t want or expect. Prior to the campaign, the church didn’t have any groups. At the launch of 40 Days, they started 233 groups. It was an amazing story, until Day 41. When the campaign ended, the church was left with three groups. Now, if your a glass is half full kind of person, you would say, well, they have three more groups than they’ve ever had. But, if you’re more like me, well, going from 233 to 3 is a tragic loss. And, it was completely unnecessary.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay



Campaigns are Just a Start.

I love church-wide campaigns. They are a great way to get avowed non-leaders to open their homes to either host a group or get together with their friends and do a study. After all, you don’t need a leader to make disciples. You need a disciple to make disciples. Often the leadership word gets in the way. It’s okay to be stingy with the term “leader.” Just call them something else. After all, you’re not recruiting elders here.

If people are willing to open their homes and/or gather their friends, the truth is they already have more leadership ability than they give themselves credit for. It’s actually a pretty good test. If people have what it takes to gather a group, then they also have the ability to keep the group. Campaigns are a great way to get leaders to self-select. You don’t need to twist anybody’s arm. You just need to give them permission and opportunity to start a group. A short-term campaign of six weeks or so based on an easy-to-use curriculum is a great way to get them started. If your senior pastor is on the curriculum, then that’s a huge winner.

Give Them a Next Step.

Here’s an interesting fact about people: if you invite them to do a six-week study, when the six weeks is over, they think they’re done. I don’t know where they would get an idea like that. Most small group pastors/directors hope that people will love leading a group and will naturally want to continue. But, there’s the catch — many of them won’t think about continuing until you invite them to continue.

Think of it this way: when people sign up to start a group for a campaign, they are entering into a leadership recruiting process. Maybe you delay some of the requirements initially. You give them enough training to get started, then you let them lead the short-term group. It’s pretty easy. This is stage one of the leadership recruiting process. But, then you need to offer them stage two — continuing into another study.

If the groups like meeting together, then it should be pretty easy to invite them to a next step study like Community: Six Weeks to a Healthy Group, so they will continue. If the group faces some obstacles, then you or their coach needs to walk them through the issue and help them continue. And, of course, a few groups won’t be able to go forward. That’s okay.
The campaign is a test drive to see whether people like leading a group. It’s low commitment and low requirement. If they will accept the offer to a second study, then they are well on their way to becoming a full-fledged group leader.

If your groups are still in a Fall campaign, then offer them a study right now before the groups end. If they are new groups, choose the study for them. If they are established groups, then let them go back to what they’re used to doing.

If you do this right, at least 80 percent of your groups should continue. If you need help, join my Live Online Mini-Course: 3 Keys to Lasting Groups on Thursday, October 17, 2019 at 1-2 pm Eastern (Noon Central/11 am Mountain/ 10 am Pacific). This course comes with a complete set of notes and costs only $20. Click here to register securely through PayPal.
If you cannot attend the course on that date, you can sign up for the online course on Udemy.

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Today is the Last Day

Registration is closing for the Disciple-making R&D Course

Now Enrolling for October 2 – November 6, 2019 Session.

Click Here to Register for only $97 per church.

A six week discussion about discipleship. Limited to 25 participants per group.

Each session will be made up of presentation and discussion. Session recordings are available to participants as well as the slide decks and note sheets.

All six sessions are one hour in length and will be held on Zoom meeting and are recorded for future review.

Here what recent participants are saying:

“The Disciple Making R&D Course is very insightful, practical, and provides the tools needed to launch a healthy Small Group ministry.​” — Bill M., SC

“I would encourage pastors to jump in with both feet. Enjoy the expert leading the way.​” — Larry M., TX

“Our church has been wrestling with how to make genuine disciples, specifically in a small group environment. The great commission says to obey everything Jesus commanded. We have been assuming groups members are obeying when they respond to discussion questions but we haven’t built any relation based accountability into our format. This course helped me understand that, and to see that knowledge-based methods of discipleship aren’t making disciples. The course contained good practical learning that I can begin to put into practice.​” — Elizabeth S., KS

The pilot cost is $97. When the full course is developed, it will cost $249. Pay securely with your PayPal account or credit card.

Click Here to Register via PayPal.

