This our fifth discussion of facets of the effective volunteer minister. I've trained myself to remember the ordering of these various facets by drawing for myself what looks like a large pound sign or a tic tac toe board. And this allows me to think of the meeting. And here, we're at number five - right in the middle if we go one, two, three, four, five. And this is the meeting itself we're going to talk about. 

But what have we talked about in the previous series? What was the first thing we discussed? Connecting. Connecting with whom? Connect with the leadership of your church and the staff of your church or their designated people for taking reports. All right?

Then after we have connected, our first task following our connection is? To recruit. Now what kind of person is it that we're going to recruit? The person who is going to take over our job. We don't say, "Would you like to come and work in a group with me?" Well, you can start that way, but as you unfold to them what you have in mind, you are saying to them, "And guess what? It's going to be your group when we get done." And you will deal with the person that you will recruit what I'm going to do to you. You're going to turn the group over to them. So we are going to work together to start a group that neither of us will own. Because we're going to give it away to people who follow us. And then, we're going to start additional groups as we go." So we set a model.

And then the third thing we're going to do is? Invite people, with the help of our apprentice, to the group. This means that the church leadership will not give us a class. They will not give us a group. Who's responsible for raising the participants and calling the meeting and making the group come into being? We are. We accept responsibility for that because we're leaders, and we're defining leaders as people who have a following. So we're going to have followers because we're leading and we're inviting. And in some cases, this means that we have to develop a certain personality attractiveness; otherwise, people won't want to come and share misery and sorry with us. They would prefer to come and be encouraged by us.

And then, as we think about precisely what's going to happen in the meeting, we have to, step four-- we have to prepare for the meeting, and now we're ready to talk about the meeting itself. 

Now, what is it that we really want to happen in that meeting? Let's see if we can center on a grand objective that would work for virtually any type of group at any time of the church year. What is it that we really want to happen? We want people to come together, and as a result of being together, we want them to love God more and appreciate what God has done by making his son, Jesus Christ, available to us and giving us a place in the body of Jesus Christ. We're a part of what God is doing on earth at this point in human history. Because as believers in Jesus Christ, we are part of the body of Jesus Christ. So we want people to love God more and to appreciate the fact that they're part of his body. 

Now whenever the body of Jesus Christ gathers, especially in its small group manifestation, whenever it gathers, there's a real opportunity for Christians to show love to one another in the name of Jesus Christ. So we're looking for a mutual ministry place where one another ministry is the key. Now if it's going to be one another ministry, it's going to speak to a pattern of discussion and interaction that is not going to be dominated by any one person including the leader. That is, even though the lesson portion may have a teaching time where the leader formally makes some statements but relatively free of interruptions. There might be a time for teaching that might go on 10, 15, 20 minutes even. In some cases, half an hour, 40 minutes. But that would be the teaching time where the gifts of the leader are being used on behalf of the group.

But if it stops there, all we've had is class. We've managed to deliver some content or at least we had a chance to offer some content. It might not have actually been received. We wouldn't know though unless we give people a chance to talk back to us. But in the caring group concept, it's just as important what each member says to another as it is what the teacher says to the group. 

Now different times during the meeting, different kinds of interaction are appropriate. But we're really talking about mixing it up so it can be mutual self-care. 

Now the scripture speaks of a particular concept. It says, "Speaking the truth in love." Truth is sometimes pretty harsh. Truth itself is contradictory to the things that we hold dear. Truth sometimes causes us to realize we're wrong. So as a consequence, what we have to look at is how can we present the truth in such a way that the people who are participating in our group are able to receive the truth and not reject the truth? And this is where the love part becomes very important. If people really feel affirmed and really feel loved, then their hearts become far more open to hear the truth. If they are willing to hear the truth, then if they will heed it, then the benefits in their own lives will be abundant. Because the blessings of God are promised to people who both hear and readily listen to and embrace the things that are being taught. 

