Im slowly working my way through an excellent book on small group ministry titled The 7 Deadly Sins of Small Group Ministry by Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson. As I continue to get my feet wet in the small groups world, I am more and more thankful for the work of experienced men like Donahue who has a clear passion to see people discipled in life on life relationships. The first “sin” in the book, and the most deadly, is unclear communication. Basically, you will never get anything done if you don’t clearly communicate what it is you are trying to get done. This has been a wake-up call for me. Not because I never knew that, but because I tend to assume our group leaders understand everything about our vision for their small group because I said it once or twice in an email or at a training forum. The challenge for me is to communicate in a simple, clear fashion to our leaders and not go all over the map with ideas I have that sound good in my head. In an effort to clean out the gunk in the communication pipeline and focus our groups towards a united mission, we are introducing a coaching element to our small groups at the Summit Church. (I tackled more of the reasoning behind adopting a coaching strategy in the post Biggest objection to small groups and a solution in BETA )

A coach is simply a seasoned SummitLIFE group leader who is charged with supporting 2-3 other SummitLIFE group leaders. Practically, this looks like a phone call or a cup-o-joe twice a month and the occasional sit-in by the coach on the small group leader’s meeting. Not surprisingly, Donahue and his team created a set of expectations they place on the coach-leader relationship at their church which they published in Coaching Life-Changing small group leaders. I took our coaches through this list at our monthly meeting earlier this month.

What do leaders expect from coaches?

1. Provide support and care
2. Make a commitment to the person, not the position
3. Create an environment of trust

What do coaches expect from leaders?

1. Fulfill their responsibilities as a leader
2. Maintain truthful communication
3. Maintain a humble, teachable spirit

So there you have it SummitLIFE group leaders. I hope you are encouraged by this. This is not some sort of new or additional program, but an effort to create intentional relationships that lead towards gospel-centered growth in the life of the Summit Church. I have the privilege to meet monthly with these coaches and listen, they are some awesome people. And as a leader of a new small group, I greatly value their encouragement towards me while my group works its way through that awkward beginning phase.

One last word, if you don’t know who your coach is yet, let me know!

This post comes as a bit of debriefing from a conference I attended with our campus pastors and church planting center director the past couple of days. The conference focus was to learn a few things from a couple of churches who, like the Summit, have multiple worship sites (campuses). My main reason for being there was learning how becoming a multi-site church impacts how we “do small groups.” Be encouraged SummitLIFE leaders, one of the main things I came away with was that we are on the right track here at the Summit. Truthfully small groups are one of the areas that it is most difficult to see a direct impact on, but the impact is there and we must be ready to jump on the opportunity multi-site affords us to grow our small group ministry healthy. So whether you are a group leader here at the Summit, or a group leader or pastor at a church considering or already doing the multi-site model, here are a couple of take-aways I hope you find valuable. Group leaders at the Summit, dont be suprised to see these begin to take shape in our ministry!

• COACHING MATTERS - In a breakout session on small groups two small group pastors/directors with very different looking models both agreed that having a coaching system in place to keep every leader connected and cared for is critical. Maybe the most critical of the whole thing. At the Summit we have just finished training a group of coaches who are currently making their first points of contact with our group leaders. Coaching (aka shepherding/supporting/caring…) is important in any model, but with group leaders attending different campuses, I may not see a group leader for months at a time. To ensure the Summit DNA is carried by all of our small group leaders, and to ensure they are growing personally as christians and as group leaders, it is critical they have a person of contact here at the Summit. Our coaches are those people. Really, if nothing else, I came away pumped about this decision we made this summer to make coaches a part of our system.
• NEW CAMPUSES NEED NEW GROUPS! Though this wasn’t a prescribed step in launching a campus, It seemed readily apparent that one of the best ways to provide momentum to a new campus launch is to have small groups ready to add new people in right from the get go.
  
  
• CLEAR COMMUNICATION: This one is really for me and our coaches, but can go both ways. It is essential that I communicate clearly and simply with our small group leaders. This isnt because small group leaders are incompetent (I cant begin to tell you how smart my small group leaders are here in the RDU area. Im pretty sure a few of them secretly run the world), but because we are more spread out than ever. So you other pastors and directors out there, learn how to simplify and clarify your vision. This is just a good habit to get into anyways.
  
