Leader Development at the Summit Church

Below is part of a letter I mailed out to small group leaders here at the Summit talking about a shift in focus we’ve made (in house) over the past few months and how it is affecting them beginning this summer. I was hesitant to share this with you as I openly convey some regret in this letter about our ministry’s past. However maybe you will glean something from this to help you in your own setting. Also, our resource list for leader development this year shows up towards the end. Again, for your general knowledge in case it helps. Really looking forward to ’09-’10!!

Dear SummitLIFE Leader,
I hope your summer has started off well. I want to take a second to say thank you for your diligent leadership of your SummitLIFE group this past spring. Just to catch you up, we had more people involved in a SummitLIFE group this spring than ever before! Praise God we are really starting to develop a family of believers here at the Summit!

Our growth is exciting, and with that God has given us a great responsibility to be not just a ministry growing in number, but growing in our capacity to make disciples as well. To my regret, we have not been emphasizing leader development as much as I’ve come to see we should have been over the past few years.  The result has been a small group ministry largely pointed towards numerical expansion and not focused enough on the spiritual health and maturity of its leaders. Thankfully, this is no longer the case.

We made up substantial ground this past year (Fall-Spring) by connecting most of our group leaders to experienced small group leaders and/or pastors who we are calling “coaches” as a prayer and support line for you. Our coaches meet monthly with myself and our SummitLIFE staff to discuss and take steps to improve the health of your group.

This summer, we are beginning the next phase in our shift towards becoming a healthy discipleship ministry. Your elders have affirmed this move and are behind us in this effort. The Summit will be issuing you a series of resources over the course of the year (Summer ‘09 – Summer ‘10) for you to work through. They include:

•    The Cross Centered Life by C.J. Mahaney
•    Emergency Response Handbook for Small Group Leaders by Groups Publishing
•    The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn
•     “Organic” Series by Pastor J.D.

We believe out of all of the resources we looked through, this combination along with our coaches and our ongoing sermon-based group material, will help us create an environment for a healthy year of discipleship for the small group leaders of the Summit Church. We will be both supporting and challenging you like never before.

I love my role here at the Summit Church.

How to plant a small group

After much preparation and prayer, our small groups team is hosting a training seminar for our small group leaders tonight entitled: How to plant a small group.

Now, in all fairness we do not claim to be experts on this. but we think God has given us a compelling vision for missional discipleship here at the Summit and we hope to share some of that tonight along with some practical steps for any group leader to plant a new small group by the end of 2009.

I am pumped

What if we stopped growing?

Im working on a seminar for our Small Group Leaders that we are calling “How to plant a small group.”

Details: This Thursday Night, 7-8:30pm , Brier Creek Campus, The Bay.

In preparation for this night God has really been challenging me on some of the presuppositions our small group growth has been based on for some time. Right now God is blessing our church with a consistent Sunday morning growth rate that is pushing 30% this year. Its crazy. For some time now our church has seen an increase in Sunday morning attendance that has had us scrambling to connect these new faces to our church community…which exists as about 100+ small groups around Raleigh-Durham. And so I have challenged our group leaders to “make room” in their small groups just like we often have to “make room” on Sunday morning. It means being more uncomfortable than we’d like but its for the advancement of God’s kingdom so we live with discomfort. I’ve asked group leaders to plant new groups because we need the room for the 16oo people at the Summit not yet in a group. It makes sense. almost. The problem with that growth strategy is that it only serves to facilitate church-wide growth, not encourage it.

Last week I began asking myself…what if the Summit stopped growing on Sunday morning? What if we caught up in our small group ministry and everybody at the Summit was in a small group. 100% participation! Goal Acheived! No more need to plant groups because there are no more people we need to worry about putting in those groups. That right there is the first step towards a church’s demise. Seeing Sunday morning as the missional arm / front door of the church and your small group as the church holy huddle will kill a church. Why? Because the church is to be an ever-growing community of people reaching out to those who dont know Jesus with the love and truth of the gospel.  We fight hard here at the Summit to encourage our small groups to be missional and this just amplifies that.

