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.

Yesterday, I met with Mark Warren & Jim Probst from Eastview Christian Church in Bloomington, IL.  We are partnering together to host quarterly roundtable discussions for Small Group Pastors.

I love sitting around with leaders and “talking shop”.  I always walk away inspired, challenged, educated, and encouraged.  I love learning from others and being able to share my experiences with others.  Our hope is to keep the pastors connected via Facebook between gatherings.

Really looking forward to our first roundtable next Thursday.  The topic is “Leveraging Small Groups to Accomplish the Vision of the Church.”

We are hosting our second Leadership Community this Saturday. This is our quarterly gathering of leaders and key-influencers to make sure we are all on the same page with the future of the church. It is a by-invitation-only time of worship, vision-casting, leadership training, team-building, food and fun.

In my opinion, it is one of the most important things we do as a church. It creates synergy & momentum. It allows us to make sure our Vision sticks in the minds & hearts of our leaders. It creates a natural dissemination of information to the church as a whole as it trickles down from our leaders to the people they lead.

This Saturday we are beginning the training for 40 Days of Purpose which we will be doing in the Fall. We are going to buy every family in the church a copy of The Purpose Driven Life and challenge everyone to get connected into a small group for the entire eight weeks of the campaign. Of course, this means we need to double the number of our small groups by August. I am estimating that we need to have 40-45 adult small groups to make sure we have 100% involvement.

Can you guess what I am talking about with my small group leaders during our break-out session this Saturday?!?

Here are some quotes from the feedback forms about this morning’s Leadership Community…

What part of the gathering was most helpful to you?

• That we took time to discuss and learn together
• Meeting and worshiping with other leaders
• Large group - about all working together as one
• Enjoyed gathering group together and hearing stories of difference Little Oaks/Upstreet make in life of children
• Vision, Direction
• The direction/vision of the church. Very motivating morning!
• Visuals
• I enjoyed all of it. I really appreciated the time Bill & Chris spent talking about the vision.
• Hearing the leadership’s vision. Spending time in the Word.
• The visual demonstrations were awesome!
• I was pleased overall, and look forward to the next time. Thank you!
• This is the first time I’ve been invited to a directional leadership meeting, and I’m 61. Thanks - very much appreciated.
• The time helped to get focused for starting a new group…challenged me personally.
• Understanding slow drift!
• Breakout sessions (several people listed this as the most helpful part)
• I think it was great. I love to hear stories; they help me to relate the point that is being taught to my own situation.
• I think the leadership training is great! I’m very much looking forward to the next session in May.

What would you improve/change for the next gathering?

• Chris has on a NY Giants t-shirt!
• Have Diet Mountain Dew
• Wear warmer socks (I’m pretty sure that wasn’t directed towards me or any of the other presenters… how would they know if our feet were cold?!?)

We’ve got the first one under our belt! It was a great success with a lot of positive comments on the feedback forms. I’ll share some of those later tonight. Right now, it’s time for lunch and a little bit of rest…

A big thanks goes out to all of the pastors, staff members, and volunteers who went above and beyond to make this first gathering a home run!

It’s 6:30am, and I am sitting in my office at the church. T-minus 60 minutes before Leadership Community begins. Right now, it is quiet and peaceful in the church.

The volunteers will start showing up soon to get breakfast ready, turn the lights on, crank the heat, and double-check that everything is in place.

The leaders will start showing up around 7:30am for breakfast. Music will be cranked. Videos will be played. Talks will be held. Fun will be had. Chaos may reign.

I’m ready…bring it on!