I love the power of small groups.  In a small group, people are known, loved, accepted, challenged, and served.  But here’s my problem with most small groups…they are primarily educational not transformational.

For the past 20 years churches have been moving adults away from the classic Sunday School model and into home-based small groups.  Unfortunately, the only substantive change was the location and time of our meetings.  We may have a bit more group discussion and ice breakers, but we have essentially taken the Sunday School model (based on the educational model given to us by society) and moved it into our homes.

Now don’t get me wrong…I’m all for people gathering together to study the Bible.  But if this is all we do, I think we are missing some of the latent power of small groups.  What if - in addition to studying the Bible - our small groups participated in a variety of transformational experiences?

• Working together in a soup kitchen
• Leading the worship & teaching at a chapel service in a homeless shelter
• Doing a prayer walk around their communities
• Hosting a block party so they could connect with the un-churched
• Preparing & taking meals to shut-ins
• Host a “love feast” (the Lord’s Supper - Jude 12)
• Adopt-a-block to make sure people have the basic necessities (food, clothing, bedding & toys for kids)
• Travel together on an overseas missions trip

What are some transformational experiences you have experienced - or would love to experience - with your small group?

I spent the entire day in Springfield, IL yesterday hanging out with fellow Small Groups Pastors from Illinois & Indiana.  One of the things I enjoy the most is being able to sit down with guys & gals who are “in the trenches” of small group ministry just as I am.  We all have different churches and different ministry environments, but the core issues we deal with are often universal.

If I were to boil down a days worth of conversation yesterday, it revolved around the topic of spiritual formation - the process of helping people grow in their walks with God.  As one pastor worded it, “we need to find ways to challenge people to take ownership of spiritual growth.”

As we talked around that topic, a few key thoughts came out…

• We need to utilize some sort of spiritual assessment tool to help people measure their spiritual growth.  The inherent difficulty here is that you can’t measure things such as increases in love, peace, joy…these are all subjective evaluations.  Therefore, whatever assessment a church were to use would need to incorporate both objective (church attendance, hours spent serving, tithing, etc) and subjective (hope, faith, patience, kindness) factors.

• We need mentors.  Men & women need to have older men & older women speaking into their lives.  We need to gain the insights and experiences and wisdom of people who have gone before us.  And older people benefit as well with a renewed sense of purpose and significance.  (We’ll be addressing this topic in an upcoming session of Men’s Fraternity.)

• Taking the need for mentors into consideration…we need to reconsider the benefit of small groups that are multi-generational.  Rather than gathering people together who are all in the same life stage (i.e. young couples), we need to combine together men & women who are at different ages and different levels of spiritual maturity.

There were many more take-aways from our conversations yesterday, but these three thought seemed to dominate our conversation.  I’ll write more later about my personal take-aways as they relate to Great Oaks.

I think someone should write a book about the role of food in helping people grow spiritually.

When our small group began meeting, we decided that once a month we would meet for a Family Meal.  Essentially, it is a monthly potluck where group members bring some food and their kids for a relaxed evening at someone’s house.  (For our Study Nights we ask parents to arrange childcare.)

These Family Meals are one of my favorite moments as a group.  There’s something about eating a meal together that draws you closer.  The conversation is pretty random, but there are always moments of laughter and moments of candor.  We talk about our children, our careers, our hobbies, our joys and our struggles.  People tend to let their guard down over a meal, and spiritual growth happens without even realizing it.

I think this is why Jesus ate so many meals with people.  In the New Testament, you see Jesus sitting down for a meal with people at weddings, in homes, in upper rooms, at festivals, and on the shoreline over a campfire. You see Jesus eat with those who loved him and with those who hated him.  You see Jesus eat with the righteous and the unrighteous.

Eating a meal with someone invites them into your life and allows you to enter into their life - and that is doing life together.

I hosted a roundtable discussion with my small group leaders during each service this past Sunday.  Love the opportunity to sit down with my leaders and hear their successes & struggles and offer up my own experiences & observations from leading groups for the last 15 years.

We met in what we call our Starting Point room.  It used to be a large storage room, but somewhere along the way, it was gutted and redesigned/redecorated to make a very nice living-room environment.  I provided coffee, bagels, muffins, and fresh fruit as well.  It’s amazing how quickly people open up in such an environment.

I loved the whole experience, but one of the things I liked the best was seeing small group leaders connect with other small group leaders.  For many of them, this was the first time even meeting some of the other leaders as we have had several new small group leaders step up in recent weeks.

Connections were made…ideas were shared…and everyone walked away with a greater sense of community, appreciation, and preparedness.