So we're looking for attitudinal change toward the truth of God. And we're looking for people to feel like they're a part of something God is doing in the world, where they feel like a part of the love of God. This is not the crusader mentality. This is the affirmer/lover mentality. You're not going to straighten out people. You're going to love people to the point that they surrender their wrong-headed notions. And so, these groups have very important places in the persuasion pattern that the Lord is using to draw people together. Jesus, himself, was a very meek person. He had firepower available to him that no human army has ever had available to it, with legions of angels that he could have called on judgment on all those who opposed him. And yet, with patience, he continued to teach and to model and to even accept a certain amount of abuse from people who were in his world.

Now there are some enemies to the effectiveness of your group. And one of those you have to anticipate is distractions. There will be distractions. So your group meeting space needs to be a guarded space. Not only do you need to pray about where you're going to hold the meeting. And it probably should not be your own home for the most part. It should probably be rotated-- occasionally in your own home perhaps. But you should use borrowed homes because you know that you're going to leave that group. Eventually, you're going to leave that group. You'll take some of them with you, of course, to help you organize a new group. But if the group's in your home, it's hard to leave it. So you want to have that group meeting in more places than just your home. Or more places than just in the home of your apprentice. You need to be moving that among two or possibly three homes. And they should not be you, and they should not be your apprentice on a regular basis so that you have the freedom of movement as leadership develops in the group.

But you say to your apprentice and you say to your assistant - your host or hostess person - you say, "Now let's watch for the distractions and let's eliminate these systematically." Let's make sure that the person who is going to be the host takes care of putting the pets away. The pets are not out available to us especially if they're licking dogs or mewing cats or whatever, monkeys that chatter or parrots that need to be hooded. Get those things taken care of before the meeting time so that's not a part of the last-minute scramble. 

And then, make sure that you've got an agreement with the family you've contracted, to turn off all the radio and television so that we don't have this constant airwave interruption that's coming in. 

And then, have it agreed as to who will answer the door for greeting late comers so that the meeting doesn’t have to stop for that but the host or hostess can greet the latecomers and do so, bring them in and help them get situated and comfortable and then they can be introduced to the group appropriately.

And so you want to put together as many preventions as possible in preventing distractions. And that even applies to refreshment preparations. Some people get out and they rattle around in the kitchen and make such a noise and hubbub about things that they actually take the purpose of the meeting and de-focus it. You don't want that to occur. So with those preparations in mind-- and you've provided for childcare arrangements that are suitable and you figured any extra strategy for any children that are present. 

Then you need to recognize the fact that your greetings actually set a tone for that meeting, how you greet each one of the people that are involved. Wherever possible, touch people. Wherever possible, if they'll let you hug them, hug them. Be warm to people, be excited and enthusiastic about their being there. Introduce them to one another. You're going to have several people in the room with you that are needing special attention. One of those is the visiting coach. You, hopefully, will invite your coach to the meeting. That coach will come to every four or five meetings. If they have four or five other groups, they're having to visit in those as well. But they'll come to your meeting. 

Well, you want to be sure that they know every person that's there. They've been introduced as the person who helps you to prepare for and helps you to manage the ministry. If you do this, if you introduce them in this fashion, they are able then to handle special problems with some of your people when those problems arise.

There are people who get out of sorts with you as the leader. It would be nice to have an in-between person to bridge that you have already introduced them to. If someone desperately needs to leave your group and go someplace else, this is the opportunity for the coach. And if you have introduced this person to the coach and somebody is struggling, you can say to the coach, "I think they're struggling. Would you mind talking to them about whether this is the group they ought to be in? If they'd be more comfortable with another group, I'd be happy to see them do that. But I can't tell them. They'd feel rejected. So how about you giving them some guidance?"

And then, the coach can slip up alongside them and say, "Is this group working for you? We have several groups. I manage several others, and I was just noticing that you were sitting here very quietly and you seem to be tense. Is there something going on that's not working in the chemistry of this group for you?" 

