Video Transcript: Small Groups Everywhere
When you plant a church and set up an infrastructure to take care of the church and to build the capacity to grow a church, really, it's all about small groups. In many ways, small groups are everywhere. They're not just life groups or house groups, small groups are everywhere. What basically, as a small group, it's basically a small amount of people working together on teams, or it could be in pastoral care settings. It could be in worship settings. These small teams make up your infrastructure of a church both in what you do as in program, and what you do in care. So we're going to talk about the small group size organization that you will put in your church plant, the whole infrastructure of the Leadership, Culture, and much of the ministry culture is done in small groups. Each small group setting has a different purpose, and needs a different approach. Let's talk about types of small groups. In every church, and especially in every new church. Well, there are permanent groups, in form teams or whatever you want to call them, such as the advisory leaders moving all the way to the ruling elders. So when you start a church you're going to start with advisory leaders and someday, you're going to have ruling elders, you're going to have deacons and those are going to be small groups. worship leaders, form a small group. Discipleship team is a small group, young Christian leaders, team leaders. Those are small groups of leaders that lead the youth of your church. There's childcare teams, finance teams, promotion teams, and evangelism teams, hospitality teams and small group leaders. Now, when I mentioned our small group leaders, this has in the last 30 years, thought to be this is the group that leads the care groups or life groups in every church, they too are small groups. But the fact of the matter is, is small groups, small teams of people with utilizing their gifts and calling within a church are very important, but to think, as a church planter that really you are recruiting and creating stages for small groups. There are short term types of groups. So we just talked about more permanent types of groups. But there's also short term groups. Groups can be created for counseling purposes or seminars, or service projects, groups that just exist for a short life shelf or shelf life, so to speak. And then those groups move on. Let's talk specifically about some of these permanent small groups. While we have advisory leaders, when you start a church, they become the ruling elders, Deacon boards, Deacon leadership, those are small groups. And you start with recruiting advisory leaders, I Timothy 5:22, do not be hasty in laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others. But keep yourself pure. As you start a new church, you are looking for those people that have that gift of leadership. You're seeking to recruit, let's say you look into your church, and you're looking for men, called by God, to be raised up in leadership to help you in leading the church. And again, you're looking for those available, available leaders, and depending upon some of your policy issues, with women or men, elders, that's a local call that you have to struggle through. But you're looking for those leaders to help you but don't be too quick in a church plant to put that
permanent leadership apparatus in place. We've talked about this and other places in this class, about how to develop those ruling elders and the deacon leadership. So I'm just gonna mention this is a permanent small group. There's also leaders as a church planter, you are the first producer. That's right. You, your family, and your little small group of your family starts the whole thing and then you recruit some other people to help you. You're creating stages. So you create a worship stage, so to speak. A small group is another example of a stage and you pick music that connects to the people your group is reaching. If you're reaching predominantly young people We'll, of course, the music is going to be different than if you're reaching predominantly older people. When you're creating that small group watch out for that egotist worship leaders. These are people who come up there just because they want a stage, and they want the attention on themselves. This becomes a discipleship issue. So when you're actually creating this small group, there are unique discipleship issues that come in creating of every small group. And then the worship leader, one, many times, leaders have been enculturated, to basically want to be on the stage and is more about them. But in a church plant, it's about God in training people how to worship God. So some of those discipleship issues will come out in every small group. Here's an example of what happens in a worship small group. But every small group has unique discipleship issues. You know, before we just talked about elders, and leaders, but there are unique leadership discipleship issues that that small group needs, worship leaders need different ones. Also, in worship leaders, one thing to watch out for is volunteer and balance because worship is something so fun, sometimes leaders can be burned out. So you might want to have more than one worship small group. After you develop one, develop another, get to the place where you're having that balance where people are not over volunteering. Discipleship teams are another form of a small group, recruit those who love mentoring and educate, recruit those who love mentoring, and educating children or adults a lot of ways this is a good place for future elder training, future shepherding training, run the Christian education team. In other words, at first, what you're looking for is that the team reflects your goals as a church planter. But soon, you're going to want to pass that off to qualified leaders who have a passion for Christian education. Come up with short term, small groups and seminars, and a lot of ways there could be permanent discipleship teams, for children, maybe like Sunday school and whatnot. But in many ways in a church plant, you can also start with some small events that come and go. And also lead permanent education offerings. What that means is, what are those places in a local church, that you're going to consistently bring discipleship and education. And these are going to be those standing education places. Young Christian leaders team recruit leaders who will lead them the raising up of young Christian leaders. And I usually think about that young Christian leader age group from around 12, 13, through 18, or even