The sessions will cover:

1. The Problem of Modern Discipleship.

The Limits of Traditional Christian Education.Disciple Making and Small Groups.How to Measure Spiritual Growth.How to Fulfill Our Mission.

2. A Well-Rounded Approach to Disciple Making.

What informs our spiritual growth?Discipling the Whole Person.Moving People from Student to Servant.

3. Inputs and Relationships for Disciple Making.

The Exponential Growth Model.The role of groups in making disciples.The role of a personal trainer in making disciples.The role of personal disciples in making disciples.

4. Learning, Action, and Reflection

Fulfilling the Entire Great Commission.The Role of curriculum in spiritual growth.Effective accountability.Relational evaluation.

5. Healthy Lives Multiply.

Becoming Hero Makers.The Pathway from Disciple to Disciple Maker to Leader.

6. Transitions.

Identify what’s working in your current environment.Identify what’s not working or what has plateaued.Identify opportunities for change.How to engage disciples in groups.

I would like to invite you to the pilot for Disciple Making R&D. We will meet for six weekly one hour sessions via GotoMeeting. The pilot cost is $97. When the full course is developed, it will cost $249. Pay securely with your PayPal account or credit card.

Click here to register for only $97.

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Replay: Why 100 Groups?

From the Live Webinar on 9/25/2019

The post Replay: Why 100 Groups? appeared first on Allen White's Blog.

Disciple-Making R&D

Effective disciple making is lacking in many churches.

If we impart knowledge, but don’t see change in attitudes and behaviors, are we making disciples?

123rf.com Used with permission.

So much of traditional Christian education is built on the knowledge component because it’s measurable. We can measure how many lessons were taught. We can measure how many verses were memorized. We can measure how many small group meetings were attended.  But, does this give us the full picture?

How do you measure changes in attitude? What are the metrics for behavioral changes? How can people know so much of the Bible, yet do so little about it? What are we missing?

Here’s the dilemma: how do we figure out new methods of disciple making while we continue to run all of our current programs? You don’t have to scrap what you’re currently doing. In fact, most churches are already doing a lot of the right things. You may just need a few tweaks here and there to see transformed lives and not just educated ones.

As pastors, it’s hard to work on something and work in it at the same time. You want to improve your ability to make disciples, yet the tyranny of the urgent, ends up taking precedent. In some cases, just the sheer numbers of people to disciple causes you to resort to large scale processes, which often prove impersonal and ineffective.

Wouldn’t you love to have dedicated time to think about ministry while you’re doing the work of the ministry? Wouldn’t you like to add a few more disciple making tools that work without wrecking the things that are already helping?

When you look at the business world, companies are constantly developing new products while they continue to produce their current products. They set aside a portion of their time, energy, and budget to R&D – Research and Development. They try new things on a smaller scale before they would add a new product or replace a current product.

I want to invite you to join me in Disciple Making R&D. This is a place where you can think about how to improve disciple makings. You can try out some new methods that will help to transform the lives of your members without upsetting the apple cart.

This isn’t the new shiny object. This isn’t the silver bullet. I would like to introduce you to things I have used and developed over the last 30 years of ministry that have proven effective in producing well-rounded disciples.

The six weekly sessions include:

Session 1: The Problem of Modern Discipleship.

The Limits of Traditional Christian Education.Disciple Marking and Small Groups.How to Measure Spiritual Growth.How to Fulfill Our Mission.

Session 2: A Well-Rounded Approach to Disciple Making.

What informs our spiritual growth?Discipling the Whole Person.Moving People from Student to Servant.

Session 3: Inputs and Relationships for Disciple Making.

The Exponential Growth Model.The role of groups in making disciples.The role of a personal trainer in making disciples.The role of personal disciples in making disciples.

Session 4: Learning, Action, and Reflection

Fulfilling the Entire Great Commission.The Role of curriculum in spiritual growth.Effective accountability.Relational evaluation.

Session 5: Healthy Lives Multiply.

Becoming Hero Makers.The Pathway from Disciple to Disciple Maker to Leader.

Session 6: Transitioning Established Ministries.

