SMALL GROUP DISCIPLESHIP #6: What should small group software do for you?

Hi all,
Just a reminder that this blog is about what I am learning right now.  So we are continuing this series on small groups, based on things which I have learned and am still learning.  Many churches have a dream of "being a church of small groups",  but they often fail to make this happen.  What goes wrong?

We've looked at a lot of different elements necessary for a successful small group ministry in your church.  To be successful, you need to understand the power of Christian community so much that you are committed to it as a church.  You need to apply the four core parts of small group life.  You need to follow the Old Testament principles for long-term group care.  You need to make some functional infrastructure changes in the way you do small groups in your church.  And last week's blog was really important; you must have coaches, and appropriate spans of care, and - most importantly - constant care and attention, like a gardener.

This last point is really important.  When you are running a decentralized ministry like small groups, you must have somebody (or some bodies) who are responsible to simply oversee the whole process.  If everybody is so busy leading their own small groups that they cannot look after the small group system, then the entire structure is likely to fall apart.  Now in most cases it won't collapse instantly;  it will simply begin to fray at the edges, and then people will start to drop out of groups, and then leaders will drop out and not be replaced, until the entire system has fallen apart, and you no longer function as a "church of small groups"; you are simply a church with a few disparate small groups scattered helter skelter throughout the body.  That is not what you want to have happen.

The way to prevent this from happening is through constant care and attention.  As I've said, somebody must be responsible for the care and oversight of all the small groups and leaders.  And once you have that person, you need to equip them with the tools to help them succeed.  Now the tools for success will begin with good training curriculum, regular group meetings, and some sort of small group tracking software.

It is the small group tracking software which I want to focus upon.  Here's why:  when I was serving as Pastor of Disciple Making at Wheaton EFC in Wheaton, IL, I was responsible for building up the small group ministry.  It was a church of 1,000 people with a very strong Adult Bible Fellowship system in place.  They had a handful of small groups but wanted to have more.  So we started working at it, and eventually had 25 groups before responsibilities took me elsewhere.  So these were 25 small groups in addition to the dozen or so ABF's, all of which I was responsible for.  It didn't take too long to begin to lose track of which people were in which groups.  Or which groups were still meeting consistently.  Or who was the current leader of one of the ABF's this week.  Oh, we could muddle along, but that didn't feel like excellence to me.  I thought it would be important as a caring shepherd to know what was going on.

Here's a verse that relates to this:  Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds.  (Proverbs 27:23).

A good small group software tool at that point would have been very helpful.  Now, no group software can replace good leadership oversight; but it can make the job easier.

So what should small group software do for you?


It should ease the burden of oversight in the following ways:
Small group software should:

1 - Give you a quick overview of EVERY PERSON WHO IS LEADING a group in your church

It all rises and falls on leadership.  Your leaders are the shepherds of your sheep.

2 - Give you the names of EVERYONE in a small group in your church

This is important, but it is also kind of a preparation and set-up for the next point.

3 - Give you the names of everyone NOT IN A SMALL GROUP in your church

If you are not constantly being reminded of who is not yet in a small group, your people will fall through the cracks.  This is where the health and growth of your church is determined.  You need to help the people who are not in a group to find a group.

4 - Easily communicate with all of your small group leaders at once

Communication is important, but it can be time-consuming.  A good small group software should let you contact your leaders directly from the software.  

5 - Easily communicate with an entire small group

If you distribute your group software to the group leaders, then they can just contact their group as they are updating the group contact information, or filling out the monthly report for the small group coach.

6 - Track a history of each person's small group involvement

We quickly forget what someone is capable of, or what they have learned, or achieved, unless we have an easy way to remember.  Good small group software will show you a history of which groups your various members have been a part of.  This also assists your efforts to link people relationally or to provide pastoral care.  If you know what other groups they have been in, you will know who they know and can continue fostering those relational connections in times of need.

7 - Easily move people from group to group en masse

Rather than having to go to each person's record individually, and marking them as in a new group, small group software should be able to do this in one action.  If the entire class completed a course and then all moved on to another one, you should be able to easily "promote" everybody into the next class with one click.

8 - Track whether or not prerequisites have been completed before assigning someone to the next class in a course

If your church uses a small group system which requires completion of certain prerequisites (101 before 201, for example), then your software should prevent people from registering from one class if they have not completed the previous class.

I've been thinking a lot lately about small group software, and what it should be able to do.  There have been some churches helping me to work this out, and we have now nearly completed the work on Shepherd Care Group Discipleship Software.   We'll let you know when we get it done.

What about you?  If you lead or manage small groups, I would love to hear from you about what you need or want in small group software.   Send me a reply if you can.

Thanks and God's best to you and your ministry,

Dr. Bill
HighPowerResources.com
SermonBase.com

SMALL GROUP DISCIPLESHIP #5: Critical elements for small group success

Hi All,
Many churches have a dream of "being a church of small groups",  but they often fail to make this happen.  What goes wrong?