And at that time, they'll either say, "Sure. It's not working well but I don't have any courteous way to bow out." Or they'll say, "No. I'm just so messed up at work, I'm just so preoccupied it wouldn't matter. This group's fine. I'd rather be here than anyplace else." 

Then the message comes back to the group leader. "Don't worry. It's not you. It's something else. This person is just not ready to share and receive support for that problem yet."

So your coach serves as a third party that can help you in tricky and difficult times even with the group members themselves. It's not a matter of your coach having to minister just to you. It's a matter of you having your ministry with your people enhanced by the possibility of calling in a coach. And then of course, as the coach gets to know your people, they can do what? They can give you tips on how to manage certain issues that are going to arise because the coach is seeing those kinds of people operating in other situations. So that can be helpful. 

And as you get your newcomers recognized in the group, here you have a chance to facilitate their acquaintance. And this is rich because facilitating the acquaintance of a newcomer with you group also helps your group members get acquainted with one another. And what you're looking for is getting people to share their personal biographies. Now you must know this - that the workplace is not a particularly affirming place in many businesses. And you also know that people who talk about themselves a lot are considered stuck on themselves and are usually labeled as arrogant. So a lot of people have been treated rather abusively when they try to share of themselves and they're very reluctant to do so. It takes a very special permission for them in which people feel safe enough to offer you a portion of their personal biography to let you get to know them. 

And so, whenever you have a newcomer present, the opportunity presented by the newcomer is this: none of you are known to the newcomer. And the newcomer is not known to any of you. Now if you want to learn about the newcomer, you'll be considered invasive and nosy if you ask them a lot of questions. This is not an interrogation time. 

Now from not knowing the newcomer to being nosy is a great in-between ground called acquaintance opportunity. And what we have learned is that there are a kind of sharing questions; we call them bonding questions. They're a kind of sharing questions that allow people to relate to one another. They give people permission to share their personal story. Sometimes we give a little menu of these, hand them around in card form and say, "Pick one of these questions to relate to." Sometimes we just pick one or two. 

There are some safe questions, and every small group leader needs to learn how to work with these safe bonding questions. I'll come back to those in just a moment. But as people share and you take time around the group to let everyone who wishes to share - and if they don't wish to share, let them say I pass - but as they share, if they feel safe enough to share, then you get insights into their lives and you have the ability, then, to empathize with them and to relate to them.

And as they offer dilemmas to the group, the way you handle the first dilemma determines whether you get the truth to them or not. Because people will test you with little things they don't really care about to see if you're going to eat them alive or whether you're going to treat them well. And if you treat them well, then they will disclose a more true and more difficult challenge over time. And you'll watch that the acquaintance-making section becomes a tone setter for the whole sharing of your entire meeting and even affects the way your prayers are going to be handled at a later point in your meeting. So acquaintance-making is tremendously important as you're actually conducting the meeting. 

There's something else though that you need to watch out for and that is you want to reduce the kind of behaviors that would hinder building each other up. No group that has any authenticity to it will fail to have some things happen within the group that are offensive to one or another of the group members. Count on that. Offense is built into the human dilemma. It's part of the Fall, sin, all of the other things that are involved. But there's almost no growth if we don't have the offense. Because in the offense, we not only learn that was not a good idea, we also learn how to be hurt and, then, to be forgiven, or to demand forgiveness, or assert forgiveness, and there is a lot of negotiating that's going to go along as a result of the hurts and the wounds that are actually going to occur. 

So we have a concern to reduce the kind of behaviors that would produce hurt. And what we have learned is this. Foolish talking and jesting do not build people. Slamming one another does not build people. Making fun of, poking fun at one another does not build people. And that's why in the scriptures we're told, "Avoid foolish talking and jesting." 

When I had gone through that particular passage with one group, one fellow said to me, "Then what am I going to say?"

And I said, "Say more. What do you mean?

He said, "Well, most of the conversations that I'm engaged in at work have to do with bantering people, and slamming is our work culture. We're always insulting. As a matter of fact, we spend a lot of our energy thinking of ways to insult each other cleverly." 

