Small Groups Guy

I will be brief, because it is July 3rd and you got hot dogs & fireworks on the mind. Ive been encouraged by some small group leaders at our church and their grass roots efforts to build their small groups. So I want to share their strategies with you. First, here is how we do it large scale: The main way we connect people is through a venue we have that connects people to the church called “starting point.” Anyone wanting to get connected comes through there. The other way is through a process called “GroupLink.” we hold grouplink events every so often and we also have a portion of our church website dedicated to grouplink where people can find out info about groups. We even have a place on the worship guide insert to indicate on a sunday that they want to get into a group. The problem with both of those (starting point & grouplink) is that it requires some action by those wanting to get connected. They have to make the effort. Many people who would be willing to be in a group, simply dont make that effort. So we come to our grass roots strategies.

1. MEET PEOPLE ON SUNDAY. Some groups have flooded our greeting teams, kidslife teams, & choir and are simply introducing themselves to people and asking if they are in a SummitLIFE group. If they arent, they invite them to theirs. Its awesome and its such an easy way to connect people. By the way, if you are in a SummitLIFE group, that needs to be the default question when you meet someone on Sunday morning. If the response is “no” immediately find a pen & write their contact info down and send it to me.
2. HELP OUT WITH STARTING POINT. 60 new faces a month come through there at our church. We have group leaders who just come down there and help pull it off each week. In doing so, they cant help but invite people to their groups. Thats what we talk about down there. Starting Point is where the “Glenn Gary” leads are for you old-school film lovers. You cant just show-up though, you gotta make it through the Starting Point screening process. But if you are a leader without a place to serve yet, you should consider that.

Regardless of what you do, get on the prowl!

Some of you know I still have a couple of classes to go to complete my time at seminary. Since Courtney and I are planning on being here in Durham for a long time, I am creeping to the finish line. Id rather be with you guys in our church than over in seminaria land. I have come to love seminaria, but its time to move on. This week I am over at seminary in a one week intensive course on church planting and pastoral ministry. More than a class though it has really been a retreat for me personally. Ive loved my first 6 months pastoring at the Summit but listen, it has been a hard 6 months. The following is personal to me and I questioned sharing it but the people of God need to encourage one another through sharing how God is dealing with them. Here is my “sharing.”: Personally my wife Courtney and I have struggled in our marriage in ’08. Our first pregnancy has not been easy. Bitterness, anger, frustration, apathy, have all at some point entered our home this year. I have faltered in being the spiritual leader Courtney needs me to be. Not like I denounced Jesus or anything, I just became the passive man that Adam was right when Satan attacked Eve. The TV has been more important in the evenings than the spiritual growth of my marriage. (This actually harkens back to a post from a couple of weeks ago on spiritual disciplines.) I say this because I spent some time confessing this to Courtney Sunday afternoon. That was hard, very hard, because my pride is big, very big. The sermon on Sin Sunday morning was the tipping point where God himself, through the scriptures as taught by our pastor, spoke directly into this area of my life. My passivity was short-circuiting what God clearly desires for our marriage. This week the course I am in has encouraged me over and over to get alone with God on a regular basis. It has encouraged me that my wife and my son are my first priority. That is a big deal and is hard for me because I just assume they are doing ok while I go pour myself into the life of our church. no mas. Im starting at home and working my out from there.

Question: where is sin keeping God from working in your life? In the life of those you influence? Serious question people. And are you close enough with another guy or girl that you could open up and confess this stuff to? My short answer: get in a SummitLIFE group. And SummitLIFE groups, its time to put the superficial on the shelf and start getting real with one another.

During our recent sermon series on the Song of Solomon (click here for related resources) our small group ministry experimented with a concept widely known as the sermon-based discussion method. We learned of this method from Larry Osborne and his team at North Coast Church. They have been doing this for a number of years now and have found it helpful in many ways. The method is simple: small groups, for their discussion/study time, cover the same general material the teaching pastor covers that week in the sermon. I say general because the secret ingredient to this is that the group is able to survey and discuss passages of scripture that correspond to the passage taught from in the sermon, while still covering the sermon passage as well.