Keeping a small group ministry running well is a full-time job.  What makes a small group ministry distinct from other church ministries is that it is decentralized.  You could run a youth group, or a children's ministry, or a men's ministry, and basically have everyone together in the same room for teaching or worship.  But a small group ministry, by its very nature, is going to be spread out all around your city or county as people meet together in their living rooms.  The role of a small group director does not involve the same skill set as that of some other program director.  S/he needs to be much more of a nurturer, or gardener, rather than a rancher.  It involves carefully inspecting each small plant or bush, and seeing how it is progressing or growing.  The work which needs to be done is best accomplished with a small gardener's implement; not a backhoe.

So a good small group director needs to be constantly in contact with his or her various leaders.  Now, depending on the size of the church and ministry this may mean that the Director has contact with each small group, or what is more likely, the Director has contact with Coaches, who then oversee and help each specific small group.  But the point is, that since small group ministry is a decentralized ministry, you need to make accommodations for an appropriate span of care.

What do we mean when we refer to a small group coach?  A small group coach has a responsibility to oversee from three to six specific small group leaders.  The Coach needs to be there to help with problems, come up with creative ideas for outreach or service, help with 'strays', and to provide accountability.  A small group coach does not lead a small group.  His or her job is to shepherd the small group leaders within his/her span of care.  If the span of care is too large, then the Leaders aren't cared for properly.  If it is too small, the Coach may try to squeeze in another ministry focus, and then the small group focus will suffer.

If you want to know how to train the small group coaches, a good place to start would be my four-part series on coaching from earlier in the year.

So the key idea is this: if you want to have a successful small group ministry in your church, then your small group leaders will require constant attention.  This means that either you hire a staff person to oversee your small groups, or you assign a high capacity volunteer, who is not involved in any other ministries in the church, to oversee your small groups.  

And of course, the senior pastor must be involved in some significant way.  This would mean at least two things:  First,  the senior pastor is in a small group.  Second, the senior pastor must, in some small but important way, be a part of the small group leadership meetings.  It could be just a greeting, a devotional, or a teaching, but the shepherd needs to keep a close eye, and have a good relationship with the under-shepherds who are helping to care for the flock.

Next to the role of quality Biblical preaching, the health of the small groups within your church, is a deciding factor on the health of your church.  And the health of your small groups is impacted by the spiritual health of your small group leaders.  So, how are you caring for them, recruiting them, training them, and coaching them to succeed?

So, some of the critical elements for success in your small group system are:

• Decentralized Ministry Skills
• Appropriate Span of Care
• Coaches
• Constant Attention
• Senior Pastor Involvement

In summary, this is a lot of work!  But it is important work to the heath - and growth - of your congregation.  So see that it is done well.

And please, please, don't deceive yourself into thinking that things are going 'just fine' and people will talk to you if there are any problems.  Things may not be going fine, but you wouldn't know, if you don't have a good care system in place.  And people will eventually talk to you about problems, but usually not until it is too late.  That is what good small group coaches should be helping you with.  They should catch a hint of trouble early so that you can deal with it before it gets out of hand.

When your church gets to a certain size, then some good tracking software would help the task as well.  The small group director needs some tools to help oversee the flocks well.

So, I've just touched on a few of the key elements for small group success.
What else have you found is critical for success?  Send me a note.

In the mean time, God's best to your small group ministry,

Dr. Bill

SMALL GROUP DISCIPLESHIP #4: Can we really be a church of small groups?

Hi All,

Many churches have a dream of "being a church of small groups" but often fail to make this happen.  What goes wrong?
The dream is admirable.  There are some definite benefits to being "a church of small groups."
But what do we even mean when we say that?

I came across this factoid about small groups at the Church Growth Factoids section of HighPower:

“Based on lots of research over the years, there are some standard guidelines.  Ideally, you have a minimum of 60% of your adult worship attendees involved in either classes or groups.  If you can get more than 70%, you’re excelling.  Between 50 and 60% is fair, and less than 50% is poor.”

(McIntosh, Gary.  OutreachMagazine.com.  Sept/Oct. 2007.)

So the goal is to have more than half of your adults in small groups, and preferably more than 60%.  In fact, I doubt that you can even make the claim that "we are a church of small groups" unless more than half of your adults are involved in small groups.

And they question I want to ask, is 'Why limit it to adults?'  We have both our youth and our children involved in age-appropriate small groups at our church of 700.  This sets people up, and prepares them for a lifetime expectation of being in true Christian community with others.

So how many of your adults or people are in small groups in your church?

What are the Benefits of being a "Church of Small Groups"?

• 1.  True Christian Community

My first blog post in this series talks about the elements of Christian community (Acts 2:42-47) which are available through small group participation.  Imagine having a whole church of people who truly experience what it means to live in Christian community with other brothers and sisters in Christ.

• 2.  Pastoral care for everybody

Every pastor who loves his people wants them to be cared for properly.  But he also realizes that he and even the whole staff are not sufficient to meet all the needs people have in their lives.  This is the power of small groups.  Small groups do not have to be assigned pastoral care, or told to care for their people; they do it naturally.  It just happens.  And so a "church of small groups", is a church of good pastoral care.

• 3.  Personally applied discipleship

Small groups apply Christian discipleship in a very personal way.  As the group works through a Bible study, or discusses the pastor's sermon, they find ways to make it relate to their lives.  It is the best application of the Word, in the context of a small group who can talk about how to make it real in their lives.