Identify what’s working in your current environment.Identify what’s not working or what has plateaued.Identify opportunities for change.How to engage disciples in groups

I would like to invite you to the pilot for Disciple Making R&D. We will meet for six weekly one hour sessions via GotoMeeting. The pilot cost is $97. When the full course is developed, it will cost $249. The group starts on Wednesday, October 2, 2019 and is limited to 25 people who are serious about making disciples. Is this you?

CLI CK HERE TO REGISTER

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The Deficit of Discipleship: How the American Church is Off-Mission

The American church is off-mission.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

That may seem like a ridiculous statement considering the number of growing megachurches and multisite churches around the country. How could the church be off-mission with record crowds? Well, let’s go back and look at the church’s mission statement:

Jesus said: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20, NIV).

Regardless of how churches can rephrase and reframe their mission statements, this is the mission: to go and make disciples. The church is not called to make converts. In fact, to lead people in a prayer without offering them a pathway and companions for the journey is irresponsible. The church is not called to make leaders. In Jesus’ view, the first would be the least. This doesn’t sound like western leadership. It sounds like discipleship. The church is not called to make volunteers to staff the weekend services. In fact, to reduce the ministry of the church body to guest service roles is an affront to the New Testament church. The church is not called to draw crowds. The church is not called to build buildings. The church is not called to make money. We are called to make disciples.

But, how can megachurches or any church for that matter make disciples?

Disciples Aren’t Processed. They’re crafted.

Many churches attempt to convert their crowd into some form of discipleship through an assimilation process. Take this class. Make this commitment. Sign this card. Yet an assembly line process doesn’t work with people. They aren’t raw materials. They don’t all start from the same place.

Who are you the most like? What is your default? While we would all like to say, “Jesus,” the reality is that you and I are more like our parents than any other people on the planet. We think like them. We talk like them. We parent like them. We relate like them. Our habits are like them. Their example is ingrained in us. Some of us had great parents. Some of us had loving parents who did their best. Some of us had parents who were complete nightmares. Regardless of what type of parents we had, what’s ingrained in us is difficult to overcome. Even the example of the best parents can be improved upon. No one’s parents are perfect.

Then, in addition to parents, we can add experiences, tragedies, pain, addictions, suffering, career paths, relationships, and so many other things that shape our lives. Discipleship is not making widgets on an assembly line. Widgets are made from pure, raw materials. Disciples are made from broken and sinful people who long for transformation. But, it doesn’t disappear all at once. As Pete Scazzero says, “Jesus may be in our hearts, but grandpa is in our bones.”

Processes are inadequate to make disciples, yet how many churches have an assimilation process, department, or even pastor of assimilation for that exact purpose? In college I had a double major in biblical studies and missions. What I learned in cross-cultural communication and anthropology is that assimilation is the process of helping people adapt to a new culture. They take on the language, the customs, the mannerism, and the wardrobe of their adopted culture. Once they look like, talk like, and act like the new culture, they are regarded as being assimilated. So if we are assimilating non-church people into becoming part of the church, we are teaching them how to look like, talk like, and act like people who belong to the church. What is lacking is actual life transformation. Mimicking actions, language, and appearance does not make a disciple. It makes a cultural Christian and that’s a lot to live up to. Disciples make disciples, but not in mass quantity.

And while we’re at it, stop using the V word: volunteer. Churches should not have volunteers. The church, meaning the people or the body of Christ, have been equipped with spiritual gifts, abilities, and passions to fulfill a divine calling. By reducing the focus to serving and helps, a church is effectively ignoring about 20 other spiritual gifts. The “real” ministry is reserved for paid staff members. This flies in the face of what Paul taught the Corinthians, the Romans, and the Ephesians about the nature and use of spiritual gifts. Paul admonishes the church that no one part of the body can say to the other “I do not need you,” but that’s exactly what the American church is saying today. The attractional movement told people to sit back, relax, and leave the driving to us. That was Greyhound’s slogan. When was the last time you took the bus?

People are reluctant to get involved because the opportunities churches offer them are beneath them. That doesn’t mean that they’re too good to serve. It just means that the only opportunities most churches offer to their people are menial tasks that feed the demands of the weekend service. When CEOs are handing out bulletins and entrepreneurs are parking cars, this is a great misuse of their gifts and talents. They have so much more to offer.