The feedback from our leaders who participated in the experiment has been better than expected. These groups have by and large felt more a part of what we are doing as a church, and these leaders are the ones who are staying connected with our vision. Not to mention, these leaders have told me several times how much better we have made their job! Many of our leaders are not bible scholars (ok I think all but 2 are not bible scholars). They are Christians who want to love on other Christian brothers and sisters through encouraging them and doing life together with them. I don’t want to stamp out that fire by making them spend 10 hours preparing a study on Romans 7 and being so nervous with what they are going to share that they don’t take time to engage in real conversation with people in their group who silently but desperately need their leader’s care.

With the sermon-based method, we’ve taken those 10 hours away from the group leader and given them to our pastoral team. We write the studies each week and leave the group leader with the responsibility to download or pick-up the study a day or two before the group meeting so they can go over it (but if they download it 5 minutes before group starts they are still ok!).

Larry Osborne talks more about the advantages of this method in a recent article you should probably read.

Caveat: This model in no way “dumbs down” our hope for what a mature Christ follower should look like. We desperately want people to love Jesus and meet with God when they open His word each day. We actually believe this method will encourage spiritual growth more than others have that simply left small group leaders on an island to figure Romans 7 out for themselves. We are giving every small group member direct access to the teaching and leading of our pastoral team (who we believe God has gifted with teaching abilities for the building up of the rest of the church) who prepares the sermons and discussion guides each week!

We are excited about where this model will take us. Have you tried this before? What has your experience been like? Use the comment section and let me know.

Our small groups at the Summit Church are each coming up with ways we can be a blessing to our community this summer. Each group is being given $100 to prime the entrepreneurial pump in the minds of its group members. Now, normally I would launch into an incredibly witty and well written (and humble) post about how awesome and edifying this is going to be for our church. But I think you already know that. So instead I am going to use this post to direct you to 2 websites our teams have put together to help our groups succeed this summer:

1. www.hopefordurham.info - This is our discussion board to post ideas on how our groups are going to serve their community as well as a place to share what God is doing through these experiences. It is a cool interactive site that will be our main hub to communicate and encourage one another through during the coming weeks.
2. www.hopefordurham.com/smallgroups - This site is dedicated to explaining in detail our vision behind putting the real emphasis of blessing our city into the hands of our small groups. We are excited about what God can do through this and cant wait to see what is going to happen.

So, go spend the rest of the time you would spend here familiarizing yourself with those pages. And dont worry, I am brewing on some stuff that I am very excited about posting over the coming weeks.

I have recently been re-influenced by three guys who rank among the greatest thinkers in the 20^th & now 21^st centuries: Francis Schaeffer, C.S. Lewis, and Tim Keller. What all three have reminded me lately (when I read their stuff) is that one of the most important things a Christian must do is to speak the Christian message in a way non-Christians will understand it. I got to thinking about how even in Christian circles we throw around certain phrases so much we no longer really know what they mean. One phrase that gets tossed around every Jesus corner is “building community.” By the way, I am the first to admit I probably say, type, or pray this phrase 30 times a day as a small groups pastor. So if nothing else this post will help me out a bit!

At our church, and thus in our small groups, we say our purpose is to Love God, Love Each Other, Love the World. While I could go into more detail, the basic job of our group leaders is to establish an environment where all three can happen and to be the primary place where Love Each Other happens. So a big big thing our church is asking them to do is “build community.”

Im not about to give you a formula for building community. That process looks different in every setting. What I want to get at is what the essence of Christian community is. We’ve got to stop assuming we know what community is and re-orient our “building” steps based on what community actually is. God created community, and thus your small group, to be:

About God: Did you read that bold print and think “duh, that’s what bible study and prayer time is for?” STOP ASSUMING!! First of all your community better exist outside the walls of your group. But more importantly, when we think that way we compartmentalize God. Community is people, not meetings. So your main purpose is to be about God. Here is how this is challenging to me: is my main purpose as a group leader and group member to create an environment for people to be comfortable & make some friends, or is it to help people worship God with their whole lives? While I normally answer the latter, I often find myself settling for the former. Community is not ultimately about friendships, it is about God. Question for you: what one new step could you take to be about God in your group?