And the scripture says, "Avoid foolish talking and jesting." Why? Because it is not the purpose of the typical business to build up people. The purpose of the typical business is to make a buck for the guy that put the investment up for the business. And if people get treated well, that's a nice bonus. But the focus of the business has more to do with making money than it does treating people well. 

Now we've learned over in the business side of things that if you don't treat people well, you don't make as much money. So for that reason, some people have said, "You will treat people well, you morons, you dumb heads you. I never saw a more idiot group. But if you learn anything at all, learn this." Everybody laughs, and the communicator thinks they've done something good because they got a laugh out of the audience. In fact, people are laughing to keep from spitting. Because they didn't like being insulted, but you've had to learn how to take it gracefully. There's not much place in the world for somebody who gets their feelings hurt every time they're slammed. But there's not much place in a group that's going to build up people for slamming, and for criticizing, and for being cynical about people.

And so, we have to start rooting that out of our vocabulary so that when people come to us they feel safe. Because one thing you know is if people are going to insult you, you're going to keep your guard up. No way you're going to disclose stuff that's hurting when you know that it's going to be used against you to injure you, and you're going to be nicknamed for it, and carry it forever. And so, you have to start disciplining yourself that way.

And you say, "Suppose I'm the group and suppose that's my style of life?" Then it's time to grow. It's time to grow. Why? Because I say so? No. Because the scripture lays for us a pattern. From the very first church when Christians were a persecuted minority, where they had to learn to trust each other because any one of them could go out and rat to the authorities and have the other person executed. That was the kind of context in which they were-- that's the quality of Christian life we get in the Soviet Union, where the persecution of the Communists for many decades was such that if anyone was known to be a believer, they could lose their job, their children could lose their opportunity for a university education, on and on. Because someone would rat on them and tell. They may wind up the rest of their lives in prison. Then he spent 10, 20, 30 years in prison for having a neighbor or a person who was in a small group betray them. You see?

So we're talking about an opportunity for developing high levels of trust in the context of these small groups where love is there. And we can't be careless of building each other up. We can't be careless in speech if we hope to make a real difference in people's lives and to help them. Because we need to be treating one another with honor and with dignity so that we can actually bless one another. Now maybe you haven't thought about this. But most of the good work that is done in human achievement occurs because someone received a blessing so that they could, with confidence, offer their gift to their community. 

Now you always have the few weird cases of the genius that was rejected by all and never the less made the contribution. But for the larger number of normal people, the only way we ever shine is because somebody says, "You can do it. You can do it. You can make a difference here. You can be the person that could help. You can be the big brother. You can be the big sister. You can be the intervener. You can be the rescuer. You can be a person who makes a difference in someone else's life." Well, that's life-transforming to think that you, yourself, could actually be a source of blessing to some other person. Wow.

So this meeting has been called together, and you want this meeting to be a positive experience for the people that are there. And so, you're going to be able to discipline that meeting with certain guidelines in mind that it's going to be a positive experience for all. 

Now it's helpful-- as you think about group interaction, it's helpful to have some idea of what you're dealing with. I call this the anatomy of a small group. We've learned that there are some recognizable parts to a small group. And these recognizable parts are going to, each time, appear in your group. They're predictable as to how they will appear in your group.

And let me lay out what this anatomy of a small group looks like. We started using a circle to contain a small group. And a circle is a kind of a huggable form, isn't it? And we pointed out to you previously what the nucleus of the small group is, and it has at least three parts. What were those parts?

The leader - and we name the leader by the number we expect them to care for in a group meeting - 10, a Roman numeral 10. And then, we have the apprentice leader and then, we have the host or hostess who serves as an assistant for that group. So here's the nucleus. 

But there are some other parts that we ought to be aware of on a constant basis. We've said that if you're going to lead your group, you have to be responsible for the childcare arrangements. So it may be that you're going to have to have a designated babysitter or arrangements made - whether that person's a member of your group or someone that's hired - one of the teenagers, one of the families or whatever the arrangement is that you've chosen to make. 