Processes are inadequate for making disciples. Any mass approach to discipleship is a failure. Assimilation doesn’t make disciples. Worship services don’t make disciples. Sermons don’t make disciples. As Mike Breen says, “People learn by imitation, not instruction.” Yet, most churches attempt a programmatic process of making disciples that does little to help people overcome the powerful models they’ve come to imitate. People can be very inspired by sermons, yet within a day they resort to their default behavior. The only way to help people change and grow is to provide personal encouragement and accountability, and of course, all of this is built on the expectation that every member should apply God’s Word to his or her life. If the expectation is for people to come back next Sunday, then we’ve missed an opportunity and are relying on the weekend service to have a greater impact than it possibly can.

Disciples are crafted, not processed. After all, it takes a disciple to make a disciple.

Big Hairy Audacious Goals

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great among other titles, coined this term for when success organizations set out to achieve ridiculous levels of growth. They didn’t settle for being stalled or accepting mediocre, incremental growth. They went for it.

Jesus spent three and a half years of His life pouring into 12 men. The impact of these disciples is still felt 2,000 years later around the globe and involves over 2 billion people. Jesus set the BHAG in Acts 1:8. Propelled more by persecution than ambition (Acts 8:1), the disciples spread a movement worldwide to transform lives.

How can you activate your disciples when most are intimidated by the thought of evangelism and distracted by the busyness of life? Groups could be the answer. You could argue that many people don’t have the time or the desire to lead a group. Some don’t even believe they can. I think we’re going at this all wrong.

Jesus didn’t call us to make leaders. Jesus called us to make disciples. And, disciples make disciples. Do you get it? You don’t need to recruit leaders to lead groups to make disciples. You could, but you don’t have to. You need to equip disciples to make disciples. Who in your church couldn’t be a disciple?

Often in the church today, we embrace the definition of disciple as “follower” or “student” when in reality we’re just working hard to increase the size of the crowd. The crowd are not disciples, if they were, they would be making disciples. In Jesus’ ministry, He spent 73% of his time with His disciples. Jesus could have easily built a megachurch, but He spent very little time with the crowd. The modern American church has flipped Jesus’ ministry on its head. Most churches choose to rapidly add people rather than invest in multiplication. This has a diminishing return.

A Disciple-Making Moonshot

So now that I’ve poked at the church and pointed out what’s broken, let’s fix it. Rather than putting our energy into mass efforts of corralling the most people we possibly can at the fastest rate, let’s focus on the 1/3 of your congregation who has enough of a spiritual basis they could each disciple two other people. Who would be on that list? Church members? Leaders? Long-time members? Then, with the church’s guidance, curriculum, and coaching, you could equip these disciples to make disciples. If the church can get 1/3 of its people to disciple the other 2/3, then you’re making some significant progress. You don’t need to do this all at once, but you certainly could. And, it’s doesn’t need to be just groups of three. You could use church-wide campaigns and host homes to get them started, but don’t leave them there. Or challenge people to get together with their friends and do a study. The bottom line is to stop intimidating people with the thoughts of leadership and evangelism and challenge them to offer what God has given them in community with other believers. What they lack, they can learn from a coach, a resource, or relevant training.

We measure what is important. When you think about the metrics used by most churches, they count nickels and noses. Maybe they count the number of groups or the number of people in groups. Maybe they count the number of people who are serving. But what if churches focused on a new metric? This metric would dynamically impact all of the other metrics. What if the measurement of success became the number of people actively discipling other people? It could be a person discipling two other people as I described above. Or it could be a person discipling eight other people. And of course the intention of all of this discipling is to produce more disciples who make disciples.

What Kind of Church is Yours?

Not all pastors and churches are doing a bad job at making disciples. But, not very many are doing a good job either. Pastors and churches fit into one of four categories when it comes to making disciples:

Content: These pastors and churches are happy with what they have. Often discipleship and small group pastors in these churches are content with the groups and discipleship efforts they have because they have met the expectations of their leadership. They are satisfied with a good job that’s keeping them from achieving a great job at discipleship.