In speaking with our church planting center (SendRDU) director Mike McDaniel, he mentioned one character trait of churches he is observing  that are making an influence in their area (called a movement church) is that they see their small groups as side doors into the church. And hundreds of side doors are more valuable than 4 (4 campuses) front doors if they just realize their potential. Let me give you an example:

If 80% of the people in SummitLIFE groups (roughly 1000 people) invited ONE, JUST ONE (often families invite families) person to be a part of their SummitLIFE group this August, we would grow our overall church population by 25% in a month. In this context evangelism and discipleship happen first in the group and second in the Sunday morning worship service. And if we recognize that our Small Group is the way that person is going to STICK and not just visit, we would sustain that growth and probably need about 100 new groups by the end of the year. We would not have a 25% bigger crowd, but instead an increase in disciples.

So this thursday, and throughout the summer, we are going to challenge group leaders to re-think the purpose of their summitlife group. Is it to facilitate growth, or to be a catalyst of growth? Is it to be a reactional group or a missional group?

As we move towards our Week of Hope this summer, consider how your group can begin to think missionaly. See you Thursday!

Mothers, babies, and Mrs. Small Groups Guy

Im thrilled to bring you the first guest blog from Mrs. Small Groups Guy: Courtney Shelton. Around the Summit, Im actually just “husband of Courtney, the nursurey and pre-school director.” She knows everybody under 3ft tall who has been to the Summit more than 3 times. I asked her to do this and she’s passionate about it, so I hope you enjoy.

Guest Blogger: Courtney Shelton,  gorgeous nursery and preschool director at the Summit.

On Mother’s Day we had our Parent Commissioning service at church. Parent Commissioning is a new name for a service we have changed quite a bit since I came on staff. When I first began it was Baby Dedication. Then it became Parent-Child Dedication. Then we realized that this ceremony truly does not have much to do with that child. It has to do with a parent’s commitment to raise their child in a gospel centered home. It has to do with a parent’s commitment to raise their child based on what the Bible teaches and not Dr. Spock, the Baby Whisperer or Oprah think is the correct way. This is our church’s way of acknowledging that we do have a responsibility to the families in our church. We need to partner with families in raising their children in homes that are focused on Jesus. I believe there is a common misconception with families that it is the church’s job to teach children everything they need to know about God and being a Christian. This is
completely unbiblical and not the way God has intended the job of parent to be. Our church recognizes that parents will need support, prayer, and sometimes help with raising their children in a Christ-centered home. When we have these ceremonies, we are acknowledging that and agreeing to partner with parents in this huge task.

This day was extra special for us because I did not just plan this one, but Spencer and I participated as parents for the first time. It was so awesome for Spencer and I to be prayed over as parents of Zeke. It was also incredibly scary to think about as members and staff members of our church to think about all the individual families in the room with us (there were 18 other children and their families). It is quite daunting to think about each child and how we can be there for their parents. We families standing in that room together made commitments not just to our children, but to each others. My prayer is for these children to grow up together and spur one another one. To sharpen one another with God’s Word and not tear each other down. To encourage and challenge each other into a personal relationship with Christ. My prayer is for these parents to not take the easy road of parenting, but to biblically discipline their children. To not privatize their rearing, but to ask for prayers and help from their church family. My prayer is for our church to love these families and join with them in raising their children in a gospel centered context. Having taken part in this from the parents’ side has definitely changed my view of Parent Commissioning, and I think it has for the better.  I look forward to partnering with the families in our church not only as they raise their children, but as Spence and I raise ours.

Do you twitter?

Ok Ok I know, some of you are thinking…Didnt he recently bash twitter? Yep. But if you read closely you will notice I did highlight the redeeming value of twitter. Well, that redeeming value has motivated us here on the small groups team at the Summit to incorporate twitter into our communication mix. And we are pumped.

Here is the deal, if you either lead or are in a SummitLIFE group, we want you to let the rest of the summitlife community know about your small group experiences as they happen. Have a great night of prayer in your group? tweet it! Have a good discussion on Sunday’s sermon? Tweet It! Come up with a cool new icebreaker? TWEET IT!  How will others see it?

