Making Small Groups the Hub of your Ministry

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Making Small Groups the Hub of your Ministry

Sunday, August 4, 2013

This past week I had the opportunity to spend some time at NorthCoast Church with Larry Osborne and his team to talk about Leadership and Small Groups (I’ll post more take aways in the weeks to come). If you don’t know already, NorthCoast is an outlier when it comes to small groups and you need to get to know these guys. While the norm across the nation is hovering at about 50% of weekend worship attendance in groups, NorthCoast is shattering that norm and boasts just over 90% of their weekend worship attendance in groups. That was enough for us to get on a plane and spend some time learning from these guys. Here are a few of my take aways:

1. Cut the Competition

You’re doing ministry in a world where people will give you 2 time slots. Leaders will give you 3, and ministry animals will give you 4. Consistently across the nation, every time you see a higher percentage of people in groups you see less competition for groups. That means fewer classes and other programs (menu driven ministry) for people to choose among. Groups become the step, not a step.

2. Limit midweek Children’s Events

Midweek kids ministry will kill your small groups because parents will always choose their children first over their small group. See above.

3. Important People are in the Important Things

Simply put, if your top leaders are not in Small Groups then Small Groups are not important. If your Staff are not in a Small Group then Small Groups are not a big deal.

4. Count and Respond to the Facts

You can’t respond to reality if you don’t know what reality is. That’s why you need to keep attendance in your Small Groups. In churches we’re often guilty of counting numbers instead of faces. We may think that we grew by 100 people in groups last year but because we don’t count faces and only numbers we could have grown by 300 and lost 200 and never knew.

5. Measure Retention

The most important measure of organizational health is retention. This is why you need to measure not just the high water mark of sign ups but also the retention of volunteers, of Small Group participants, & leaders.

6. Talk Like Everyone is in a Group

It may sound counterintuitive but a constant drip is more powerful than the momentary splash of large-scale marketing. This is why you need to make a reference to Small Group homework & conversations somewhere in each of your weekend sermons. This is not an advertisement or announcement, but a normal part of the conversation. For example: “I don’t have the time to talk about this but you’re going to talk about this in your Small Groups this week.”

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation

The Baby Elephant Principle

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Some years ago when I was in Africa on a short-term mission trip my wife Lisa and I had the opportunity to take an additional day to spend in Masai Mara, a famous game reserve that spans the boarder of Kenya and Tanzania. We got to see all kinds of animals in their natural habitat. We saw lions with their cubs, rhino, giraffes, hippos, and more. It was literally like something right out of National Geographic. But surprisingly some of the most incredible animals to watch were the elephants. These were a far cry from those circus elephants from my childhood. These elephants were larger than life powerful animals that trampled a path as they walked through the brush and knocked over trees, and broke branches. They were spectacular to be around. The largest living land animal, the average adult male is 10-13 feet tall at the shoulder and weighs between 10-13 thousand pounds. To get your head around just how massive these animals are, get this, their molars (their teeth) weigh about 11 pounds each and are 12 inches long! Their tusks weigh between 50-100 pounds and are between 5-8ft long! These are massive and impressive animals.

And when I think about those elephants that I saw in my childhood at the circus it’s almost comical that one of these grown massive, powerful 10,000-pound elephants could be tamed and chained to a little stake in the ground. What happens is when the elephant is young the trainer will drive a metal stake in the ground and chain the baby elephant to it. Unable to pull the stake out of the ground and lacking the strength to break the chain the baby elephant eventually gives up. It grows accustomed to the stake and conditioned to believe it can’t break free. In adulthood when the elephant is literally thousands of pounds, and has the strength to push a railway car, the trainer can still chain that elephant to a small stake in the ground to contain this giant powerful animal. All because it’s been conditioned to believe it can’t break free.

3 Questions to Ask about how Your Past is Affecting your Present:

1. What behaviors and practices does your church need to break free from that worked when you were smaller but are restricting you from moving forward and are keeping you stuck?

2. What ministries were effective at one point and breathed life into the church years ago but are now limping along and take energy to prop up?

3. What Staff Members were the right person at the right time some years ago, but have since hit a lid and need to be shifted into another role or off the team?