And we also know there's an occasional person that drops in the meetings, usually your invitation. Some of your groups are hard to crash by the way. It's difficult, even for a supervisor - a named supervisor - to show up in your group without it being awkward if you haven't invited them. So we're going to call this the invited coach.

And the invited coach, we use a Roman numeral for them too by the way. An L is a Roman numeral for 50. And of course, if a coach were coaching a group of five leaders, they would have how many under their care? 50. So that all fits, doesn't it?

You'd say, "Hey this is the leader." Actually, it's the person looking out for 50 arranged in five groups of 10. 

But here's the coach, and the coach is just there every so often. The reason the coach doesn't want to be there every single meeting except maybe at first when you're having a problem or two and you need them there two or three times in a row. The coach doesn't want to be in every single meeting because they need the distance so they can get away from things and come in and see it with fresh eyes. And then, they can spot problems, and help you, and assist you with more a creative event because of the relative strangeness they have to the group.

All right. But beyond that, we have learned that there are other components, especially three other components to a group that are critical so far as your managing them is concerned. One of those components appears in only about half of the groups that we've studied. And we call that the critical care component - the extra care required person (ECR), a person who has needs such that a group could be a rescue for them in terms of their life. But they have growth challenges that sometimes will stretch the group's ability to accommodate them. Because we've documented at least nine different ways that people who have extra care requirements interact within a group and by interacting, create a turmoil for the group. 

Let me give you some examples of what those nine ways are.

1. Disagree with the leader. Outright say, "No. You're wrong." Contradict the leader. But that takes a certain amount of grace to manage, wouldn't you agree?

2. Others don't tackle the leader, but they tackle and attack someone else. It's a favorite ruse for one member of a married couple to confess the sins of their spouse in these groups. It's enough that we should confess our own sins, not someone else's sins. But you confess the sins of your spouse once and you virtually guarantee they won't come back to that group ever again. And they won't let you there either. Because you're talking behind their back. But extra care require people will do that, showing you the level of neediness that they have. 

3. Criticizing the behavior or opinions of others in the groups. "No. You're wrong." Contradictory behaviors. "You're so funny." Making fun of other people in the group. This happens a lot, and I used to think it was a characteristic of teenage groups, but I've learned that it's very characteristic of all groups that have ECRs in them. 

4. People who dominate the discussion time. They get on one theme and they have to have that theme. And that theme keeps recurring and they want more than their share of the time, and they talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And you have to take those people strongly in hand, because if you don't, they kill your group. And you have to get them on the side and say, "No. We won't do this." Right? "I need your help in running this group." You have to set covenants with them. And then, when they violate them, say, "Bill, I need to talk to you about this outside the meeting. So hold that for afterwards when we can have a one-on-one discussion." Honor the person but firmly manage, because if you don't, the rest of the group will not follow your leadership. They'll say, "We need to be under the leadership of someone who can manage the group," and this person is behaving in a wild manner.

5. Complaining about the church services or the staff of a church is a death nail for a group. It just takes a-- people say, "Well, we've got to be able to exercise our right to free speech." As a Christian, you don't have the rights that Americans have. The flag that we fly under is not the stars and stripes primarily. But it's under the injunction of scripture. And the scripture doesn't give us the right to say any old thing we please any old place we please to say it. Because we can destroy and hurt other people in the process. And so, whenever criticisms come for the church or its program, if we don't have the guts to deal with those criticisms one on one, and take those people to the proper authorities, and let them register their complaints, and get their hearing in the proper place, they will kill the spiritual life of our group. And we need to discipline that. 

And one thing we can say to them is this. We can say, "You have a concern. I want to honor that concern, but this is not the form in which we can give time to that. So will you see me afterward and let's talk about that." And if they want to continue, get really tough with them and say, "Don't ever, in my group again, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever when I've asked you to talk to me about something on the side, don't you ever continue that or I want you out of my group. Now I don't want you out of my life, but I will not tolerate that."