Why the dream goes awry:
But if the benefits of small groups are so great, then why does it not always happen?  What stops the dream from becoming reality, or from not being completely fulfilled?  I see three primary reasons, and if one doesn't stop a church, the others do.  They are interdependent, and intertwined as to how they prevent a church from achieving this dream.

• 1.  Saying it, but not doing it

Lots more churches say that they are a church of small groups, than really are.  "Having" small groups in your church is not the same as "being" a church of small groups.  There needs to be real intentional effort.  This is indicated by either having a staff person or a volunteer whose sole job is to oversee and guide small group creation and maintenance.

• 2.  Doing it, but making it optional

If a church begins doing small groups, but just lists it as an optional item on the menu instead of the main course, they will not achieve the goal of "being a church of small groups".  But when we say "optional", we obviously can't force people to join a small group if they don't want to.  But you can design your church infrastructure such that it is very difficult to avoid them.  Larry Osborne has a great book out, entitled "Sticky Church", in which he talks about how they focus so much on small groups, that people don't have a lot of other options if they want to meet some people or get some personal discipleship.

• 3.  Requiring it, but not streamlining programming

Third mistake which prevents the dream of "being a church OF small groups" from becoming reality, is to offer small groups and even strongly encourage it, but then also offer too many other choices on the menu.  It is difficult to choose the main course, when there are so many salads, appetizers, and desserts also available.  Take a look at all the programming in your church, and make a list.  How many other choices do you have in your church besides joining a small group?  Too many, and that's a problem.  Most churches in American are over-programmed.

How to fix it:
OK, so you want to "be a church OF small groups", and you see some of the problems in your own church, so how do you fix it?  Here are just three ideas I have, which is based on comments of experts in this field.

• 1.  Pastor must lead

This is the number one, must have, can't avoid it, requirement to become a church that truly values small groups.  Until and unless the Senior Pastor is involved in a small group it will never happen in your church.  If he gets involved, two things will happen:  First, everyone who cares will take note, and begin reshaping their own values in that direction.  Second, s/he will make reference to his/her small group in sermons and begin sharing stories of this or that, and people will hear how helpful the group is in the pastor's life, and this will make an impact.

• 2.  Infrastructure must support it

Second step is that your church infrastructure must support small groups, not work against it.  What do I mean by that?  First, as mentioned, you need to either require it, or strongly support it.  In my Chicago church plant, we made small groups the place where you became a member of the church.  If someone wanted to join the church, they had to take the membership class (which most all churches require), but then THE SMALL GROUP LEADER HAD TO LISTEN TO THE TESTIMONY AND SIGN THE MEMBERSHIP FORM.  So they had to join a small group to become a member.  How does your infrastructure support small groups?

• 3.  Dump the good for the best

As mentioned already, Larry Osborne in the book Sticky Church makes some great comments about this.  You need to get rid of a lot of other ministries to really focus on small groups.  What if you've been around for a long time as a church, and you already have a plethora of various miscellaneous ministries clogging up the discipleship system?  You will have to practice benign neglect and let some of them die, so that small groups can gain a more central focus.

Can we really become "a church OF small groups"?  Yes, I think you can, but it will take work and will not happen by accident.  You will have to be intentional, and smart, and persevering to make it happen.  (And when we finish "Shepherd Care Discipleship Group Software", you will be able to use that to help make it happen at your church.)

I would be curious to find out:  What have you seen work, or not work, when trying to apply this model?  Drop me a comment and let me know.   Thanks!

Wishing you God's best for your ministry!

Dr. Bill

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

SMALL GROUP DISCIPLESHIP #2: How Necessary are Small Groups?

Was C.Peter Wagner right or wrong?
I had the privilege of receiving most of my doctoral courses from Dr. Wagner, and I, like many others, have read and consumed his many volumes on church growth.  One very influential book which he wrote was entitled, Your Church Can Grow.  It was originally written in the '70's and then revised in the '80's, and republished in 2001.  It is a GREAT book.  It covers the seven vital signs of church growth.  It has wonderful church growth principles in it.  It was in that book, and probably some of his others in which he talked about the need for a C-C-C church structure.

This is a reference to the three key structures necessary for a healthy church:

• C - Celebration

This is your typical Sunday or weekend worship services where everybody gathers together to worship.

• C - Congregation

This is your mid-sized group; typically a Sunday School class or Adult Bible Fellowship.  Please note that even though he uses the word  "congregation" he is not talking about the church worship service, but a gathering of part of the church.

• C - Cell

This is the small group.

Wagner's contention is that you need all three of these to have a healthy and strong church.  And he is, no doubt, right as usual, for most churches.  (Although I have read some who contend that it is very difficult to find a church which does all three of these well.  For example, when I was serving a major suburban church in Wheaton, IL, they had a very solid ABF ministry.  It was completely a part of their church culture, so much that anytime you met someone new, the second question after asking their name, was "Which ABF are you in?"  But they had a rather weak small group ministry, for a church of 1,000 people.  Even a strong effort to start small groups was met with limited success.  And the reason was that most people's social needs were met through their ABF's, which functioned as mini-congregation's within the church.  Why did they need a small group?  They had their worship, Bible teaching, fellowship, and outreach needs  (all four elements of true Christian community from last week's blog)

But my question about him being right or wrong, is specifically this:  Is that middle C (the 'congregation') absolutely necessary for church growth?  A lot of churches have pretty much focused just on the main worship service and small groups, and have done just fine.  Many of them pursue the 'two-winged' model of church, where Celebration is one wing, and Cell is the other.  And their church is able to fly quite well, thank you.  