Confused: These churches and pastors believe they are making a greater impact with discipleship than they actually are. Often these churches are led by brilliant teachers who can captivate an audience. The thought is if the pastor gives the people more of the truth, then they will learn and become more like Christ. This is a result of the Enlightenment. Knowledge is king. But, we must remember that “Knowledge puffs up, while love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1, NIV). How many people know a great deal of God’s Word, yet it’s not reflected in their actions and attitudes? Great teaching alone won’t overcome the average person’s default which was established by imitating their parents and other role models. They need the support and accountability of others to apply God’s Word to their lives. One service or series won’t dramatically change someone’s daily habits. In fact, a call to change without the means to change will lead to tremendous frustration.

Frustrated: These pastors are trying to make disciples in a church that doesn’t support their efforts. Make disciples anyway. These churches have a spiritual growth/discipleship/assimilation/small groups department for the minimum purpose of preventing members from complaining about a lack of discipleship. When someone asks what the church is doing to help people grow or to go deeper, these pastors and churches just need to point to the department. If you are a pastor who’s discipleship efforts or small group ministry as been relegated to a complaint department for unchallenged members, you have my sympathy. In your church, the weekend service is king. But, in your circumstance, you can still make disciples who make disciples despite the limitations.

Disciple-making: These pastors and churches are making disciples who make disciples. They use worship services and sermons to catalyze commitments that lead to next steps in discipleship groups, support groups, or whatever next steps people need in their spiritual walk. In every worship service, every event, every church initiative, these churches provide an opportunity for people to take the next step of working through issues, applying God’s Word to their lives, finding their unique calling as part of the body of Christ, overcoming sin and addiction, and so many other things. A worship service alone will not resolve these things, but it can motivate people to take their next step. People need someone to disciple them. Disciples make disciples.

Which church are you? Isn’t it time to stop striving to become the megachurch you will never be? Isn’t it time to come to grips with the fact that bigger is only better as long as the church stays on-mission to make disciples? The alternative is wearing yourself out trying to raise money, build buildings, market strategically, and recruit volunteers to maintain a large weekend gathering that doesn’t make disciples in and of itself. Then you wonder why you don’t have any energy to fulfill the church’s calling to make disciples. If your church’s focus is not on making disciples, then what are you making?

This is why I am calling churches to the 100 Groups Challenge in 2020. We have got to make up for this deficit of discipleship in our churches. We need to give 100% effort to either connecting 100% of the weekend attendance into groups, reaching 100 total groups in your church, or starting 100 new groups in 2020. To find out more about this movement, join a free webinar on Wednesday, September 25 at 1pm ET/ Noon CT/ 11am MT/ 10am PT. Click here to register.

If you are ready to go for it and join the 100 Groups Challenge, you can find out more here. There is no cost. My goal is to help 100 churches start 100 groups in 2020 and effectively disciple 100,000 people. Over the last eight years, I’ve helped churches to start over 16,000 groups and connect over 125,000 people into groups. My BHAG is to do the same in 1 year! Will you join me?

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Join the 100 Groups Challenge

You don’t belong here. That’s the feeling I got from the looks on the faces of the other pastors when I sat down in a circle of churches with over 100 small groups. They had never heard of my church. My church was the only one with under 1,000 people and over 100 small groups. Someone even asked, “Are you sure you’re in the right group?” I was.

My church at the time, New Life Christian Center, Turlock, CA, after being stuck with only 30 groups in a church of 800 adults, made a breakthrough. In just six months, we connected 1,000 people into 103 groups. What’s even better is that in 18 months, we went from having 30 percent of our adults in groups to having nearly 40 percent of our adults lead a group for at least one six-week series. When it all shook out, 13 percent of our adults led on-going groups for 125 percent of our congregation. This was small potatoes compared to what came next with the churches I coached.

Harvest Church (UMC), Byron, GA, started 500 groups in a church of 2,500. By giving permission and opportunity to their members, they had twice as many people in groups as attended the weekend service. New Life Church (AG), Renton, WA found similar results in their congregation of 2,500. When we started, they had 100 groups. In six months, they had 500 groups. But these weren’t the biggest numbers.

Kingdom Life Church, Baltimore, MD, created a series called Back to Church based on Pastor Michael Phillips’ teaching. This church with 600 adults on the weekend launched 167 groups. What would your church look like if one out of every three adults led a group?