You say, "How can you do that and speak the truth in love?" Because you're speaking the truth and sometimes the truth is tough and requires tough love. But you have got to take people who can't manage themselves and help them manage themselves because they'll be lost to the church and lost to the Christian cause if you don't help them manage these areas of their lives that they can't manage by themselves. So you're not being unkind. You're actually being kind. Because you're giving them a sustained life within a Christian community. We've seen uncontradicted people and unchallenged people who not only want to destroy the groups but lose their own life in the process of not having a place that's a safe place for them to come and receive care.

6. Behaving rudely, cynically, not cooperating, controlling distractions from their own children or in their own home, quoting contradictory authorities. "But so-and-so says," "Well I was watching the TV and Benny Hinn says," and they quote other authorities to you so that you're faced with Jesus looks like a direct contradiction or a challenge. And learning to deal with these people with grace is a mark of the maturing Christian leader. 

7. Now the other two components that you want to be aware of are the growing Christians, the people who are on the grow. These are people who are learning what their spiritual gifts are and are becoming quite deliberate in the use of their spiritual gifts. And as a result, the Holy Spirit is blessing the group through them. 

8. And then, of course, there is the seeker. This is the person who comes looking for a safe place to see whether or not they could find a place in the body of Christ as represented by your leadership, or if they can find something about God in the eternal, and something that will affect their destiny. Because they're unhappy with their life in some respect. And they think if they could just find the energy that they need, if they could just find the help they need, just find the enlightenment they need. And they're searching. They've gone here, and they've gone there, and they come over to you to see is this a safe place for you?

The most touching story I've seen of a safe place was when a young woman who had been abused, she had been bruised, she had been in two or three abusive marriages, she'd lost her children, and she came to a small group. And in this small group, they were asking, "What would you like from this small group? What would you hope for from your experience in our small group?" And it was their way of acquainting. And when it came to this seeker, who was this woman who had this very bad treatment, she said, "I hope I can find a safe place, because I've been pretty badly wounded. And I need someplace that will encourage me." 

And the seeker sitting next to her, who was one week or two weeks longer in the group, she reached over and touched her and says, "Honey, this is a safe place." I think that small group leader had achieved what we're trying to achieve. In just to matter of two or three meetings, an unbelieving seeker was able to say to a person who needed reassurance, "This is a safe place." 

But what are the skills that you want to develop as a small group leader so that you can manage this complex anatomy of a small group successfully each time you meet? We're developing a whole series of special studies on this particular topic. But let me name for you four or five of those skills.

You want to know how to use a bonding question. Here is the most widely used, longest used bonding question I know of. It invites people to share and it says this, "How was your home heated when you were a child?" Or "What was the center of warmth in your home when you were growing up?" That one little question, you'll be amazed at what that question opens up. 

You'll find situations where homes were not happy and were not warm. You'll find situations where homes were happy and warm. You'll find kids that were raised in orphanages, and people who were rejected, and you'll find people who had great upbringings and people who struggled with turbulent marriage situations. And as a consequence, all kinds of stuff comes out that people feel safe enough to disclose because that childhood confession seems to be kind of a common thread that only very damaged people can't respond to.

And as long as you let people know, "If you'd care to share, we'd love to listen to you," then that kind of question is safe. Books, now, have been written of those questions. And to my mind, Lymon Coleman has done the best job of writing serendipity type questions that allow people to safely share whatever level that their sharing. And for that reason, I recommend most of his publications to group leaders as important clues for bonding questions.

Now teaching people to pray in a group is another one of the skills you'll want to develop. How do you get people to pray in a group without feeling threatened? Some people are ready to pray and know how to pray out loud. Other people won't even come again if they think you're going to force them to pray. Be sensitive to the fear factor in oral prayers. Many people will have to go through reciting the Lord's prayer from the scripture several times before they'll even consider any other form of praying because they'll need model prayers before they can do extemporized prayers. Long-term Christians are not sensitive to that. And that's an issue. So that's a skill area to work on.

