Community starts at home? Maybe that's not atomic enough, community starts with the individual.

Whaaat? How does that work? Community by it's very definition has to involve more than one person so how can it start with the individual?

The weekend just gone the Eldership of my church (which I am one of) went on retreat to pray, reflect and discuss God's direction for His church in the coming year. I think we all went in with some fairly clear ideas about what 2009 will look like but by the time we were done God had turned it all on it's head.

If you are a member of my church, you should probably skip the next couple of paragraphs, it contains spoilers for next year :)

God's agenda for our church seems centered around the statement "Being in community. Being of community" which is to say we are committing ourselves to growing our church in community with each other (as well as those who walk through our doors) as well as committing ourselves to growing in further outside of our church walls into the greater community.

The basis for all of this community building are small groups with the stated goal of "Being a church of small groups, not a church with small groups". That doesn't mean adopting a cell church model but rather seeking to make community a part of the DNA of our church. When someone new joins, the goal is to have them plugged in with a small group who will then become the primary mode of pastoral care and support.

The Holy Spirit was quite convicting when this vision took form in front of us, out of my own mouth I heard the challenge to us as a leadership to be practicing this form of community that we had been discussing for the rest of the church because if we were not able to practice and demonstrate it how could we expect the rest of our congregation too?

So why does community start with the individual, because the individual must make a conscious decision to open their life up to those around them even if those openings may invite pain or conviction. (Although in my experience it has always brought more joy than anything).

Community is not something that can be tough, it can only be shown. In fact we have the greatest example of community in God. As a Trinitarian being he is in constant community with himself and at his very nature he is love.

If we want to grow a God-like community, a royal priesthood of believers than we can do no better than taking a leaf out of God's book on this on.

This is the third part in the unintentional series on business following on from Confronting busyness with vision and Overburdening our congregations. Burn out, drop out or drop dead.

I say unintentional because initially I was really just ranting about something I see as a problem for the church and pastors, getting those people in the pews committed to the vision of the church (universal) and growing Spiritually.

Something that has been keeping me awake at night, and I do actually mean that it has been keeping me awake, is the questions

1) Are we making disciples of Jesus or just a crowd of followers,
2) If our church was to disappear tomorrow, would anybody notice?

The questions have popped up so many times recently that I know that it is God asking me to explore them in my own life and own church and ministry.

This is the third part in the unintentional series on business following on from Confronting busyness with vision and Overburdening our congregations. Burn out, drop out or drop dead.

I say unintentional because initially I was really just ranting about something I see as a problem for the church and pastors, getting those people in the pews committed to the vision of the church (universal) and growing Spiritually.

Something that has been keeping me awake at night, and I do actually mean that it has been keeping me awake, is the questions

1) Are we making disciples of Jesus or just a crowd of followers,
2) If our church was to disappear tomorrow, would anybody notice?

The questions have popped up so many times recently that I know that it is God asking me to explore them in my own life and own church and ministry.

I've been reflecting a lot recently on why people seem so reluctant to be involved in the life of their church. In my church as a lot of others the 80/20 rule holds firm, 80% of the work is performed by 20% of the people. It's a problem of complacency for the most part, people are just happy to not be involved.

This 80/20 creates a dangerous situation for the church (like any other organization) because the concentration or work on a small group of people means that they are prone to burn out, drop out or drop dead. Which ever way it happens you could see important ministry functions such as pastoral care or your soup kitchen / outreach ministry dropping straight off the face of the earth.

During the last three days I've been attending a course in advanced preaching techniques at my college. On the second day they rolled in three pastors from very different churches and life experiences to talk with us about the challenges of preaching ministry. The conversation turned to ministry in general and again this topic of complacency raised it's head.

The consensus of these pastors and the rest of the room seems to be that people in the west are just too content to care! They are happy with their big house, car and job and can't give much care to what happens in the church.

There is obviously a Spiritual issue involved here but I'm not sure if it is complacency or something else and complacency is just a symptom of a deeper issue.

