A guy I am coming to really respect and appreciate is Mark Howell. His insight into small group world is clearly shaped by years in the trenches of small group ministry. Specifically, his blog series called “How to build an effective coaching structure” handles what I believe is the most critical part of small group ministry very well. If you are in any type of leadership in your small group ministry, this blog series will serve you well. Take some time to work through it while you have extra time this holiday season.  you can also follow Mark on Twitter at @markchowell.

Another one of my favorite small group guys is Craig Eggleton. Craig is a member of our small groups staff at the Summit and serves in the role of “coach” for about 25 groups. He shared his insight on the new EQUIP blog recently on “what makes a good small group leader.” be sure to check it out and give him some love. you can follow Craig on Twitter at @craigeggleton.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

This fall I’ve had a few things taking my attention away from the small groups guy blog. But wow has it been a great fall. So let me show you a little of what has been taking my attention and after that talk about where this site is going:

Stuff that distracted me this fall:

First off, personal life. Here is The new guy (Benjamin Graham Shelton born 10.07.2009) & the bigger family:

On the church front, I’m very excited to announce the launching of a new site from the Summit Church called EQUIP. I’ve poured a significant amount of time into getting it up and running and believe it’s going to be a great resource spot for people here at the Summit and those around the church world.

Also on the church front, I’m pumped to tell you that the Summit will be publishing a small group study through the book of Ephesians which will debut in January 2010. It will remain in-house through the spring while our groups go through it and then should be ready for large-scale publication in mid-spring!

Last, I have had the great privilege of building some relationships with some other small group pastors & ministries across the country. Trevor Joy and the small groups team at The Village Church were awesome to spend time with. God is cultivating a doctrinally sound army of worshipers there that is nothing short of inspiring. Other shout outs of people who are encouraging me across America: Jay Ashlog at Rockbridge Church in GA, Heather Zempel at NCC in D.C., Joe Muller up at FCCF in M.O., Mark Duncan and Matt Hahn both doing small groups here in N.C., the BALLER church planting teams I get the privilege of hanging out with around the country, Scott Mosley and Samantha Krieger over at SmallGroupTrader.com,  Also, The team at leadership network has been a blessing to begin interacting with and I’m stoked about partnering with them in the future.

2010 Small Groups Guy:

1. More network oriented approach. I see a couple of things that need help in the small group world in American church right now and one of those is connecting the people in charge of groups at a church with others who have done it and/or are doing it. I want to help that cause. That’s why I partner with smallgrouptrader.com because I think they are doing that really well online. So, if you are a groups pastor or director or co-ordinator, I’d like to get to know you in 2010. And one way is…SMALL GROUPS CONFERENCE. We are looking at hosting a small groups conference in October of 2010. more details to come. Another way is by having other pastors and leaders around the country do some guest blogging here on the small groups guy.

2. More writing. I believe God has shown us some very awesome things about biblical community here and one of my goals is to communicate those clearly so that he might receive glory for his work here. That may mean fewer but more in depth blog posts. The Small Groups Guy is staying, dont worry. Just not at 3 posts per week like I was able to do most of this year. Then again, you never know.

3. EQUIP. I believe this new site is going to be very helpful both to those who are here at the Summit Church and to those in other ministry settings. be sure to check it out.

Alright, I’ve got a truckload of material to send your way, but first I want to inform you about a change in one of the links over on the right side of the blog. For sometime now I have been fortunate to partner with and write for smallgroupexchange.com. Samantha and Scott and the rest of the team there have been very gracious giving me my first opportunity to communicate with the larger small groups audience here across America. Since their partnership I have been fortunate to pick-up opportunities to write for smallgroups.com (Christianity Today’s small group site) and Outreach Magazine. In my first year of “real” writing I have learned much and have Samantha and Scott largely to thank for it. Of course, really the only people I can thank for the writing I am doing are the small group leaders here at the Summit. Your commitment to building a healthy local church has been nothing short of inspiring and because of how God is using you, we are getting the chance to tell others of God’s great work here!

Recently the smallgroupexchange team made a pretty big move and retooled their website to better suite their growing audience. The new name is SmallGroupTrader.com and the new look is awesome. I think you will find it very helpful as a small group leader. Spend some time looking around on it today and if you are a small group leader, it may be one you should set in your favorites.