The best part in all of these churches was they put an emphasis on discipleship over leadership. Think about it. Jesus did not call us to make leaders. Our mission from Jesus Himself is to “go and make disciples.” As one pastor in Connecticut put it, “We’re not recruiting elders here.” It takes a lot to develop a leader. But, to make disciples, you just need a disciple. After all, disciples make disciples. Now, to keep things headed in the right direction, the churches gave them the curriculum to study and a small group coach to guide them. While they opened up the opportunity, this wasn’t open season on whatever you wanted to do!

The great thing about this approach was that more people were connected into a disciple-making environments more quickly than ever. There were also many people in groups who had never darkened the doors of these churches. Evangelism was happening without calling it evangelism.

There is a bit of a misnomer that in order to have 100 groups, you need 1,000 people — 10 in each group, right? Wrong! To have 100 groups, you only need 100 people who are willing to invite and include others and do something intentional about their spiritual growth.

I want to challenge you to join the 100 Groups Challenge. I am looking for 100 churches who will commit to reaching 100 small groups in 2020. This isn’t renaming classes or teams as “groups.” This is increasing the total number of groups in your church until you reach 100 groups in 2020. If you already have 100 groups, then your challenge is to start 100 new groups in 2020.

Are you ready to join the challenge? Click here.
For more information, sign up for a Free Webinar on Wednesday, September 25 at 1pm Eastern/ Noon Central/ 11am Mountain/ 10am Pacific.

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Before You Launch Groups This Fall

The Fall is the biggest season of the year to launch groups, but before you launch groups this Fall, you need to plan ahead. Over the years, I’ve seen churches pull out all of the stops for a Fall campaign only to watch the small groups ministry shrink back to its former size after the six weeks is over. I don’t know about you, but so much work goes into a Fall launch just to watch the results disappear is disappointing. And, you certainly can’t make disciples in six-week once-a-year groups.

If you follow a church-wide campaign or an alignment series model, the draw is usually the short-term experience. Your people have a chance to kick the tires and see what groups are like. People who don’t consider themselves as leaders can take group leadership for a test drive. These are great ways to plant seeds for small group ministry. But, unless you have a way to bring in the harvest, you’ll be planting and replanting seeds year after year after year. I refer to this phenomena as Ground Hog Day. While it’s great to give your people a trial run at groups, the trial run is not an end in itself. If they like groups, then what do they do next?

Keep Your New Groups Going

To keep new groups going, you have to offer them a next step. In the middle of the first six-week study, offer them another study for their group to continue. With new groups, you should choose the study for them. Most new groups I’ve led typically don’t have much of an opinion of the first two or three studies they do. Just choose a study for them. Otherwise, they’ll get lost in the study choices that are out there. If the group doesn’t decide to move forward while they’re still in their first study, they probably won’t continue. You want the group members to decide to continue before the end of their first six-week study. As far as established groups go, they can continue with their normal pattern after the campaign ends.

Choose the Right Study

In choosing a next step study for your new groups, if the groups started with a video-based study, then you need to offer a video-based study as a next step. Eventually, the leaders will gain the training and experience to lead other types of studies, but initially the goal is to get the group to take the next step without having to consider any other factors. But, for now, if they started with video, then give them more video.

The next study could be a sermon-based discussion guide with a short video from the pastor. The group could simply download the discussion guide, click the link to watch the teaching video online, then discuss and apply the topic. Some of the churches I’ve worked with have actually recorded these videos between the Sunday morning services on a smartphone, then uploaded the video directly to Youtube or Vimeo. Other churches shoot the video before or after the weekend with the pastor in a studio or in a living room. You don’t need to plan out and shoot the entire series. You can just make the videos and write the discussion guides as you go. This is a great way to help your people take their weekend into their week.You could also create a video-based curriculum about what it means to be a small group at your church. This could become the standard next step for every new group that starts. While I’ve talked to a lot of pastors over the years who were interested in this, nobody actually created one. So, I decided to take the hard work out of doing this for you. Next week, I am releasing Community: Six Weeks to a Healthy Group. This is the second in a series of Do It Yourself curriculum I’ve created. The video scripts are written. You just need to shoot the videos. Then, you can purchase the study guides at allenwhite.org/community. (If you are interested in a custom version of the study or need help with video production, contact us here.)

You can also purchase curriculum for your groups or use a curriculum from a streaming video service. Again, you want to choose something that is relevant to a new group.