Transparent: Honestly, I almost didn’t write this because of my own shortcomings here. Thank God for the encouragement of scripture that I am not condemned for those shortcomings (Rom 8:1) & can live in freedom. Community is not surface level. Sorry, that’s just for acquaintances. Since the gospel of Jesus reaches in and challenges the deepest most private parts of a person’s life, community must go there too. This is the hardest thing in the world for us I think. And it is where Satan wins most of his battles against the church. Personal example: God tells me in the scriptures I gotta confess my sins to my Christian family (James 5:16). I commit the sin of not honoring my wife in an argument we have about that blankety-blank dog of ours. I have a small group & among the people in it are a couple of guys ive designated to be the guys I confess my sins to (who then will do their job by telling me to go confess to the one I sinned against). I deliberately choose not to tell them about my argument with my wife. Why? Because that shows weakness. Why does that matter to me? Because it is more important to me to appear like a great husband than it is to participate in the church family God has given me for just this purpose. Underlying assumption: I am more confident in me than I am in God. It happens this way everyday with so many people. Pride trumps gospel. Transparency is hard. But the consequences of not practicing it are infinitely worse. I really don’t want to think how many marriages in our church could have been saved if we practiced this a little more.

Missional: I will be brief here. See John 17 for Jesus’ words on this. The unity we experience under the gospel must be visible to the rest of the world. We should put ourselves in settings where we can be “watched.” Basically, God’s community is one that doesn’t exist for itself, it exists to bring the world into a reconciled relationship with its creator. How is your small group missional?

Ok, so the caveat here is many books have been written on this subject, but I didn’t want to write a book today. I challenge you to start thinking both on your “community” and on how clearly you are speaking about Jesus to people who don’t worship him.

I’m almost 26 now. I’ve officially been out of college longer than I was in it (yes I made it all 4 years). I find myself occasionally longing for the schedule and routine I had at 21 where I could go work out for a couple of hours, play basketball with the guys for two more, and then eat anything I wanted because my metabolism was at its peak. Recently however I am in a stage in life where words like “portion,” “bottled water,” and “diet Dr. Pepper” are regulars in my vocabulary. Probably the biggest change from then to now, is that life is simply busier. In college my Wednesday consisted of class, call my girlfriend, and hangout with friends. Maybe study depending on the month. It was easy! There were no real time demands most of the time. So as a believer, I could pretty much pick whenever to sit down and study my bible and pray. But, those days are over. Today I have a wife I love spending time with, a job as a pastor that I love pouring into, an emotionally needy and mentally lacking chocolate lab, a washing machine that needs repairing, and a 2 month deadline to get my first son’s bedroom ready before his arrival in august. I get up at 6 am, go to bed at 11pm and could rattle you off another 20 things each night that I wanted to get done that day but just didn’t have the time.

The point is, I have to be disciplined now to carve out time in my life to meet with God. I cant just wait until that moment in my day when I have nothing to do. That moment is called college and it is only a memory to me. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells me that all of the scriptures are the very words of God and are useful in all aspects of my life. They are like food to my soul that I should hunger for. And the truth is that I do hunger for them. But If im not careful to make time to feed myself, the barking of the dog and the clanging of the washing machine will suffocate that hunger. And remember, my child isn’t even here yet!

So, after recognizing the pattern of immediate needs killing my spiritual growth, I decided to go on the offensive and re-schedule a daily time to meet with God. I looked for a time in my day that was calmest, and started there. For me, that was the morning. I wake up at 6am everyday. (If you don’t like keeping a schedule this part will frustrate you. But you need to grow up and realize somebody else will decide your schedule for you if you don’t.) By 6:20 I am out the door with my dog for a walk around the neighborhood. Its only about a 20 minute walk, but has turned from an obligatory part of my schedule into a 20 minute daily prayer walk. That is, as I walk by the homes of the neighbors I see regularly, I pray for them, for their marriages and ultimately for their salvation. I pray for opportunities to share the gospel with them. Its awesome! That is also my time to just praise God for his creation or pray for things really weighing on my mind. Warning: Im not saying this is the only time I pray. I find the most growth in my prayer life when I am in solitude, speaking to and listening to God with the scriptures sitting open in front of me. What I AM saying is that I reclaimed a time in my day as an opportunity to meet with God instead of letting it be another task on my honey-do list.

At 6:40 I start reading my bible and usually eat a pop-tart (with Cold Skim Milk. Mmmm). Sometimes that bible reading lasts 40 or 50 minutes, sometimes it lasts 15. Sometimes I read 3 verses, sometimes I read 3 chapters. Today I read chapter 2 of Galatians. I read it over about 4 times and just meditated on what the author was saying. I think I sat there at the island in my kitchen for about 30 minutes or so really trying to think on v.20 that says “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now life in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” This is the gospel message. So I tried honestly evaluating where I want to see Christ’s love lived out in my life more than it is right now. Nothing earth shattering hit me at that moment, but things I’ve been praying for like my marriage and my relationship with my co-pastors came to mind. That is how God often speaks to us though. He gives us (via the holy spirit) recall of his word (meaning we’ve been reading it) into our life situations that we are coming before him in prayer about. Its pretty awesome. Sometimes he will use the recall of his word in a fellow believer to speak into our life situation / prayer request. That is even awesomer and it’s why we always have to be in relationships (re: small groups) where that can happen.