Simply put, you should be at the Summit’s SENT conference tomorrow night. There are several reasons why. You probably know them by now. I dont need to rehash them here. ALLLLLL small groups should be there. thats just a no brainer. See you tomorrow night!

Guest Blogger
Curtis Alan, Pastor of Church Planting at the Summit

I suspect we’ve all had those “ah ha” moments – where confusion and chaos in our lives suddenly becomes clarity…when suddenly the light bulb goes off and it all makes sense. I’m no exception, although up until about a couple of years ago, those moments had been reserved for those infrequent times when Algebra suddenly clicked…or when I finally realized how to use the copier at work.

About 4 years ago, I was on a late-night flight back from the West Coast when I had such a moment. My life was in absolute turmoil – God was doing something in my life and I was struggling to sort it all out.

At the time I was literally “living the dream.” I was a director at one of the top companies in America and was compensated handsomely. I lived in a dream home, drove a nice new car, my kids were in the best schools in the state, and we spent our family vacations in Europe. Our lives were in a nice, tidy, and comfortable box.

However, about a month earlier, I had returned from an absolutely unexpected experience. I had spent six incredible weeks volunteering in an area devastated by the 2004 tsunami. There I used my business and management skills to develop projects to re-develop communities there…and plant churches in a vehemently Muslim context. Before leaving, I was asked if I’d return with my family to continue the work. I admit that I had laughed the idea off with an arrogant “you don’t know who I am and what I have”.

But, after returning home, I was a wreck. My heart was burdened by what I had experienced. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had seen God doing in this place. suddenly all the pieces didn’t fit in my nice tidy box anymore. After much prayer with my wife, we had concluded that God was leading us to go…to sell what we had, leave the “box,” and move our family to the Third World to help plant churches. It made no sense, in many ways it was terrifying, but I couldn’t shake the call.

So there I was on the red-eye back from the West Coast. I had flown out for a series of meetings that were intended to merge the division I led with another business unit. I had wanted this change for years, lobbied my vice president for it countless times. It would mean more money, more responsibility, more prestige…and more things in the box.
As I sat in the seat headed home on the darkened plane, I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. I came upon some comments that he wrote on Matthew 7: 13-14  (“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”). His insight caught me right between the eyes.
But if we behold going on before step by step, we shall not go astray. But if we worry about the dangers that beset us, if we gaze at the road instead of at Jesus Christ who goes before, we are already straying from the path. For He is himself the way,the narrow way and the straight gate. He, and He alone, is our journey’s end. When we know that, we are able to proceed along the narrow way through the straight gate of the cross, and on to eternal life, and the very narrowness of the road will increase our certainty. The way which the Son of God trod on earth, and the way which we too must tread as citizens of two worlds on the razor edge between this world and the kingdom of heaven, could hardly be a broad way. The narrow way is bound to be right.
He’s right, of course, absolutely right. I had a choice – walk down the broad road that the world understood and rewarded or follow the narrow road towards Him, in His presence.

The Gospel  demands a response. It starts with a decision whether or not to accept and follow and it continues with a submission to go. Not all of us are called to the other side of the world. However, the  road to the lost co-worker in the next office or the broken neighborhood downtown is just as narrow. Whether to another zip code or to another time zone, we’ve all been sent.
At the Summit, this compels us to plant gospel-centered churches and we believe that everyone plays a part. Whether it’s joining a church plant, being part of a small group that plants new groups in new communities, or supporting through prayer and short-term trips, we can all love our world by  churches. That’s why we want everyone to be a part of our annual missions celebration called SENT. If you call the Summit home, this is a night you won’t want to miss. So mark your calendars for Friday, Oct 23rd – you can find out more at www.summitrdu.com/sent <http://www.summitwestclub.com/www.summitrdu.com/sent> .

Blog readers: This is a great note from one of the guys I work closely with here at The Summit. You should definitely consider being at the advancethechurch event next week

Guest Blogger: Mike McDaniel, Director of SendRDU

This morning I had the opportunity to share in Southeastern Seminary’s chapel service about SendRDU. I felt like I was preaching to the choir. Danny Akin and the faculty at Southeastern have a tremendous heart for church planting.