So, is there any guidance from Scripture on this?
Well, here is one verse that makes me think:

Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.  (Acts 5:42)

This is a great verse that highlights the balance experienced by the early church between large group life ("in the temple courts"), and small group life ("from house to house").  This clearly points to the Celebration & Cell concept, but doesn't do much for supporting the need for the mid-sized Congregation group life.

Small groups are clearly a powerful tool for people to experience Christian community, as I mentioned in last week's blog, and they are a critical element in church structure.  So is the middle-C, that is, the mid-size Congregation even needed?

But perhaps there are many churches out there who do just fine without small groups?  I'd like to hear about churches that are able to fulfill their mission without small groups.  Maybe they only need the Big C, and the Middle C?  What has worked for you?  

We will continue talking and thinking together about small groups next week as we look at the Old Testament plan for pastoral care.

Until then,
for Christ and His Kingdom,

Dr. Bill

SMALL GROUP DISCIPLESHIP #1: The Power of Christian Community (Acts 2:42-47)

The Power of Christian Community (Acts 2:42-47)

I have a suspicion that most Christians have never experienced the power of Christian community.  And this is a big problem if you are trying to create a robust small group ministry in your church.  If most people have never experienced deep Christian community, they are not likely to easily jump into the small groups that you are offering.

What percentage of people in a typical church participate in small groups?

I went to the HighPowerResources.com Church Growth Factoids page, entered "small groups" in the search field and found this:  In 1992, Leith Anderson of Wooddale Church in MN said the following:

"Small groups are not for everyone. Even those churches that heavily promote them often do not exceed 50% of their overall constituency who regularly participate in small groups."  (A Church for the 21st Century)

But I recently finished the book "Sticky Church" by Larry Osborne (see my blog post on "Sticky Church vs. Simple Church").  And in that book he speaks quite a bit about how many adults are involved in his small group ministry (partly because they apply Simple Church concepts).  Here's what he says, 

"Without cutting the competition so severely, there is no way we could have reached an 80 percent participation rate in our small group program. And without keeping things trimmed back, we wouldn't have been able to sustain it, either"  (Sticky Church).

So we have two viewpoints here.  One pastor says 50% small group involvement is tops and another says that they have reached 80% small group involvement.  I would guess that Anderson's comments about 50% is probably closer to the average success experienced by most churches, and Osborne's numbers at 80% are an exception that proves what you can do if you stay focused on it for decades as he has in his church.  But please remember that these are the best rates experienced by these churches.  What this means is that for most churches, a very large percentage of their adults, probably more than 50% have not been in small groups.

But what is it that we want them to be experiencing when they get into a small group?  Christian community.  That ideal, as I see it, is best expressed in Acts 2:42-47:

2:42   They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.  44 All the believers were together and had everything in common.  45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.  46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,  47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.   (Acts 2:42-47)

And as you know, most people see four key elements of Christian community here:
1.  Biblical study  ("devoted to the apostles' teaching)
2.  Fellowship
3.  Worship & Prayer
4.  Outreach ("And the Lord added to their number")

This is the church in microcosm.  I really believe that if we can get most people together into their living rooms to really BE the church together, they will be hooked; they will choose to stay together in Christian community because it is so fulfilling to their souls.

In my personal experience of being in small groups, I have felt more love, affection, both given and received, when in the company of a small band of brothers and sisters who take the time to get to know each other, and share honestly about what God is doing in our lives, than in most other contexts of church life.

I believe that if the pastor believes in the power of small groups, because s/he has personally experienced it, then much of the Body will follow.  Of course, as Osborne has indicated, you as the pastor also need to be making some good programming choices for your church to make it easy for them to get into a small group.

Q:  What do you think?  Do you agree or disagree that most Christians have not experienced the power of Christian community?  How about pastors?

For the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

Sticky Church & Simple Church

HI All,

If you've read this blog for a while, you know that I am a fan of the Simple Church concept. The book Simple Church has really changed the way we do things around at my church. Although we read the book three years ago, we are still applying its principles today. They seem to get truer the older we get as a church.

Well, I have recently finished another great book, called Sticky Church by Larry Osborne. The focus of this book is on the power of sermon-based small groups to make your church "sticky"; that is, the sort of church that people don't easily leave. Larry Osborne has been the pastor of North Coast Church for years, and his wisdom and experience as a pastor comes through many pages of this great book. It is filled with good insights about how church works and doesn't work. It is not faddish. It is based on years of personal experience. He shares in this book how his church implements sermon-based small groups and how such a focus has helped to provide both spiritual growth and assimilation 'stickiness'.

He makes an interesting observation in chapter 12, "Overcoming the Time Crunch". Here's what he says:

"As I travel across the nation, speaking to leaders from various denominational, theological, and socioeconomic backgrounds, I've found they all say the same thing. As a rule of thumb, most people will participate in only two time slots a week. No matter what the third meeting is for or when it takes place; it's hard to get anyone to show up."