One of my favorite college subjects is one called "Personal Formation". It is 3 years long and works to grow the individual in themselves. It's run as a small group (typically about 8 people) who get together over regular periods during the year to reflect on themselves, life and ministry and how God is forming them. I had my third session this year on Monday and we were introduced to the term, Missionalism. This is the tipping point from being a sucessful leader and drawing yourself into a cult of personality and sucess. And I'm prone for it!

Those that sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. (Ps 126:5) I've always enjoyed that Psalm, it brings an amount of comfort to me when ministering to those in pain because it points me towards the hope that they have in future and that the pain not matter how much it hurts will be redeemed. Twice this weekend I fell into some accidental ministry where this verse resonates deeply within me. The first happened in my lounge room...

Since I'm a small group pastor and this is a ministry blog, I think I should probably do a bit more talking about small groups :) One of the most impacting moments in my early Christian life was when in the middle of a small group study the leader turned to Ben* and said, "are you ready to make that commitment?" and Ben said "Yes". The study was very evangelical and focused on what it means to be a Christian. Ben had been in the group for some months and in his 40+ years, only when to church for weddings and funerals. So what happened?...

As I mentioned earlier, we are now in the third week of our eight week bible study series on the beatitudes and I don't think things could be going better. There is a lot of conversation being generated by the participants and even new groups coming on board since it kicked off. We now have close to 100% adult participation which I believe is a testimony to how God is working in the lives of our church at the moment. Besides running my own group, I'm attending one of the new groups that were formed for the study (and I believe will continue to progress afterwards). It's been a strange experience for me to not be in the drivers seat but God is certainly working through the new leader (who had a great mentor :) to bring out His agenda for the group. It's this group leaders first time of leading "full time" and I've been encouraging him along the journey but I thought I should share some of the insights I've had with him.

I want to spend a little time talking about a practical problem with all those involved in ministry (although it can be applied to anyone). This is the power of triangulation.

 

It’s important for a pastor to be aware of triangulation because of the impact it can have on their relationship with the congregation, it’s also pretty important that the pastors wife gets to understand it as well because people will certainly try to put her in one.

 

Basically, triangulation is when someone tries to influence the relationship of two other parties be it two people or a person and an object.

 

Triangles are formed when any two parts of the system become uncomfortable with the third.

 

Try this on for size. A wife has an alcoholic husband and after years of worry she decides to do something about it, she tips all his alcohol out! When she does this, she is trying to affect the relationship between the husband and alcohol as seen in this nifty diagram.

 

 

 

Like stop signs and reindeers, red means bad!!!

 

You could change the labels to read something like Pastor, Pastors wife and congregant. Does this sound familiar, a congregant doesn’t like something the pastor has done so they tell the wife in order to make a change.

 

In both of these situations all that’s going to happen is somebody will get hurt.

 

So what do we do with all of this? Learn that you can only change the part of the relationship that you are apart of.

 

In our pretty picture, the wife is not in the relationship between the husband and alcohol but she is in a relationship with the husband. If she wants to affect the alcoholism she needs to strengthen the relationship with her husband. Or she can strengthen her relationship with the alcohol by joining a spouse support group and understanding more about alcoholism.

 

There is a difference between triangulation and mediation. If Y comes to you saying that X owes him money, don’t go to X but offer to go with Y to X. This is empowering Y to confront X. Don’t go to X on Y’s behalf!

 

Remember, if you try to change the other two parts of the triangle you will not only be ineffective, but will end up with the stress of the conflict.

The milestone has been reached and if I didn't have 5000 other things to do, I would sink quickly into a pit of exaustion.

I am of course refering to the church wide bible study, this is the biggest project I have ever undertaken by myself and it has certainly gone off well. At last count I'm at around 80% attendance which conventional wisdom seems to suggest is about the best you can aim for with small groups.

Our preaching pastor Lionel kicked it off with a bang, he absolutely nailed the sermon which gave people an introduction to thinking different about the beatitudes. Best of all it challenged me, one of the people so involved with all of the study material. We are polishing up the podcast at the moment so I'll keep you posted when it's available.

I was disapointed in myself with one thing though, I forgot to bring the video camera. I was planning to produce a DVD series and package it up for newcommers so they can get a feel for who we are and what we believe but it looks like audio only is the way to go.