  
• SMALL GROUPS ARE MISSIONAL: This isnt just for multi-site churches, but the multi-site model offers new opportunities for small groups to adopt a missional mindset. For example, we are launching a new campus this Sunday on West Club Blvd in Durham. That is going to open up a slew of new opportunities to show the love of christ in a tangible way to a inner city-type community. With the launching of each new campus comes unique ways small groups can love our world that we didnt know about before. Launching campuses keeps the mission of loving our world in front of our small groups. That is a good thing.

Those are a few things, there are many more. Take them for what its worth. On a side-note, I learned that you can do about anything through an i-phone. I am now officially repenting from my techlust of that thing.

It is necessary that this post is longer than normal. Don’t be a pansy; read it.

This post is for 3 groups: small group leaders at the Summit, people in other churches who have small groups & people who object to small groups. For the group that doesn’t object but just doesn’t have them b/c they don’t fit their model of church, I guess this is just informative. Consider yourself the Canadian citizen living in America right now. You cant vote, but all you hear is talk about who you should vote for.

The Objection – no accountability
Anyways, back to the debate. Seriously the objection to the small group model of discipleship I hear often and the one that carries the most weight is the accountability objection. It goes something like this: “how do you know what your groups are doing? Are they meeting regularly? Are they teaching heresy? Are they really doing life together or is that just what you say they are doing? Are your leaders feeling detached from the church? THERE ARE TOO MANY UNKNOWNS! SMALL GROUPS ARE DANGEROUS FOR A CHURCH!”

The reason this objection (which we will sum up and name as the “accountability” objection) is a good one is because it strikes at the core of both what the local church, and the pastor, is supposed to be. The local church was commissioned to cultivate unity around their identity in Christ (Acts 2:42-47) and the pastor was to “guard the deposit (gospel) entrusted to him” (1 Tim 6:20-21) and to teach the gospel , “keeping a close watch on yourself and the teaching” (1 Tim 4:16). So, some will say, how could you possibly build unity and preserve the correct teaching of scripture when your people are broken up into small groups meeting at various times and in places that span 4 counties?

A Response – Small Groups aren’t alone
Before providing a solution to the accountability question I briefly want to point out something about the objection. It assumes that false teaching and disunity do not occur in other models. I think we can all safely say this is a bad assumption. A friend of mine who is a Sunday School pastor (yes we are still friends) told me just the other day about how he discovered, through YOU TUBE, that one of his SS teachers was teaching, basically preaching, pretty blatant heresy on Sunday mornings, just across the hall from this pastor, during the “SS hour.” This is an example, not a proof, of a simple truth & warning from scripture: “False prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them…” (2 Peter 2:1). Basically, this warning is that your discipleship model is not immune to Satan’s attack whether you do it all in one building or all online or in living rooms around town. Do not be too proud to acknowledge that, the spiritual safety of the people in your church depend on you acknowledging that.

A Solution – coaching
The Summit Church is a small groups church. We believe whole-heartedly discipleship happens best in relationships and those relationships are formed best in small groups. We have tried several models and methods to institute accountability among our small group leaders. The one I am telling you about is the latest. (Caveat: I don’t mind telling you about it because we are confident it is fully in accord with biblical teaching, but when we identify a better, biblically sound, method we are not going to be too proud to jump on it.) After observing several small group-based churches in the United States we decided to follow the lead of Willow Creek & Redeemer Pres who have successfully instituted a model we are calling the coaching model.

It’s pretty simple. Every small group leader has a coach. A coach has 2 qualifications:

1. experience as a small group leader
2. identified by the pastoral staff as a spiritually maturing Christian of good character (We believe our next crop of elders will come from our coaches).

A coach has 2 responsibilities:

1. support the 2 to 3 group leaders (no more except in rare circumstances) they have been entrusted with by the small groups pastor
2. Meet monthly with other coaches & the small groups pastor. At the monthly meeting we pray for our leaders, diagnose and problem solve small group problems, and encourage one another with what God is doing in these groups

Is this model Satan-proof? Of course not. But Jesus is. So we will continue to bathe our small groups in prayer as we institute this model. I would love your feedback on this concept. For you SummitLIFE leaders, I know this is new so like the title of this post says, its still in BETA mode. Pray with us that God blesses this effort and moves our church towards spiritual maturity.

For a more in-depth look at this model, 2 good resources are Coaching Life Changing Small Groups by the guys at Willow Creek, and the Redeemer Presbyterian Church Planting Manual by of course the staff at Redeemer.