Personally, I can’t wait for our next one here at Great Oaks.  I also can’t wait for the pastor’s roundtable I am co-organizing in November.  More on that later…

So…who do you need to gather together for a roundtable discussion?

I’ve been talking for a few months with Mark Warren at Eastview Christian Church in Bloomington, IL about establishing a regional network of Small Groups Pastors.  As I’ve said before, leaders are learners.  And what better way to learn from other leaders than to sit down face-to-face and talk shop.

To that end, Mark & I are joining our efforts to host roundtable conversations with Small Groups Pastors who serve within a 3-4 hour radius from Bloomington.  It is going to be an informal one-day event with a single topic of conversation.  The pastors will all know the topic ahead of time, so they will be able to come prepared with ideas, resources, and stories of successes & failures.

I started making phone calls today to invite specific individuals to our first gathering.  All of the people I have spoken with have expressed appreciation for organizing the roundtables and are eagerly looking forward to being there.

From a purely selfish standpoint, I’m looking forward to learning from some of the best Small Group Pastors out there.  I’ll keep you updated as things progress…

I can breathe again!  There was a ton of work building up to this last weekend with the start of our 40 Days of Purpose campaign and the wedding in Chicago, but I am all past it now.  I have spent the last 48 hours following up with the last few people who needed to be placed in small groups, and I am really close to being done with that.

We still have some big events coming up in the campaign, but it feels like there has been a huge weight lifted now that the Kick-Off weekend is over.  The weekend services are getting planned out; the small groups are starting to meet; the prayer teams are praying.  A lot is still happening, but there just seems to be a different feel around here.

Of course, we are not letting down our focus or our guard.  The campaign is just beginning and the stories of changed lives are going to start rolling in (in fact they have already started - God is good!).  This is the very moment we have been praying and planning for, and we are going to stay diligent through the entire campaign.

And yet…it doesn’t stop at the end of 40 days.  As we have been already been praying and talking about, the 40 Days of Purpose campaign is the launching point…it is the first step in accomplishing the Vision that God has given Great Oaks.  We are already planning for “Day 41″ and beyond - new events, new programs, new classes, new experiences.

Bring it on!!!

I met with several members of my new small group this evening. We had dinner together and spent some time getting to know each other. Half of the couples have never been in a small group before while the other half has extensive experience. We are also varied in age and life-situation. It looks like it will be a great group to lead!

We are going to meet for one more meal in December and then begin in earnest in January. The plan is to meet the first three Sunday evenings of each month. The 1st & 3rd Sundays will be study nights without kids, and the 2nd Sunday will be a potluck meal with the entire family invited.

Here’s an idea for your small group to consider. Nate Westerfield and his small group have done this for the past couple of years, and they have found that it is a great time of service to the community and that it opens doors for conversations about the church. It is called “Light the Night”.

On Halloween (or whatever night your community does trick-or-treating) gather your group members together at one person’s home and set up some simple games in the yard (not in the house) for kids in the neighborhood to play. Keep the games fairly simple – bozo buckets, bean bag toss, ring toss, hula hoops, etc. Be creative but simple. You may want to consider having some hot chocolate or coffee available for parents while the kids are playing.

When the kids are done playing, give them a pre-packaged bag of candy with a brochure from the church or other information about the church. Be sure to set up some extra lighting for the yard so people can see better and so that the house stands out in the neighborhood. If your group members have young kids, they will still want to go trick-or-treating, so share the responsibility of supervising the games among group members while taking your own kids door-to-door.

Nate said that the kids come back two or three times during the evening to play the games and hang out. It is during those visits that parents will often ask who you are and why you are doing this. That is your opportunity to let them know you are a small group from Great Oaks and that you just wanted to give the kids something extra to do while trick-or-treating. There’s no need to get into deep theological conversations or try to convert someone to Christ on the front lawn. This is simply a method to connect with the people in your neighborhood.

Keep looking for ways to redeem the culture around us for the sake of Christ. A big thanks goes out to Nate & Kalee for this great idea!

I found my local coffeeshop! It’s called “The Blend“, and it just opened today in Washington.

They’ve got a great atmosphere - contemporary design and color; tables, booths, and couches; free wi-fi; and an assortment of books to peruse. And I love their tag-line: where coffee and community come together.

I can’t wait to settle in for a couple of hours with the laptop and a good book!

“We cannot settle for anything less than Jesus’ dream of community.” Building a Church of Small Groups by Bill Donahue & Russ Robsinon

What is Jesus’ dream of community? Read John 17…