(p. 92, Sticky Church)

This, of course, ties in perfectly with the insights of Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger in Simple Church.

I am learning again and again the importance of stream-lining the church calendar so that we as a church can focus on that which is most important. And for us that means weekend worship and one spiritual growth opportunity mid-week. For us that may be a small group or a short-term discipleship course. But if we add too many other events, we distract our people from what they most need for spiritual growth and events.

The question I would ask you, as I ask myself now, is 'Does this plan (for some ministry event) fit with our 'two-slot paradigm'?

If there are only two slots in most - not all - people's lives, what do you want those two slots to be? You need to make a determination of this as the pastor of the church. What is important for the spiritual health of your people? As I ask myself that question, there is not a lot that I feel is worthy of pushing out their need to fellowship and pray each week with some close Christian friends as they support one another in a small group, in the hopes of living a successful Christian life. What is more important than that?

For most churches, if they are forced to choose -- and the pace of life in most communities IS forcing you to choose -- they would pick as number one, the weekend worship, and as number two, some form of small group community for spiritual life and growth.

We all need to keep this reality in mind as we make the programming choices for our busy, busy, busy church calendars.

Yours for the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

Pastor's and Technology

Hi All,

I've got a special word and thoughts for the pastors reading this post. This blog is all about what I am learning related to church growth & church health, and related topics. One issue that is tangentially related to this is the issue of technology in churches and in ministry. Now by 'technology' I am not referring to all the gadgets that are being used, or could be used, for ministry enhancement, such as the accessibility provided by cell phones, or the usefulness of video projectors for class teaching purposes. No, the area I am talking about is the issue of software for ministry.

Many pastors could have their ministry enhanced and strengthened by using software tailored to their needs.

We are moving from the era of the massive software suites to the niche software targeted to specific needs. Software suites like Microsoft Office are gigantic pieces of code designed to meet the needs of everybody. And if you must meet the needs of nearly everybody, that means that it will not perfectly meet the needs of anybody. For example, look at the area of word processors. Microsoft has created Word and filled with it with tons of features so that should anybody out there possibly look for that one particular feature it will be there. But the era of the massive software suite bloated with tons of little-used features is fading away. We are now moving to more customized or niche type of software options. Instead of just a generic word processor, for example, now there are specific word processors plus, such as some designed for screen writers, which combine elements of word processing and data processing into one piece of software. Or there is the highly specialized word processing required for writing doctoral dissertations. These are examples of customized niche software for sub-groups who are looking for something more specific than just a 'word processor'. And now we have that same type of niche specialization for pastors in a piece of software called "SermonBase Message Planning software". It is a word processor plus a database combined together so that a pastor can both create a sermon using the typical word processing features for text creation and highlighting, but it also contains a database so that a pastor can archive and search for sermons based on multiple criteria including Scripture, Topic, Title, Date, or several other options. SermonBase is just one example of the way that pastor's can do a better job at ministry by accessing and using software specifically designed for what they do. Why continue to use a generic word processor which is designed for nobody in particular, when you could have something specifically designed to help you do a better job at the one activity you spend more time on than any other in a typical week: sermon preparation. Something as important as the Word of God deserves a better tool for preparing to deliver it. That is the benefit of a specifically-targeted software like "SermonBase".

Or consider the important pastoral function of tracking people who are in your church in the various small groups. Most pastors need to know who is in which group and how things are going in that group. And can you believe that some churches still try to track those groups by using an Excel spreadsheet? Why?? When there are customized tools out there specifically designed to help churches do that very important function well. There are a lot of tools out there, and you are free to research one that fits for you. But I couldn't find any that I was totally happy with, so I made my own. I call it "Shepherd Care Discipleship Group Software" (yeah I like long names). It helps to track people in the various groups, and where they are in your discipleship system or your small groups. Using the shepherd metaphor it tracks the "sheep" in various "flocks" headed by various "shepherds" (or teachers) in your church. It is made for churches so that they can do a good job at fulfilling Jesus' command to care for the sheep.

There are other things I could say about this, but I am really convinced that the church needs software specifically targeted to help the church be the church. That's why I've been working on HighPower Resources software for some time now.

For the Kingdom of Heaven,


Dr. Bill

Why I need Shepherd Care

Hi All,

Coincidentally, I also have a comment this week about some other software I am developing. I mentioned SermonBase Message Planning Software last time, because I was preaching and needed some old files that I had developed before SermonBase. Well this week, something cool happened with another piece of software which we are developing, called "Shepherd Care" Group Software.

Here's what is my problem, maybe it is yours: tracking the various people who are in the various groups in the church. I've tried other software to help make this happen, and have not been satisfied. Mostly the software is overkill - both in price and installation and usability. Most of the group software which I have found is one 'module' in a gigantic software package that tracks all aspects of church life: finances, membership database, giving, groups, emails, directories, etc. But in some cases this is way more trouble than it is worth. I know, because we have some of this at our church now, and it is very cumbersome to enter & manipulate information and get reports.

Installation is overkill too, because often they are either server-based, which means I must be at church and hooked into the church's main server; or else they are web-based and slow.