into young adult, maybe recruit a team of two to five adults who sense the calling to work with the young people get the young people together with the expectation that they are going to be the future leaders of Christianity. So many times when these types of small groups are put together in churches, it's the youth ministry and its programmatic and it can be any size, it is, in a sense, just babysitting the young people through their teenage years. But in a Christian, young Christian leaders team, this team of leaders of two to five adults are a small group, the leadership small group, and what they are going to do is get together young people, and it can even be in a beautiful program. But the purpose is to encourage the young people, not just to, this is what's done for me babysitting me through my high school year, but give them the expectation that they're going to be the future leaders doing engaging leadership topics for teenagers, such as people smart in ministry, you know, things you've learned here, you know, people smart is a big topic for young people. And they need to do well with people and they're gonna see the benefits right away. But if you talk about some of those issues, and then, of course, grounded in the Word of God and have many opportunities to share the faith, those are powerful, small group leadership opportunities, creates a stage for them to do music and worship. You know, many times these young people play instruments and seek to bring them into that other small group team as well. So they're not just connected to the church by one small group, but they're also connected in other ways as well. And also when you find young people who are on fire for the Lord, get them involved at Christian Leaders Institute get them started in the Getting Started class. There's also the child care team. This is many ways called the nursery. But this is a group of people a small group whose calling is to care for the young. Maybe while there's a worship service, there's a nursery that's conducted. Here's just a few things if you can do background checks, in many places in the United States, liability insurance is connected to the background checks of people that work with young children, or actually any children for that matter. You know, maybe the idea of background checks applies to anybody who works with children at any age, all the way up to age 18. So think about that, that when you recruit young Christian leaders, when you are leaders, when you recruit childcare or Sunday school leaders, it's just a good idea to do a background check. Always, at least two people with the children never have it where one person is in the nursery alone. Design your offering for the paranoid parents. What does that mean? Well, think about some a parent who's coming in, they don't know what your church is about. They're looking at things like is everything clean? Do is are two people there? Do these two people dress? Well, these first impression issues are really important. Check online, type in search keywords, such as how to make a really excellent and safe childcare program in my church. And you'll get all sorts of tips from churches that have done that. Find leaders with passions for children. And here's something pay if you need to
have a high quality care. Pay. Yeah, that's right. Many times, this is such an important issue that in the new church. Maybe this has to be the sense of, we need to make sure that we get high quality service in this area. Now, many people will say don't ever pay, and I'm okay with that too. But I know many churches need to specifically pay for childcare. And if that's you don't feel bad about that. The finance team, that's another small group, recruit money counters, at every service, where you take a collection, have someone else dependable people to count the money, you as a pastor in general, just stay away from touching money, have a whole system set up, somebody else counts he money, somebody puts a deposit slip. The spending and prioritizing of money is the work of the ruling elders, not deacons, by the way, so a finance team, and the money counting team would probably be a different team. So when you think about a finance team, they're not necessarily the team and the money counters that create the budget. So I just want to insert that little thought in there. Many churches, the deacons or the finance team also makes the budget, but really the the spending of money how it's spent is really a function of the spiritual care of the church and the deacons. If, if you have a traditional understanding of deacons as money counters and stuff like that, the finance deacons, I should really say, are not necessarily the ones who set the priorities, develop a budget. And then that budget gets brought to the elders communicate how the funds are coming in, communicate, experiences, you know, the experience of what's happening in your local church are something that you want to bring through the finance, small group, the finance team, some more issues that I think are very important. And here's another one, the whole whole pastor salary issue. See, you're a church planter, and you may not be getting paid at all. So how does a bi vocational church planter who's giving more and more, whose life is totally involved in this church plant? How do they actually get paid if more and more they're going to need to phase out of their bi vocational job, their other job and do this full time with the finance team and the elders, maybe get a team together whose role is the development of a plan for the pastor to go full time. So put a pastor salary plan in place appropriate to one income of the middle class of the people group of the primary funders and senders, leaders salary amount to be decided upfront with senders and advisers. So now what I'm saying is, let's say a mother church is sending you to plant this church, and be sensitive to how that salary amount reflects the community you're reaching, but also factors in the sender as well. So what you want to find is that good balance. So how do you stair step that? Well, here's sort of the way in which many bi vocational church planters do this. Stair Step, the salary for bi vocationals is 25%. Of that salary amount might come after the first year. So the first year, the church planter might be just planting out of the fullness of his or her life. And then they get involved with the ministry, they raise people a lot, they raise small groups and leaders, and giving and tithing is occurring. So after the first year, the church planter can