As I told them, talking to seminary students about church planting felt a little like lecturing homeschoolers on the value of big families, or telling a tree-hugger why they should recycle. If Southeastern is anything like my seminary was, then most of the guys, when they’re not studying or fighting for the attention of the 10 girls on campus, spend the rest of their time daydreaming about the church they’re going to plant one day.

Still, I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to share our vision, because we don’t just want to be a church that impacts a few pockets of Raleigh-Durham. We want to see all of RDU reached with the Gospel, and not only our city, but in cities all over the world. We believe the key to doing that is developing leaders that will plant churches. I’ve heard J.D. say many times lately that one of his greatest responsibilities as a pastor is developing future leaders.

That’s why SendRDU (our church planting center) exists, to equip leaders to plant churches. It’s also why we have partnered with organizations like AdvancetheChurch. Advance is a movement of local churches committed to planting healthy new churches and reviving dead and dying churches (some of you may have attended the Advance conference in June). We’re excited to be a part of Advance, because we believe that by partnering with like-minded local churches we will better advance (no pun intended) the Gospel in RDU, the South and beyond.

Next Wednesday, October 7th, we are helping put on the first Advance Regional forum at Vintage21 Church in Raleigh. This is a free event for leaders and pastors. It will feature Pastor J.D., Pastor Jeff Vanderstelt from Soma Communities in Tacoma, WA, and Pastor Tim Smith from Mars Hill Church in Seattle. For more info and to register, go to www.advancethechurch.com.

This post is the third in a series of posts I am doing on how we connect people to small groups here at the Summit Church. This one will describe the third, and most critical, piece of our connection strategy: Personal Invites. The first two posts talked about our web presence and our on-campus presence.

PERSONAL INVITATION

We work really, really hard from a staff team side to make sure we are creating as many opportunities as possible for people to get into a small group. That’s what the previous two posts have been about. However, all of those efforts are really supplemental in nature. The driving force for growth and expansion in our small group ministry is, and will continue to be, small group members inviting others to join them in small group community.  here is why:

1. People are more likely to accept a personal invitation. Larry Osborne talks about this principle in his book sticky church. He acknowledges after 20 years of small group experience at his church, that people “stick” in a small group when they are invited by somebody they know. Just common sense, but sometimes we forget it.

2. Groups stay outreach focused. It could be very easy for a small group leader to sit back and wait for names to come floating to them through all of our other avenues for connection. But we dont want to create a disciple making ministry that leaves out evangelism or even less just plain old pro-activeness. So we train people to become recruiters when they become leaders. Its just a part of the job. That’s why the most frequent phrase heard on campus at the summit is “are you in a small group?” if the answer is no, the reply should always be “want to come to mine?”  We want our groups open, and open to anyone.

3. New Groups start with momentum. Because new groups start as “plants” (think church plant) from current groups, they start with a core team who is planting the group and a sending group who is helping them out. That means the average group plant has 15-20 people recruiting and inviting people to the new group.

This has more work to develop as I believe the simple question “want to come to my small group?” may be the first step in a follower of christ getting into the regular habit of sharing their faith. its a small step, but we are always stepping somewhere and I would rather push people towards being others focused than letting satan convince them they need to just watch out for their own interests.

Next and final post in this series: the power of the mix.

This post is the second in what turned into a series on how we at the Summit Church go about connecting people to small groups. I submit it to you only so that 1. you might avoid our mistakes and 2. if you are at the summit you will be more informed!

In part 1 I introduced our small groups online presence as a means of connecting to small groups. In this post I want to take a look at what we do on campus (by that I mean at our facilities) during a weekend. Weekends at the Summit are a big deal, small groups at the summit are a big deal, so making sure small groups are emphasized each weekend is a…you guessed it…big deal. There are 3 main approaches we take to this on campus connection. I am ranking them according to their small group retention rate (the % of people connected through that outlet who are retained by a group and become a part of group life).