I needed something that was nimble and quick; easy to access, desktop-based, and inexpensive to deploy. So then I was contacted by "Pastor Pete" from a church called "Cowboy Fellowship' in Pleasanton, TX that was growing gang-busters and needed a software package to track their progress. So we are developing a tool which I call "Shepherd Care" and it is group tracking software. It uses the metaphor of Shepherds, Sheep, and Flocks for tracking groups, and classes, and small groups in your church.

We are testing it right now in both churches and making usability improvements as we go along.

Well here is what happened just a couple weeks ago with Shepherd Care, and which is convincing me that this could be really useful software: One of the reports we've included in Shepherd Care is a monthly "Flock Report" which is emailed to the leaders each month. They complete it and send it back. One of the questions on that report is 'who did not show up this month at your group?' And the name of a particular young man was listed on the report. So our discipleship team gave that leader a call to check on why this individual did not show. When the follow-up call was then made to the young man, he said something like, "I'm going to take a break from church for awhile." The leader was able to lovingly let that young man know that that wasn't really OK with him or the group because they loved him and would miss him. Because of that conversation, the man stuck around, and it was really a joy for me to see him in church last week!

Shepherd Care helped us prevent one of our sheep from straying.

Now you may say, "Well any alert small group leader should be able to do that on their own!" And that is true; but you and I both know that doesn't always happen. People are busy, and sometimes they either don't notice, or don't get around to contacting a straying member. The value of having a piece of software like "Shepherd Care" is that it helps provide redundant systems of care, so that if one person misses the chance to follow-up a straying sheep, through monthly reports like the "Flock Report" someone else might notice a pattern and catch it. And in this case it works. It is an example of how the right easy-to-use software can make your life as a caring leader easier, not harder.

It convinced me that we need to keep fine-tuning it and getting it ready to release to churches soon, because it is useful for kingdom work. And that is what it is all about.

Yours for the Great Shepherd of the sheep!

Dr. Bill

Small Groups vs. Sunday School - The Main Event

Hey All,

Just heard about this debate between Rick Howerton, Small Groups Expert & David Francis, National Sunday School Director.  You can find it here:  http://www.lifeway.com/sundayschoolvssmallgroups/?CID=SSVSSG-LWCMain-UpcomingEvent-20090502 .

Rick recently sent me an email asking for my thoughts on the subject.  Here is the email interview:

HI Rick,

Thanks for contacting me.

I'll be happy to give you my answers to your questions, but I do need to say that some of these decisions took place before I got here three years ago, so I'll give you my best guess for those that preceded me, as well as our current thinking.  Since I've served in several churches (Wheaton EFC, church plant, old traditional church, etc.), some of these comments are based on combined experiences...

1) What brought you to the point of deciding to switch from Sunday School to Small Groups? 

Crossroads is 13 years old and from day one made the decision to only do small groups.  Part of that was necessity, because for the first 8 years they had no building.  After it was built they decided to continue their small groups focus by hiring a small groups director.

2) Has your church grown since you made the change? Do you think switching from Sunday School to Small Groups was key in the growth of your church? If so, why? 

Since we didn't switch it's a little tough to answer this, but I will say that participation in a small group is definitely a major factor in our retention rate.  Those who join a group (small group, Ministry Team, men's/women's group) stick around.  Most of those who do not, don't stay.  

My guess is that participation in a sunday school, or ABF, would also help retention, but not as much.  And the reason for this is two-fold, which are the two problems I have with SS/ABF's.  First, they are often large enough that if someone is missing they are not noticed, or it is not perceived as a big deal.  Whereas if someone misses a small group, the question is always asked, 'Where are they?' and 'Why are they missing?'  

Second problem with SS/ABFs is that the DNA or prime purpose of those groups is in most cases just content dumping; learn more.  Unless you have a very focused outreach/group/assimilation orientation which is constantly taught to all SS/ABF leaders, they are just there to teach, so if someone is missing, it doesn't interfere the with true purpose of the group.  Whereas in a small group a key purpose is fellowship, so if someone is missing, it impinges upon your very reason for being.

So that's my case for why participation in small groups is going to have a better impact on growth than participation in a SS/ABF.

3) How has the environment at your church changed since you have become a Small Group church? 

We have always been a small group church, but what I think is interesting and a little scary is the constant gravitational pull to become a SS/ABF church.  We constantly have people who want to teach in a SS/ABF context.  And their motivation for this is not so that we can grow the church; it is so that they can teach something.   We will have the occasional Sunday morning or Saturday night class, but we make sure that they are always short-lived, and focused on a key subject.  We don't want people to replace their small group with a  class.

4) What would you tell other churches who were considering switching from Sunday School to Small Groups? 

It is a major cultural shift, not to be under-estimated if you make such a change.  Besides the good reasons people have for wanting to be in a medium to large SS/ABF, you must also be aware of darker motives such as people who would rather sit semi-autonomously in a SS/ABF and absorb, than do the hard work of being in a small group which will hold them accountable for attendance and personal growth.  

God's best to you Rick.  Hope you win the big boxing match!

FYI, I'm currently working on a piece of software to help churches track people in both small groups and discipleship classes.  It's called "Shepherd Care" and I hope to release it soon.