So my question to you is really twofold:
1. Are the immediate needs of your life killing your walk with Christ?
2. What is the calmest part of your day & how could you start there in reclaiming a regular time to meet with God? Commute in your car? Your workout hour? Grey’s Anatomy hour?

I would love to hear suggestions that have worked for you to this end. Also, if you are struggling through this battle as I did recently and want a hand in figuring it out, feel free to contact me: sshelton@summitchurch.cc .

Earlier today I was able to interview Brad Obrien, the community and church planting pastor here at the Summit. In the interview Brad does an awesome job sharing with our small group leaders how small groups integrate into the community ministry of the Summit Church. In the interview Brad unveils a brand new small group study written by his team specifically dealing with the biblical foundations of community ministry. Regardless of whether you are a group leader at the Summit or not, you definitely want to take time to look at those. You can find them and the interview with Brad here.

By the way, that audio would have been posted right here, but my blogging skills are simply not up to speed yet. Dont worry, more to come.

Jen is a Summit Church member who, along with her husband Brian, helps out on Sunday mornings with our Starting Point ministry. (Starting Point is our monthly process people go through to get connected to the church. You should strongly encourage your people to go there if they have not yet. More info here) Brian and Jen also facilitate a SummitLIFE group. That fact will be important in a minute. Last week, A woman sat down at Jen’s table on Sunday morning at Starting point. One of our pastors stopped by the table and got to talking with her about knowing Jesus. What happened next was nothing short of inspiring. When the woman indicated she was not a Christian but wanted to be, the Pastor turned her to Jen who subsequently walked this woman through the gospel and upon understanding the gospel for the first time she placed her faith in Christ. Did you see that? It was subtle but extremely significant… The Pastor empowered Jen to lead this girl to Christ. And Jen was pumped to do so because she has been equipped by the church to do just that!
( I really want to stop here and talk about how much I love being in a family of believers that really strives to function like the New Testament Church. They want pastors to equip them for the work of the gospel. They want to do the work of saints. I pray daily God infects our church with more of this spirit.)

I cant stop because the story gets better. Last week Courtney and I were at Caribou coffee in Brier Creek (The unofficial hot spot for Summit people after hours. pray with me for the salvation of their staff as we are starting to build rapport with them). I look up from my computer to see the women in Jen’s SummitLIFE group having coffee together. Guess who is there? Yep, the woman Jen led to Christ just a couple of days earlier! I almost jumped up, ran outside where they were sitting and hugged Jen. But that would have been awkward on so many levels I chose to shake Courtney’s arm uncontrollably instead. I’m that giddy because nobody asked Jen to invite this girl into her life. In fact, Starting Point doesn’t do group placement for another 2 weeks. Jen’s group is pretty full as it is and doesn’t need another person. Jen brought her in simply because it was her first instinct to care for the person God put in front of her.

WHOA! So often we wait and hope on a church program or ministry to point people towards. These are good things, but the essence of the church, and the essence of discipleship, is relationships! Its not programs or processes. It is the people of God lovingly sharing the truth (the gospel) with love to those who God brings in front of us.

What would it look like if you asked the person you sit beside this Sunday morning if they were new to the Summit? Rough estimates are that we have 30 people each week who are at the Summit for the very first time. Scores more have yet to meet a single person outside of those they come with (if they come with anyone.) What if we all saw ourselves as the point of connection, for the person beside us, to the body of Christ? What if that person said they were new, and you offered to take them to lunch just to get to know them and let them get to know somebody at the church? Heck, what if you just stood outside for 5 minutes after the service and had a legitimate conversation with them?

Do you see what would happen? Our first impressions team would grow exponentially because we would all become in tuned , like Jen was, to the people God puts in front of us. What if we prayed for God to put a non-Christian in the seat beside us this Sunday?!!! WHOA!!! Did you just get as uncomfortable as I did? For me, that discomfort was no doubt conviction and I am going to pray that today. And I am going to do everything in my power to not sit beside someone I know this Sunday.