Timing is Everything

If your campaign or alignment series starts in late-Summer/early-Fall, then you can offer another six-week series in the Fall that will end before Thanksgiving. It is nearly impossible to keep groups in studies between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day in the U.S., so the study will need to conclude by Thanksgiving. If your campaign starts later in the Fall, then end the first six-week study before Thanksgiving and start the next step study in January. You will still want to invite groups to continue in the next study while they are in their first study this Fall. Secure a commitment from the groups to continue with the new study in January, then offer some suggestions for what they can do during the Christmas holidays as a group.

If a group will do two back-to-back six-week studies, more than likely they will continue on as a group. If you don’t offer them a chance to continue, then more than likely the group will disband. You’ll have to start over again next year. A next step study will make all the difference in keeping your new groups going after a Fall campaign. Don’t miss this step.

Allen White helps Take the Guesswork Out of Groups. We offer books, online courses, coaching groups, consulting, and curriculum writing and production.

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Accelerate Your Groups in 2020

Is small group ministry the unsung hero in your church? You work hard at recruiting leaders to never have enough leaders. You move heaven and earth to place people in groups only to discover they don’t show up. You know that small groups are the most effective means to fulfilling the church’s mission of making disciples, yet you can rarely get “airtime” in the weekend service. If you feel stuck, there are some very good reasons why.

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

Fifteen years ago my groups were stuck. I had worked for seven years to connect all of our people into groups. After handpicking every possible leader that I knew, we only had 30% of our adults in groups. None of our groups were multiplying. Our weekend attendance continued to grow, but our groups did not. And then, something changed, I joined a coaching community. 

In three weeks, we doubled our groups. Six months later we doubled them again! We went from having 30% in groups to having nearly 40% of our adults lead a group for at least one six-week series. When it was all said and done, we had 125% of our weekend attendance in groups and 13% of our adults leading on-going groups. What would that look like in your church?

Learn the best practices from over 1,500 churches. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Allen White has drawn some proven principles from a wide variety of churches: different denominations and styles of worship, regional differences, various sized churches, culturally and ethnically diverse, and even churches with Sunday school. If you are ready to double, triple, or quadruple your groups, these strategies will get you there. As a learning community, a group of five churches will work together to learn these principles and learn from each other.

Customize these strategies to your unique situation. Every church is different. There is something unique about you or else your church wouldn’t be necessary. Groups in your church won’t necessarily look exactly like groups in another church. You already have a history of groups. Maybe what you were doing didn’t get everybody into groups, but it worked for some of your folks. There is a way to get more people into groups without wrecking what you’ve already built. In monthly one-on-one meetings with Allen, you will adjust the best practices to fit your church’s needs and directions.

Interact with a community of like-minded small group folks. Wouldn’t it be great to spend time with people who speak your language.  Your staff team can engage with you on groups, but not to the level of people who live, breathe, eat, and sleep groups like you do. The coaching community offers a regular time to discuss ideas about groups and learn from other churches. You won’t need to defend why small groups are important, everybody in this group already believes that.

Invest in Yourself. You can read books, attend conferences, or even seek an advanced degree — and maybe you should. But, for about the same money as a conference, you can receive a full year of coaching. Honestly, I wish every day was a conference. You get so filled with vision and so inspired, but when you get home, you soon discover that reality stinks. What if you could spread that conference out for an entire year and have the “speaker” walk alongside you as you build the future of your ministry? No conference will give you that.

2020 could be the year you connect more people into groups, make more disciples, equip more people for ministry, and reach your community like never before.

Are you ready to hear more? Just click this link for the full details.

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Case Study: Vertical Church, West Haven, Connecticut

Vertical Church is an over 30 year old church in West Haven, Connecticut. The worship attendance is 1,600 adults in a diverse congregation made up of 38 different nationalities. No one ethnicity is dominant. Prior to implementing the principles found in Exponential Groups, the church had 34 groups following the Free Market model of groups.[

“The verbiage in the Northeast is small groups don’t work
here,” says Randal Alquist, Discipleship Pastor. “Nobody wants to open up their
houses. You’re not going to get them to join. We’re not a front porch
community. We’re a back deck community with fences. We’re going into our
backyards and have our own little space.”