God bless,

b

APPLYING SIMPLE CHURCH

Simple Church is a great book with a powerful premise. It is basically that simple, and therefore effective, church's have a clearly defined process for making disciples. And this means a complete process from the moment before a person accepts Christ, to the growth into Christian maturity. According to the book you are not a Simple Church, if you just have a bunch of hodge-podge Bible studies, small groups, and Sunday School classes randomly selected according to the whims and interests of your people. You are an effective Simple Church if you know where you are taking your people spiritually, and have a specific path to take people there. And even then you are not quite a Simple Church, until you have removed everything that is extraneous to Simple Church discipleship.

The four parts of Simple Church life is: Clarity, Movement, Alignment, and Focus.

Here is how this works out in our experience:
CLARITY -- how you define your end-product goal. We spent a year as a staff in defining our discipleship product. We did this by developing 27 character and behavior traits that we seek to achieve as a church. We've put these into three categories of Head (beliefs), Heart (attitudes), Hands (behaviors). Each of the 27 traits reference a particular Biblical trait which defines a mature disciple. We worked these through our entire leadership team, Board, Staff, and ministry leaders.

MOVEMENT -- defines your plan for moving people from non-Christian to mature Christian. And what is required here is that you actually have a plan; just hoping you have enough Bible studies and small groups to help people grow, is not a plan. You need to know what you will teach them at each level, and why, and what will be next. Here is how we are doing it at Crossroads: We have developed a three-stage process that includes Main Street (worship + evangelism), Community Circle (growth and loving care), and Ministry Way (service). These are tied in to our logo, and our purpose statement. Our purpose statement covers the five basics of Worship, Evangelism, Growth (discipleship), Loving Care, and Ministry service. And the Movement is tied in to our logo as a church. Our logo represents Main Street (going up the vertical beam of the cross), and around the heart for Community Circle, and then back along the horizontal cross beam for Ministry Way.

ALIGNMENT -- defines the process of making sure that every ministry in the church contributes somehow to the spiritual growth development process that you have defined in your Clarity and Movement stage. Here is how we are addressing the issue of Alignment. We used to have (and still do) a collection of small groups started by various people focusing upon various topics of interest. It is your usual hodge-podge of Christian discipleship selection. We still have that, as we left the old system in place; but now we are developing a new system that begins with just four key small group discipleship experiences. Those four discipleship groups are: Alpha - the well known seeker sensitive introduction to Christianity; Connections - a group focused on developing relational skills, and then using those skills to love seekers into the Kingdom. The third discipleship group is Foundations - which covers the basic Christian discipleship habits (Scripture, prayer, meditation, fasting, silence, etc.), and finally, the fourth is Shape, which introduces people to their spiritual gifts and where to serve in the local church.

The way we make this happen is that after our membership class ("On ramp"), we encourage everyone of the people in the class to take either Alpha or Connections. That is our alignment portion.

The final stage is FOCUS. This is where it gets interesting. Focus means that you as a church only promote those ministries which specifically help this process. This means that you must either ignore or eliminate any ministries which conflict with your stated purpose as a church. Most churches have a wide array of ministries which do not contribute toward their stated maturity goal (if they even have one). What we have chosen to do is simply focus on the ministries that contribute toward our stated goal, and allow the rest to continue on as long as they do not interfere with the stated goal.

We are about 15 months into our Simple Church plan. We took a full year planning it, and communicating it to the leaders. Then we did a sermon series in the spring to introduce it, and then another one in the fall to launch it. We also tried one sample Alpha class last year to test it out. Now we have launched this Fall with both an Alpha Class and a Connections Class, and are on track to ramp up all four by the time we finish out this ministry year in the Spring. So far, so good.

Learning and applying Simple Church is not so simple. It has been complicated and confusing, and challenging, but very, very good, as we wrestle with what it means as a church to have a clean and simple process for making disciples.

Blessings in Christ,
Dr. Bill

SMALL GROUPS: What's your Hospitality Index?

When it comes to small groups there is a constant tension in most groups between outreach and intimacy. Imagine, if you will a continuum, and at one end of the line is complete intimacy & togetherness, or fellowship. People know and love each other. They are sharing their burdens with one another, loving one another, confessing their sins to one another, etc. Basically, they are fulfilling all of the 'one anothers' that Scripture commands us to fulfill. It is the perfect small group, right?

There is, however, another important dimension to small group life, and it is found at the very end of that famous set of verses about small groups in Acts 2:42-47, "and the Lord daily added to their numbers". That's right, I'm talking about 'outreach'. No small group in the Scriptures lives and dies unto itself; the focus must always be upon those who are not yet walking with the Lord. They look in, and as the Bible says they "see how they love one another", and they want a piece of that. They want in. This is the built-in tension of the Hospitality Index.

At this point, every small group is faced with a choice. It does something like this, "Hey guys, I have this friend from work, and I was telling him about our group, and he's going through a rough time right now, and I was wondering if he could maybe join us once." Or, maybe the Director of Small Groups puts out an ad in the church newsletter and says that if anyone wants to join a group, to give him/her a call, and s/he will set them up with a group. Then s/he calls various groups to try to place a new person. How will the group respond? Their willingness to accept others into their group is a measurement of their "Hospitality Index".