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation

Why You Should be Worried that Your Ministry is Going Smooth

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Have you ever noticed that the ministry of Jesus and the Apostles after Him was messy? I mean it was literally like one Jerry Springer episode after another. Now if you know anything about me, you know that I love helping churches implement strategic steps that help vision become reality. My first foot forward is to lead a great team to diligently execute a great plan. But have you ever stopped to think that maybe doing ministry the way Jesus modeled it means that ministry may end up being a little messier than we might like? The book of Proverbs puts it this way in chapter 14, verse 4…

“Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.”

The Scripture is clear that one of the by products of an abundant harvest is a mess. Yes you can have a nice, clean, explainable ministry but it means you’ll miss out on an abundant harvest. Here are 4 indicators that you may be avoiding a messy ministry:

1. Infrequent Risk Taking

2. You have Church full of Nice Church People

3. Your Church Growth is more easily explained through strategic planning than it is a move of God

4. Messy People are looked at as an Interruption instead of an Opportunity

So which would you rather have, a nice, clean, explainable ministry or an abundant harvest? What would you add to the list?

Posted in Leadership, Spiritual Formation

Do Denominational Labels Matter Anymore?

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Recently I was criticized by a former student that Thomas Road Baptist Church is not “Baptist” enough. I’ve heard that from time to time. Used to happen at West Ridge Church when new folks would come in and say, “love this place, but it’d better be Baptist or we’re gone!”

My word. John the Baptist didn’t die for my sins, Jesus did. Having been in a Baptist church most of my life, I have an appreciation for the times in history when true followers of Jesus in response to false teachings or persecutions did distinguish themselves with the name Baptists. I do appreciate the long history of disciples who called themselves Baptists who gave all and died on foreign shores to proclaim Good News. People claimed the name Baptist as a way to say they were followers of the Way in religiously confusing times. I honor those martyrs and that history. It’s disrespectful to ignore it.

But Baptist only? Baptist above all? The Baptist life? What about the Christ life? What about Christian? What about disciple of Jesus above all?

I humbly perceive that 90% of people who argue about being Baptist over another name are referring to worship styles, denominational practices, and secondary or tertiary teaching distinctions. They don’t understand primary biblical doctrine that unites most of us. By the way, stick another name in here: Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentacostal, Calvary Chapel, Lutheran- we’re all guilty.

Yes, Dr. Falwell once held an event called Baptist Fundamentalism, which gave us all a free trip to skip conference sessions and explore Washington DC. But he was a Christian first and foremost – “Jesus First”. He was a fundamentalist evangelical, holding to core teachings and heart of the mission with any brother of another name who would join.

Time is coming very rapidly in America, where names, tribes, associations, denominations will mean very, very little to anyone outside the faith. The only questions they will ask are these: “Are you followers of that Jesus? Do you believe those teachings of that Book? Do you really love each other the way He said you would? Is there any salvation there for me?”

God help us if the answer is, “not sure ‘bout all of that, but we’re Baptist!”

This is a guest post by my friend Matt Willmington. Matt is the Director of Ministries at Thomas Road, where he has served in various capacities for 13 years. Prior to rejoining TRBC in 2009, Matt ministered eight years as executive pastor and small groups pastor at West Ridge Church in Dallas, GA. Matt is also a former youth ministry educator for Liberty University.

Matt has been a Christ-follower for 42 years and husband of a kindergarten teacher (Chris) for 23 years. He is also the father of two young adults and one high schooler.

Posted in Spiritual Formation

What you Celebrate gets Repeated

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

The best leaders know that culture isn’t formed in a moment but a series of moments. Consistently leading and making decisions from an intentional framework that runs consistently through out the organization. One of the best tools great leaders use to do this is stories. Stories move our hearts faster than speeches, emails, or edicts from on high because art is the quickest way to our hearts. That’s why when we want to build an outsider focused culture at Sun Valley we do it through celebrating life change…people’s lives who have changed as a result of saying yes to Jesus. Because what you celebrate gets repeated. Here is a series of videos we showed in the past couple of weeks to tell stories that both reflect and build our culture of life change at the same time. Check them out!