One week to go and my brain is fried. I'm having trouble getting the words together even for a short post like this so forgive me if it resembles a laundary list and not something a little more well written and reflective.

Sally and I were selling the new study books on Sunday morning (doesn't even cover cost) and they were really well recieved. The one thing I did overlook was a large print edition but I just ran a couple of those off myself. More than half the books were taken, it would have been more but a lot of people were away for mothers day.

I've had another setback with the training. I was planning to do it this Sunday after church but I was reminded that I've promised to take my parents into the city to see Phantom of the Opera. Do'h! The week after I'll be away so I've done what I should have done weeks ago, asked someone else to do it. *GASP*

This Sunday saw a whole lot of last minute sign-ups which is encouraging, most of the groups are pretty full although I had to close two of them, just didn't have the numbers. It actually worked out pretty well because one of the group leaders is very ill at the moment and will be better suited to participating than leading.

Combine all this with two days of Mothers day (too much family!) and it makes one very busy weekend.

The last thing I have to do is get a video camera together and organize the youth study. Full steam ahead!

Although I haven't blogged about it in detail I've been putting a lot of time into contemplating the life cycle of small groups in out church.

One blog I have read suggests three phases of group life being
 1) Starting / Open to all
 2) Covenented / Closed to new people
 3) Concluded

While each church has different needs and goals with their small group life and it wont fit with everyone, but I particularly like this view of small group life because it plans for the conclusion of the group. And in my mind, the conclusion of a group brings oportunities for growth.

Most of the existing groups at my church have been running for many many years. They are full (I call a group full at 12 people) and stagnant. There is no room for anyone else, no thought of splitting and no thought about concluding. They are happy in their rutt. That sounds harsh, after all they are faithfully studying the Word of God and growing from the experience but they are missing something because of their familiarity with each other. They have lost the boldness to grow.

Most strategies for small group growth in a church is to help groups get to a certain size and then split them in twain. I'm not a fan of that strategy at all! To my mind it is an unnecessarily violent act and only serves to damage both halves.

To combat the contradiction in these two areas I've been experimenting with a sort of middle of the road strategy that I call "Small Group Plants". I'm sure it's not unique or original although I have not heard anyone else articlate it, not in any books or confrences.

The idea behind small group plants is for the leader (who has been mentoring group leadership with others in the group) to support and commission two to three people in their group (I think three is the most ideal number) to go out and find at least one other person that is not in a small group and start one on their own.

The old group leader is allowed to come to the new group for a limited time period but after that they are on their own (although supported by the small group pastor, me :)

In this way, both groups move back to the starting / open to all phase and begin again recruiting members. The old group because their is now three spots freed up and the new group, well, because it's new.

Thoughts?

To my great surprise I recieved a phone call from my friendly local Fedex Kinkos yesterday asking me to pick up my box of studies. I wasn't expecting them until Friday so it was a pleasent surprise get them early. I took a photo of the box but I used the wrong phone and I can't get the images  off it so your just going to have to imagine the depressing browness of the box and it lovely bible study center.

I'm thinking about turning it into a pinata and smashing the box open with a big stick on Sunday morning during church but I dont know how well that will go :)

Besides getting the studies underway, the biggest issue I still face is getting all of the group leaders together for our intital meeting. I've had three false starts so far because of Mothers Day and other ministry and college obligations. I'm going to try one last time on the Sunday the studies start and hope for the best.

On Friday I recieved a proof copy of the new bible study from the printers, I must say it looks great! The only thing I would change is adding a table of contents. I know, I know, how could you and every other person miss a TOC?!?! well I did so I have to live with it.

Sunday morning I got up to spruke the study and also tell people the cost. As a church we could probably absorb the production costs without much hassle but I believe that people take a greater ownership of something when they shell out for it. So I've pinned the price at $5 a study which is the printed book plus a small exercise book to keep study notes as well as sermon notes. I didn't really see the point of paying for lots of blank pages in the study book to write down answers when the exercise book is cheaper and a lot more flexible!