Would you be willing to pray that? Would you be willing to act on that? Would you be willing to, right here in our midst, begin transforming the culture of the Summit family to one that starts to live out the love of Christ by being the welcoming family of Christ the New Testament encourages us to be?

1. 1. Growth takes time – This is critical for me as a “I want results now” kinda person. Spiritual growth takes time. It takes time for individuals and for churches. As small group leaders, we must be willing to live in relationships with people for a significant amount of time. We cannot see them as a “project” but as family members we are investing our lives into. This also means that we as group leaders may never fully see the fruit of our efforts. That should never dissuade us from our great task of helping people grow deeper in love with Jesus.

2. 2. Growth comes through the pursuit – We tend to think we will arrive one day at this great land called “spiritual maturity.” Here is the problem with that: when we do things in hopes of arriving at a level of maturity, we become legalists. We become Pharisees. We grow spiritually through pursuing Christ. Spiritual maturity is simply consistently pursuing Christ & the application of the gospel to your life a little longer than the guy or girl beside you.

3. 3. Growth is messy – Ok this one is for both numerical and spiritual. First off, growing a small group ministry is messy. Once a group gets comfortable it tends to take on a character of its own which is good, but can result in loosing contact with the church at large. As a pastor, I have to be comfortable with a certain level of that happening. That’s called putting trust in my leaders. When leaders launch new groups, it is never perfectly neat and clean. Group members stepping out of old groups to lead new ones isn’t easy, it can be quite hard. But spiritual growth is messy too. People don’t usually just gradually grow up in their faith on some mythical scale from 0 to 10 over the course of their life. The truth is, they grow in spurts and in different spurts in different areas of their lives. You may have a couple who really becomes solid prayer warriors in your group, who you discover is in financial ruin because they have never sought to apply the gospel to their finances. Guess what, you as a group leader probably have areas of your life where you are not sure how to live out a gospel-centered mindset. I will be the first to tell you that I am about to enter parenthood and I have a TON to learn about what gospel-centered parenting looks like. Thankfully my small group has parents in it!

4. 4. We gotta buy in – Not sure how this became a “growth…” blog anyways. One thing im convinced of, by seeing it in our small groups, is that a leader must be fully bought in to the idea that small groups work if they are going to have a successful group. If we aren’t convinced we can see life change happen, our people will see right through our façade and we are wasting time. I implore you, if you are leading a small group and you are not convinced God is going to change the lives of your small group members through their time in your group, get on your knees immediately, repent, and ask God for faith. Im really not exaggerating or kidding. We are not just going through the motions in small groups. We are literally being the church. Please don’t treat the church, the bride of Christ, lightly.

5. 5. Small Groups are Awesome – I love small groups. Im convinced growth happens here better than in any other context. That gets me all excited and I hope you are excited with me.

Recently I read a couple of books that have been quite challenging to me. One is Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey. In this book she unpacks how deep darwinian thought (evolutionary theory) has permeated the church. She traces back the current “truth is relative” mindset back to this along with so many other systems of thought currently popular in our society. Most importantly the book gave a fairly good ground for what it looks like to be able to defend the claims of christianity with one’s brain. It made me think in a major way about how we spend our time in our small group gatherings. Do we encourage one another to adapt the gospel to EVERY area of our lives? Do we dig for the truths of scripture and then are we bold enough to actually apply those truths in our context or do we leave them as a nice idea? Ive been kinda shaken out of my complacency a little I think and it feels good. I want to, and I want you to, be able to accurately explain the Christian message at any time in any context (1 Peter 3:15).

The second book is called Truth in Love by Brian Follis. It is an overview of the work of a guy named Francis Schaeffer. If you are over say..35… you probably know the name. Schaeffer was one of the most brilliant christian minds in the 20th century. Here was his whole philosophy on life: love people as Christ would love them. Christ never loved people apart from truth. Always speak truth in love. It was Schaeffer who coined the phrase “love is the final apologetic.”  Either of these reads would be well worth your time.

So small group leader, are you convinced of the Truth of Christianity? Are you fighting to know and apply that truth in your life? In the lives of your group members? When you speak about Christ, are your words laden with sincere love, or are you trying to win a debate, or are you trying not to say anything that may be offensive?

Also, I am headed to my first ever Small Groups Conference this week. Hope to bring you some good insights from it while I am there, and tons of ideas for you when I get back.