1. Starting Point. Starting Point is our introduction to the Summit put on by our connections team. They are awesome at it too. This month long process involves an introduction to the ministries and pastors of the church, placement in volunteer opportunities and into a small group, and most importantly a clear evaluation of where each person considering participating in life at the Summit is spiritually.  What makes starting point so good for small groups is that each person who goes to SP, is personally cared for by an SP table host to make sure he/she/they are connected to a small group before SP is over. We’ve seen this to be true as SP yeilds the highest retention rate for our small groups out of any formal on campus recruiting tool.

2. Small Groups Kiosk. While this is not up at all of our campuses yet, our small groups kiosk serves as an every week info center for all things “small group” and is stationed in a high traffic area. The goal here is for the kiosk to be inviting enough and accessible enough for the guy or girl who is sipping a cup of coffee to wander over and look around. From there our team goes to work asking the most important question at the Summit “are you in a small group?” This team is comprised of staff and knowledgeable small group leaders. We have the website up at the kiosk and any other basic information someone asking about groups might need. A “win” at the small groups kiosk comes 2 ways. 1. The person interested decides to go to starting point where we know they are likely to make the step of getting into a group. 2. The person jumps right into a group where their group leader will send them to SP so they can get to know the Summit. Retention rate is average here, but we tend to get our most 1st time guest traffic here so it is a win for us because we keep the “word out” about small groups there.

3. GroupLink. I feel like I’ve touched on GroupLink before on the blog. Basically, this is an event we do 4 times a year to connect as many people as we can to small groups. We bring all of our leaders on campus and make a BIG BIG deal out of being in a group on those days. Then, after each service we get anyone interested in a group to go to a designated area where the group leaders are and let the introductions begin. its a bit of an awkward environment we admit, but it usually is a big win for us in 2 ways: 1. The entire service is built around it which means a great deal of exposure about why you should be in a group and 2. we connect a very large volume of people in one day. The biggest loss for us is that because of the ease of connection (just shake a hand and sign a paper) we have our lowest retention rate with GroupLink. We are never pleased with low retention, but have come to expect it and prepare our leaders to fight it by ensuring they follow up with everyone who signs up with them.

These are the 3 outlets that make up our on-campus piece of the connections mix here in the summit small groups world. What about you? Do you have on campus exposure to your discipleship model? What does it look like and how could you diversify it?

I think this thing will wind down at 4 parts. Pretty excited to be talking through this with you.

I know some who read this blog do so from a variety of discipleship settings, and constantly deal with the struggle that I deal with of how to get people into small groups (or whatever your model is). Do I print off lists of group leaders to hand out on Sunday? The problem there is that they get outdated within minutes of handing them out. A new group starts up and you gotta wait 6 months to “publish” them. Not to mention you waste paper which isnt en vogue right now. So do you do sign-up forms and tell people they will get a call? do you have group leaders stand on the stage during the sermon as live props? You probably feel like you’ve tried everything and still people say “hey how in the world do I get in a group?” I want to address over the next couple of posts how we are working through that right now.

THE INTERWEBNET
The lesson learned here: people use the internet and so should we, as best as possible. SO, During our busy month of August here at the Summit, we launched a new groups search feature on our website. We are fortunate here in RDU in that God has blessed us with a high concentration of some of the best programmers in the world. One of them, Zack Riesland, is the genius behind the thing. If you want his contact info, it will cost you. Seriously though, Zack is a great example of a guy using his talents and present situation to worship God through serving in the church. I said Zack, make this thing better than the best one out there. He said “give me 2 weeks.” I said “i love you” and he replied “i know.” That was followed by a long awkward stare to ensure we were both on the brotherly love plane since our wives were right there. Zack, thanks man.

So here is one piece of our small group connection effort.

This is one of about 4 main avenues and it is neither our primary nor our last resort, just a piece of our connections mix.  More to follow in the coming days.

And hey, if you know any summit people out there looking for a group, be sure to point them to the new find a group page.

So there are a few “gurus” in the small group world right now. Steve Gladen, the small groups pastor at Saddleback Church, is one of them. The guy has a great ability to communicate clearly and is usually really in tune with the needs and realities of a small group leader. An article of his was just published at Small Groups.com called “Making Disciples” that I found to be a great, short read.

Check it out.