receive 25% of that salary, then 50%, the next year 75%, the third year 100%, the fourth year, and then that fifth year, and again, this is assuming the church is growing, and the church can afford this. That should be 125% of that first agreed salary amount. And then in year six, and on three to 5% Raise increases. It's tied to growth numbers giving etc. But this is sort of a paradigm to think about how a bi vocational pastor can receive a salary after this pastor has planted this church. So the finance team separate from you is part of that. And then those recommendations, go to the elder board. Let's talk next about the promotion team or evangelism groups of leaders who are called to talk about and execute promotion and evangelism plans. Emphasis on word of mouth. We've talked about that here at this class in the past, emphasis on local witness. What's up, how's evangelism happening? Emphasis on apologetics in some places, a lot of people have a lot of hard questions about Christianity and are, are there promotional events, small group events that these leaders can put in place to spread Christ in their local area? Hospitality teams, you know, I really believe that shepherding elders, deacons, and even ruling elders. All the leadership is, first of all, it says in the Bible that any office bearer is given to hospitality. So that hospitality focus in a church is vitally important. So you want to recruit those who have that. That passion for meeting people, that passion for making people feel welcome. And you want a specific team, that's the hospitality team, recruit maybe future deacons, and even future elders that might participate. Meet to develop that local plan, schedule hospitality to newcomers, discuss the best practices for assimilation, make connections of newcomers with existing participants in this is sort of how it goes, okay. So let's say a elder or deacon or leader in the church is willing to take a Sunday of hospitality opportunity. So they are on this list. A newcomer comes to church, that person invites that newcomer to their home. Now, they might also connect with an existing member of the church to make that connection to for the newcomer. So often what happens is somebody comes to a church, and really, they come, no one hardly talks to them, and they leave, or people talk to them in sort of a superficial way. Like they're the official greeters. They do their official work. And after their official work is done, everybody goes home, when you plant a church, every one who comes need to feel welcomed, and need to see the possibility that they can be friends here that they could join in Co-journey with someone else together in that spiritual trajectory that they're on that that journey that they're on. So the hospitality team is vitally important, a very important small group. In fact, as I look over church planting, I'll, I'll say this, we like to say that the worship team is really important. We like to say that the elders are really important. I would say, the hospitality team in a church plant could be more important than how great your music is, on Sunday, more important than how your Sunday school program might be more important than so many things. And yet the hospitality team, though leaders are called in the Bible to be given to hospitality, often the
hospitality team is still weak in many churches. So the hospitality small group, that team is vitally important. There's also small group leaders and this is sort of the traditional understanding of small groups. So you recruit maybe the pastoral care team, commission as a small group leaders, deacons, you know, you know, we're not really talking about here, but in a lot of ways, elders and deacons both are filled with ministry duties and opportunities. When when deacons are ordained, they're not there just to be about budget and counting of money. They are all about ministry, learn the methodology of starting ministries, small groups, and even go online, we have some blogs for you to read here. In this church planting class. The leader team leaders team is the pastoral care work of the ministry deacons. So in many ways, what I like is when somebody becomes a small group leader, they also go through a ordination as a deacon process. Now again, in your local setting, you might see that a little differently. These small groups are about shepherding the church, and you want to create the platforms for people to do that. One more thing about small groups, small groups tend to create cliques that are closed. One thing I would suggest to think about is to create a small group and have it automatically that after a year or two, the small group is going to disband it for in order for you to meet other friends. Now, I will tell you people won't want to do that necessarily, unless you say that upfront, and basically say, you know, we are all new here, we want all of you to have friends. And we want you to grow in your friendship developments. So what we're going to ask is that we create these small groups. And after a little bit, you try another small group, just because you want to keep meeting people and keep growing spiritually. Or maybe another way to do it is maybe two couples really connect. And they become the team leader to start a new small group. You are going to have look at your situation and your temperament and what you think about that. But the downside of care groups, life groups, small groups, is often it can form cliques, there are groups that will be together for 10 years, you know, recently I visited a Church where a small group was together for 12 years, and no one else had ever joined that small group. Now, this, this group of like six families know each other, and whatnot, but nobody else is invited. The um, one of the people of the church said that, what they do sometimes is they'll have like a get to know new members, week for the small group. And what they do is they invite some people, to their small group to get to meet them, and then they tell them, Okay, we invited you just to meet you. Now you can go back to the church, it's nice to meet you here. But our small group is full. You know, that that happens quite a bit. So be careful as a church planter, about small groups that they do just do not become cliques or closed groups. You know, another way to do it is to say that every small group is going to split in half, and then half are going to meet new people. So you have a little bit of a concept of long term relationships. But the group is going to open up to three new families every year, and then those three families that are going to open up to three more families.