After digesting the content of Exponential Groups, the church was challenged to add a new
approach. “My biggest revelation was this idea that people are already in
groups,” Alquist said. “There are distinctives we want to accomplish within a
group. We want people praying together, people gathering together for community
and to draw closer to Jesus. We’re activating faith together in the group. If
we know that’s happening, and they’re attending church regularly and serving
once in a while, then we know they’re growing. This revolutionized my approach
in how to talk about groups and promote them.”

Previously, the church sought out people with high
qualifications to lead a group. The new leaders were given a 52-page manual
they were expected to follow. Alquist says, “We started giving people
permission to jump in. We’re asking for people who love people and love God.
We’re not asking for elders here. We want people who are willing to facilitate
a healthy environment where connections can happen.” The 52-page manual was
replaced with a 10-page manual and a short briefing meeting at the church.
Training videos were created to answers common questions from the small group
leaders. Each new leader received a coach to help them.

In their most recent alignment series, Vertical Church had
over 90 groups with 920 group members. Additionally, another 240 people are
involved in eight short-term Growth Groups at the church. “This approach opened
up a world to us,” Alquist enthused. “We knew community was happening on the
periphery, but we’ve been able to look at all of these little communities in
our church and identify some basic things for those leaders to start practicing
and to make sure it’s happening. It’s been amazing.”

Allen White helps Take the Guesswork Out of Groups. We offer books, online courses, coaching groups, consulting, and curriculum writing and production. [

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The One Strategic Move that Will Keep Groups Going

Have you worked hard to launch groups only to see them disappear after a church-wide series or semester? I heard of a church once who launched their entire small group ministry from a campaign. They didn’t have any groups when they started, and then hey recruited 233 groups for the series. When the campaign ended, they only had three groups that continued. This situation can and should be avoided.

Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay

For some reason when we invite people to lead a group for a six week study, they get this crazy idea that once the six weeks is over, they’re done. Where would they get an idea like this? The same is true for a semester-based groups. Where are they headed in the next semester?

If you haven’t decided what’s next for your groups, then prepare yourself for a hard landing. Otherwise the celebration of new groups at the conclusion of a series will end with a deafening thud, unless you’re prepared for what’s next. Next year, you’ll be right back at re-recruiting leaders and re-forming groups just like you did this year. It’s not good for the groups or for you!

You see all of this grouping, de-grouping, and regrouping is really an exercise in futility. It produces an effect I refer to as Ground Hog Day after the namesake movie starring Bill Murray. If people are already meeting together and they like each other, then we should encourage them to continue, not break up.

Now a few folks who signed up to lead for a literal six weeks will object: “This is like bait and switch.” My response is something like, “That’s because this IS bait and switch. Do you like meeting together? Then, continue. If you don’t like meeting together, then go ahead and end the group this week. Life is too short to be stuck in a bad group.” If they really can’t continue with the group, then ask if a group member could take over leading.

If the middle of your current series or semester, introduce a next step. Whether the next step is an off-the-shelf curriculum you purchase, a church-wide study in the season or semester, or a weekly sermon discussion guide, invite your new groups, especially, to pursue one specific next step. Don’t offer 12 different choices to new groups. The decision you want them to make is whether the group will continue, not what they will study. Established groups can follow what you’ve set in place for a curriculum pathway or library. Established groups need choices. New groups won’t have an opinion, so choose for them.

Before the groups disband at the end of the current series or semester, ask the group to decide about continuing. If you wait until after the study ends, then you have a much lower chance of getting the group back together for the future.

With the Christmas season upon us or when Summer hits, have groups focus on group life rather than group meetings. The new series might not start until January or October, but the group can meet socially, have a party and invite prospective group members, or serve together. Then, in the next series or study, they can continue their regular pattern of meeting. If the group insists on doing a Bible study between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day or over the Summer, then encourage it. Most groups will not take this option, but a few might.

You can avoid the disaster of Day 41 after a 40-day campaign. You can avoid experiencing Groundhog Day for your next series or semester. By offering a next step now, you can retain more groups, then build on what you’ve accomplished in your groups’ launch.

Allen White helps Take the Guesswork Out of Groups. We offer books, online courses, coaching groups, consulting, and curriculum writing and production.

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