SMALL GROUP DISCIPLESHIP #3: The Old Testament Pastoral Care Plan (Exodus 18)

Hi All,
This story in Exodus 18 known as "The Jethro Plan" has always fascinated me in terms of its potential for successful small group ministry.  God has revealed the plan for providing care for all the people, without burning out the pastor, and yet it seems that many churches have a difficult time putting this plan into reality.

It is a key method, not only for protecting leaders from burnout, but for applying to your church's small group ministry and care plan.

Now, here is how NOT to do it.  Many people, in reading this plan, simply decide that "what we will do is to simply divided the congregation into six or eight or ten groups (depending upon how many leaders we have in our key oversight board), and everybody will be responsible for a set number of people to call and check up on."  Has that EVER worked for anyone?  I've never seen it work.  Why?  Because it is not ORGANIC.  It is not natural; it is not in harmony with the natural human need to connect with others through a true and living relationship.  It often turns into a perfunctory phone call from one relative stranger to another relative stranger to talk about how things are going.  How successful do you think that will be?

What people often forget when they read Exodus 18 and then try to apply it to their church by this kind of artificial division is that all throughout the pentateuch, as the children of Israel were wandering around and trying to live their lives, is that they did everything in the context of family relationships.  The people were grouped by tribes, and the tribes represented actual bloodlines of relational connection to each other.

Now we obviously can't do that in the local church, but we can follow other relational connections.  For example, there is no natural relational connection between everybody whose name starts with A through D, for one elder, and E through L for another elder.  But you can begin to get some hope of relational connection if you organize the oversight of your people through your small group relationships.  At least there, we know that the people feel a connection for each other.

So organize your small group system this way.  That is, not only does each small group shepherd care for their own group, but you have some other overseers, or coaches, who care for the small group shepherds.  Who cares for your small group leaders?  What kind of span of care do you have?  That is, how many small group leaders is each one of your coaches/overseers responsible for?  Span of care is a huge issue if you want to successfully oversee your small group ministry.  When Carl George wrote his books on small groups years ago, he recommended a span of care of 5 groups per oversight shepherd.  However, Bob Logan, in the context of his coaching ministry recommends a span of care no greater than three, and often two.

Here's why:  if you want to have a successful small group ministry, which helps your leaders to overcome their problems, provide care for their people, teach, visit, outreach, etc.  then you must implement a leadership coaching plan.  That is, you must have trained coaches whose sole job is to come alongside two or three small group leaders and coach them to success.  And these coaches have to make this their primary ministry in the church.  If they try to squeeze it in with everything else they are doing it will not work.  The reason is that it takes a lot of effort to do it well.

So, the span of care needs to be small enough to work, and these overseer/coaches must be trained on how to be a good coaches so that they help the small group leaders to be stronger and better group leaders.  What you don't want to have is a case of reverse delegation going on, such that the overseer/coaches think that their job is to solve the small group leaders problems.  It's not.

So, put this all together and what do you have to provide a good pastoral care plan for your church, using the Jethro Plan of Exodus 18?

• 1st - you must have organic relationships between leaders and people.  

That is, no arbitrary lines can be drawn (at least with an American church); there must be actual relationships.

• 2nd - you must implement overseer/coaches for your small group leaders

• 3rd - you must have a small span of care of about two or three leaders per coach

• 4th - the overseer/coaches must be trained in proper coaching techniques

In my experience, I believe that these are the four principles of implementing an effective Jethro Plan in your church's small group system.

If you want to see a Bible study on small group principles from the Scripture, I have a free "Small Groups in the Bible" study in the Coaching section of HighPowerResources.  Just go to the Coaching section, and find the category on the right entitled, "Small Groups".  You will see several free resources there to help you with your small groups, including an SG Covenant, and a guide for communion in your small groups, as well as said Bible Study.

What do you think?  Is there anything that we can learn from the Jethro Plan for our churches?

By the way, our Shepherd Care Discipleship Group Software is going to be released soon, to help with this oversight process.

God's best to you and your ministry,

Dr. Bill