So there's a lot of ways to do this. But please remember that small groups can be very cliquish counseling, small groups, maybe identify short term, small groups, or task force or teams that have a specific problem in mind, maybe a marriage seminar to renew marriages. You know, that's something that needs to happen maybe every year or every two years and maybe it's just a seminar. Identify the problems in your church in your community. Refer difficult matters to specialized helpers. This is very important. Don't get over your head, like for instance, doing a counseling, seminar on bipolar disorders, you might want to get a professional to help you. And follow up if a follow up is needed. Because some of these things become very dicey, very difficult, very long term. And churches that go into those waters often get into trouble. Connect mentors, if possible. Like maybe there might be a mentor program in your community. And a small group might be a retired man with a at risk team who needs a little bit of mentorship. In a sense, that's a little small group, it may be less for short term one year, have clear end dates in mind, or clear event dates in mind, and do all these things upfront, especially in small groups related to counseling. Then there's just seminars in general, think of various topics that are offered at a church. Maybe it's like a Christian businessman's approach to the community. So you have promote a topic there's attending, connect the attendees, with the larger church life, a lot of times I find seminars in churches do not do this. Well. What they do is they will do their seminar, it's so separated from their church. One thing that you can do things like, Okay, you have a seminar in area, about, let's say, Christian business, development, have this seminar, but have your worship team start and do a song or two and devotions and have like a little devotion, that it's like a mini church service. So you have the community coming, and they see just a little mini devotional church service. Now, if people from the community see this, they see the great seminar you put on, but they see a little bit of kernal seed of your church that will get them to say, you know, that was really meaningful. I think I'm gonna check the church out on Sunday, or on a Saturday night service, or however you structure your worship program. See, so when you do a seminar, keep in mind how to connect those seminars, to the local church, service projects, small groups, where you word or deed, we admit, but when you do a service project, remember, you're really mostly thinking about discipleship goals in your local church be understand that that's the first thing a lot of times people believe like a mission project. The whole purpose is to help you know people in another country now there is a lot of help that can occur there. And be very careful that your discipleship goals, don't just have the mission goals as sort of the the main purpose because what happens is, is that you can confuse who you do mission to by your discipleship goals. What I'm saying here is be very honest about when you do a service project, understand, it's for young people to see other cultures and along the way, teach them about being friendly and giving leave, give a hand. Christian love to the community.
Where your church is, is one of the best places to do word indeed projects, so that you can form relationships with the community. There's many discipleship goals, and there's much love in the community, these goals can combine together to create even church growth for your new church. Remember to keep projects low cost if possible. And the reason you keep them low cost is because you want that sustainability to be there. And you don't want to create financial dependencies from people that you're helping to your church. A lot of times what happens is the church feels such love for the community, they will set an expectation that they will not be able to keep they'll they'll say we're going to help single moms and they'll start this program. And then because they can't maintain it, it goes away and then it brings hurt because you started something you could not keep going try to think of service projects that create discipleship goals that show love to your community or another community with yet the budget staying very reasonable and appropriate. You know, there are so many different small groups and and each one of these areas, you can check online for some of the best practices. But when you create small groups remember there's task small groups, there's small groups that are short term, there's long term permanent small groups. you're organizing your whole church around groups of people to do ministry. Sometimes a small group meets once a month, sometimes it meets every week. Some small groups meet once a quarter, maybe there's an audit small group that you have that audits all the books it meets once a year. There's all forms of small groups in your organization as you lead and develop a new church. So, read up on them read up on the different types of small groups become very good at creating small groups, very good at delegating others to create small groups and be also good at ending a small group if its purpose is not there. Church planting is incredibly fun but when you have a group of people with you, you really see how the body of Christ operates and is very effective for God's glory.