When you post a tweet relating to your group, include #slg. That will pull your tweet into the feed over on the right side of this blog. This should become pretty awesome as we regularly begin encouraging one another with what God is doing in our church.

an example: #slg, cool night of prayer in my summitlife group tonight!

Town Hall for Hope

Ok Boys and Girls, the end of the world is at hand. Thought I’d blog about it, or at least summarize in one sentence what every news desk personality is saying each day when the “economy” segment comes up. News anchors have got to be depressed people. Each day they have to look into the camera with a straight face and say “hey America, your country is in the toilet both nationally and here locally…happy Tuesday.” We’ve got a local news anchor here at our church, I will have to ask him about that.

Ok, now that the doom and gloom stage has been set, lets talk hope. This Thursday, The Summit Church will be one of several host sites around the country for an event put on by Dave Ramsey called Town Hall for Hope. If you don’t know Dave, you should. He’s a leading voice in money management and is weekly on all of the major morning shows and a daily nationwide radio show as well.

Town Hall for Hope will be a forum to hear from Dave on the current economic situation and how we interact with it. The financial team at the Summit is pretty pumped about it. They are some smart people so I am taking their word for it that this should be cool.

Details: Thursday, 8pm, Summit Church Brier Creek Campus

For more info: www.townhallforhope.com

Help Needed at the Summit

Ok boys and girls, here on the Summit Small Groups team we are in need of some assistance. We have some serious web development needs and our team does not consist of anyone who can do it. Since none of us roll in the programmer circles, we are pretty much starting with no leads on people to talk to about this sort of thing. You help is greatly appreciated. If you know someone or are someone who we could talk to about this freelance project, let me know through the comment section below or via email at: sshelton@summitchurch.cc

Good stuff in our small groups right now

I just want to take a moment and share with you that I am hearing reports from group members and leaders that God is changing lives in our small groups right now. Addictions are being broken, sin is being exposed and fought against, and groups are experiencing increasing levels of depth in their relationships. It appears the freeing power of the gospel is taking root in the community of saints that is the Summit Church.  My own small group is among those who have had our best weeks recently. I apologize for being so vague in my celebration here but you understand I am protecting privacy and what not.

I started to write here my observations for what led to this increase in life change. Then I remembered, you dont program for life change as much as you pray for it. God, via his Holy Spirit, seems to have rested upon the Summit Church family and begun an act of communal sanctification that recalls me to the early church and Paul’s teaching on the church throughout the NT. I will say simply, I am exceedingly grateful to be a part of the movement of God happening in our midst. SummitLIFE small group leaders, your role is the most significant one we have here. I hope you humbly submit your role before God daily and ask that he continue changing lives as he is doing now.

Carboard Testimony :: Summit Style :: updated

Below is a video we showed at the Summit this past Sunday. Whether you have already seen it or not, I encourage you to watch it. We are talking right now in our church about how the Gospel of Jesus Christ is truly life changing. And that life-change is happening right here in our midst. This video tells just some of those stories that are here at the Summit Church. I know there are more out there, and more to come as well!

If you visited this post earlier today you saw the html chaos that attempted an overtake. in the end I won, and instead of watching the video here, click on the link below to watch it on the Summit’s website:

Summitchurch.cc/cardboard

Nexus Project

Every now and again our Summit Bloggers will unite to promote something to you that we deem significant. Today, it is the Nexus Project: A Conference for Middle and High School Students.  This conference will be March 6-7 at the Summit’s Brier Creek Campus. Below you will find a basic list of the “what’s happening” for the conference and you can click the graphic above to take you to the website. I will be leading a breakout session I am especially pumped about. I wont unveil it yet, but you know it has something to do with the community of believers. Still work to do on it for now.

• Keynote Speakers: J.D. Greear and Clayton King
• Worship Led by Carl Cartee
• Saturday, March 7th evening worship is open to the entire church and to the public free of charge
• breakout sessions with several gifted teachers (and me).