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 do not believe I am the smartest, the wisest, or the most intelligent person in the world.  (No comments, please!)

Because of that, I believe strongly in seeking input from a network of friends and leaders in my life.  Whenever I am developing a new strategy to accomplish the Vision that God has given me, I seek their advice.  Whenever I am considering a major financial purchase/investment or considering a life-changing shift for my family, I seek their advice.  Oftentimes, these advisers open my eyes to areas I have overlooked or introduce me to perspectives I would never have considered.

“Refuse good advice and watch your plans fail; take good counsel and watch them succeed.” - Proverbs 15:22 (The Message)

What are you working on now?  And whose advice are you seeking?

Here’s another great quote from the book Activate…

“Average leaders focus on what happens next.  Extraordinary leaders focus on what happens after what happens next.”

Right now, we are gearing up for the launch of our Spring Semester of small groups.  December is a natural time to rest, so many small groups do so with the intention to renew their focus in January.  As the Small Groups Pastor, I am working to make sure we are set for that launch in January.

However, if we are to be truly successful in accomplishing our Vision for small groups at Great Oaks, I know that I also need to be focusing upon the Summer & Fall of 2009.  To that end, I am working diligently with my coaches to make sure we are prepared for a major overhaul of our small groups come Fall of 2009.

We will soon be revealing a major paradigm shift for small groups at Great Oaks.  We believe it will result in greater involvement in groups and lead towards a more focused process of spiritual growth.  It will capitalize on the natural rhythm of life that most Americans follow, and it will allow for regular entrance & exit ramps for being a part of groups. Lastly, I believe it has the potential to increase the number of people who step up to experiment with leading small groups resulting in a natural process of raising up new leaders in the church.

The system won’t be perfect right out of the gates, but we’ll tweak it as we go.  After all, everything is an experiment, right?

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?