How about facilitating involvement? Passing the discussion around in the group? There are a number of discussion-sharing questions that you ought to have in mind. How about reading a few of those with me just so you can verbalize those. You'll have them on your own lips. 

The first one is, "What do you think about that?" Would you say it with me? "What do you think about that?" 

By doing that, what's the leader doing? Offering time for the floor, handing the mic to the group. 

All right. Or the second one, "Who has seen this at work lately?" This is a principle or this is a problem. "Who has seen this lately?" What are you doing? You're inviting the group to offer their observations from their life. 

How about the third one here? "Does anyone have another view of that?" Now when someone comes up with a really off-the-wall kind of thing and you don't want to tackle them as the leader, then it's good to say, "Wow. That's interesting. Does anyone have another view of that?" You're inviting descension. But what you're doing is you're broadening the plate so that you all can say, "Well let's think about that." Maybe one of these approaches is better than another. One of these approaches may be more scriptural than another. But we have to think that through, won't we? And so instead of slamming a person who has a wrong-headed notion, we simply say, "Okay. Are we hearing that? Ah, okay. Who has another view of that?" 

And we’re just simply saying, "Here is view A, here's view B, here's view C," and we're not having to commit ourselves with the truthfulness of it, are we? So we're managing the discussion in a way that treats them with dignity, and doesn't label them as wrong-headed, and lets them come to a decision, "You know? That was my first view. But I have never researched that or ever discussed that at length. Perhaps I need to amend some portion of that." And they can retreat with dignity, then you preserve them as a human being. 

How about this question? "What have you seen?" Say it. "What have you seen?" You're valuing their opinion. Or "When would that idea be most helpful for you?" Okay. Someone comes up with an idea. It's a winner. It might not apply in every situation, but it might be a bell ringer at certain times. You say, "Ah. When will that idea be most helpful for you?"

One would say, "Never." Another would say, "Golly, next week." Another would say-- and what's happening, you're inviting people to affirm or to contradict one another in a gracious way and you're leading the way because you have some of those questions memorized.

You need to constantly redirect, and one of the most helpful ways to redirect, to bring the meeting back is to say, "All right, that was interesting. Let's get back on track. Can I get you to come back on track with me?" And you're inviting to change the subject and go back to the subject at hand. But it's not wrong to have been out there because you're regarding persons while you're out there in those byways and asides that are taking place.

Now it also may be possible that you'll have to learn how to say some things that are difficult. Things like, "I'm sorry." Things like, "I was wrong." Things like, "I don't know." That's a difficult language to come out of an expert's mouth. "I don't know." Or "I'll have to research that," or "I'll have to get some help on that."

And then, there are some questions that every group leader needs to learn. Because these questions invite help to their role as a group leader. And there are three special questions that I'd like to learn. 

We go to a person who is potentially helpful to us, and we say, "How do I handle this kind of situation?" Say that one with me. "How do I handle this kind of situation?" 

You're inviting a coach to say, "Give me some feedback here." And this way, the coach can graciously share with you things from their experience. 

Or, "Is there a more effective way to accomplish this?" You can ask that one of yourself, but you can also ask that of a helper. Say that with me. "Is there a more effective way to accomplish this?" 

Or how about, "What am I not seeing here?" You're in a dilemma, and you don't know what you're facing, and you need some insight, and so you say, "What am I not seeing here?" 

Now if you practice those kinds of lines and use them in a few places, you'll discover they open up a whole world of wisdom to you in your leadership of a group. Well, it is our prayer that as you become familiar with the anatomy of a group, you develop the kind of skills that enable you to facilitate mutual ministry, that what will happen is your group becomes a truly loving, caring cell of interactive people who are not only able to receive and administer support to one another but actually are a place where an unbeliever can find safety while they're learning, "Is this the faith that I can embrace?" Your group's actually going to have the tone to enable them to be the birthplaces of new converts. And we'll deal with that in one of our later facets.


Остання зміна: середа 8 липня 2020 12:50 PM