The Hospitality Index is in constant tension. As I said, imagine a continuum. When a group begins, they are all about inviting people to their new group. So they would be way over on the Outreach side of the line. But then as the weeks go on, they get to know each other, and they begin to open up and start sharing about their lives. As they do this, the group's Hospitality Index slowly begins to move more and more closely to the Intimacy side of the continuum. Then one week, one of the members breaks down and starts crying about issues at home. At that moment, the Hospitality Index takes a big leap towards Intimacy. And so it goes. Generally, the longer the group is in existence, the more the Hospitality Index is over on the Intimacy side. Or said another way, the less hospitable they are. Oh, they gladly welcome each other, but not strangers. Because that would ruin the incredible fellowship they are currently experiencing.

Generally, if a group goes 18 months without adding anyone new, they never will. They will then either slowly implode as a group, and eventually die. Or they will calcify and become a clique that never welcomes another person into their mix.

The question is, what does your church do with new people who are interested in small groups? How do you get them into the small group system? An understanding of the Hospitality Index will help you to make the right decisions.

There are two steps which you can do to address this on-going tension in the Hospitality Index. First, you could create groups in which every "small group covenant" has a built-in clause that "this groups shall remain open and available to newcomers; that anyone is free to invite a friend into this group any week". What that does at the outset of the group as it begins is that it sets a standard or a boundary on the Hospitality Index. It says that the door will always be open for newcomers. How does this affect the Hospitality Index? Well, if the group has been slowly moving towards greater Intimacy and away from Outreach, it causes a jump back towards the Outreach side as soon as someone new walks in the door; "hey everyone, this is my friend from work that I told you about...". They welcome him, but they also clam up for the night. And they stay safe and don't share too many intimate details with the group (like they used to), until they get to know this new guy, or until he leaves. That's the HI index. So, creating Open Groups, based on the small group Covenant is one option.

There is another option as well: you could start all of your Newcomers in one group. That is, as everyone is going through the Membership Class, you could build in small group type sharing as a part of your weekend or six-week class. Then as the class goes on, they start forming up their own small groups. Then you just make sure that you seed into each of those groups, during the membership class, someone capable of leading each one. At the end of the class, you announce new groups with the leaders, and many of the newcomers will hop on board. This method is also compatible with the HI index.

So there are two methods of dealing with the natural tension in any group between Intimacy and Outreach. They are both important and Biblical needs which must be addressed, and a sensitivity to the Hospitality Index will help you do just that.

For the Kingdom,


Dr. Bill

Small Groups vs. Sunday School

Hi All,

I just had a conversation with a church chairman about the impact of Sunday School on small group involvement. Sunday School, or Adult Bible Fellowships (ABF's) are a good tool and so are small groups, but you need to know what you are trying to accomplish with each. In many churches the two are used interchangeably, but are they?

This discussion is impacted by my thoughts about "Simple Church" the book by Eric Geiger and Thom Rainer. We are taking a good look at everything that we are doing as a church and trying to decide how it SPECIFICALLY fits in with our discipleship process. We are no longer going to do 'discipleship by accident'; that is, just hoping that because we have a small group, or a SS or ABF that people will automatically develop into disciples of Jesus Christ.

We have developed our Product description (something I teach about when I do the 'Growing a Healthy Church' seminars - see the "Seminars" page on HighPowerResources.com), and we have developed a 27 point Christian growth list, based on intellectual, emotional, and behavioral goals (head, heart, hands). About one-third of those goals are Christian character traits, fruit of the Spirit, mercy, compassion, humility, etc. What we discovered as we talked about in our strategic staff meetings (4 hours a month), is that it is very hard to develop these qualities in people intentionally. (By the way, let it just be said here that we believe totally in the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit and the power of God to change lives, not us. But we want to COOPERATE WITH GOD, in the best way possible, that is why we are developing these Christian growth goals.). So we realized that if we are serious about developing Christian's who display the very character of Christ, through these personal attributes, related to what we call 'heart' traits, then the very best place to make that happen is in our SMALL GROUPS, NOT SUNDAY SCHOOL.

We no longer have Sunday School, or ABF's; it's all small groups all the time. We are even trying to avoid using the word 'class' about anything we do (except for maybe membership class, which we now call 'On Ramp'). And this brings me to my main point of this blog, the issue of small groups vs. Sunday School (ABF's): Sunday school in its classic incarnation was not going to do what we wanted it to do, so we are now totally focused on small groups.

You have to realize that in most churches, Sunday School, by its definition ("school") is aimed at intellectual education of the Christian mind with more Biblical teaching. The focus is primarily intellectual teaching of the Bible. Now anybody you talk to will say that they are also focused on fellowship, prayer, sharing, etc. just as any good church would want to be. But the problem is that this is done in a 'classroom' in the church building. Big difference when you go into a small group in somebody's home. It has a totally different feel, not only in size, but in atmosphere. This provides the opportunity for deep sharing and care and prayer of real life issues. This is where you really have a hope of helping people to address the deeper character issues of the Christian life. And that is where our church wants to be - focused on character growth.

So we have made the switch; out with Sunday School and Adult Bible Fellowships, and totally in with Small Groups.
And we are trusting that God the Holy Spirit will use these more intimate settings to conform us all more to the image of Christ.

At work in His Kingdom,

Dr. Bill