After the service I was praying with a young couple about some big things they are going through, what a privellege that is to pray for someone, and after I was done someone was there with $10 to buy two studies! That was so encouraging, it's one of the first signs I've seen of people not directly involved with the production of the study wanting to be a part of it.

On a slightly different note, I've had to move the training day back a week (to the day before we start) because some people are being totally unreasonable about the timing. Apparently Mothers Day isn't a good time to get a big group of people together, who knew? :)

As a young and naive small group leader I used to believe that you could do things in your group like, pick the next study, by canvasing the opinions of the whole group, garnering a consensus and then together going down to the local Christian book store and picking one out that meets all the agreed upon conversation.

This in fact did work for a while, when the group was very small, 3-4 people finding such consensus was easy because the group was traveling very closely together in their discovery process with God. When the group grew bigger, say 6-8 people, it became much harder to reach an agreement on who would bring supper next week let alone what we should be studying.

I put these kinds of issues into the subject of Shared Leadership vs Leading by Consensus. When we lead by consensus one could make an argument that we are showing no leadership at all, I don't agree with that. It does however put an unnecessary strain on the group when people start to engage their opinions only to be upset when the group doesn't move the way they suggested.

Shared leadership on the other hand is in line with the model of mentoring new leaders from within the group to become group leaders themselves. Let's take the example of choosing a study again. In a shared leadership scenario, the group leader would pull aside the person (or people) they are mentoring and ask them what they believe the group should study next and either go with it or put it to the group. Doing this gets people to think not just about themselves but of the Spiritual needs of others in the group and that is the best training I can give them.

There is one other benefit from shared leadership, it keeps the leader accountable. It gives people permission to speak into the leaders life about where they think the group is and helps prevent leader ego trips.

Today is pretty exciting for me, I'm off to go visit the printers and get the ball rolling with the new church-wide bible study. It's due to kickoff on the 19th of May so I'm cutting it a little fine as far as production is concerned but it all seems to be going to plan.

I'm also going to send out a PDF copy to the small group leaders today so they can have some time to absorb the infromation. As a church we have performed 40 days of Purpose and 40 days of Community. The biggest problem with both of those studies was there was no formal equipping for the leaders, we just had to feel our way around.

I'm a firm believer that the group leader should lead. Be it by reading on ahead and nutting out the answers themselves or just being further down the road of Christian experience than those in their group. If the leader is stumbling for answers then the rest of the group will stumble along with them.

Along with sending out the advanced copy, I'm also setting aside two training days for group leaders where we will go through the study as a small group ourselves and learn and grow. Because the study is 8 weeks long, I'm planning to have one day just before the commencement and one day three weeks in both covering the following 4 weeks.

Theological training today prepares you for many things. It prepares you as a critical thinker. It prepares you meet peoples Spiritual and emotional needs. It prepares you for understanding the whole person and their welfare. What a good theological education doesn't prepare you for is the fear in peoples eyes when you want to involve them in a ministry.

We joke around our church saying if you visit two weeks in a row you will be on a roster, I'm not trying to get people onto a roster, I'm trying to get them into a small group.

At our vision casting confrence (VCC) we (by that I mean the church leadership) commited to developing three areas in 2008, number two with a bullet is small groups as a means for personal spiritual growth and development. It's the reason I'm employed by the church, to create this small group culture. Also at the VCC we promised to undertake a church-wide study to kickstart our small group program.

So I've been spruking this for some weeks, I have sign up sheets, new leaders ready to take up the reigns, training planned but so far it's a little like pulling teeth to get people to sign up. This Sunday again I made an announcement during the service about what this is all about (them and God) and said I'd be at the back of the church after the service to help people find a group that's good for them.

As people filed out of church a few wouldn't meet my gaze, some rushed past and others made excuses. But the worst were the ones that had fear in their eyes that I might talk to them and display some interest in their spiritual well-being.

I've decided that the best way to overcome this is to use rule number 1. My rule number 1 for all ministry situations is to have people personally invite others. We can put up a hundred sign-up sheets and not get a single commitment to come but a leader extending a sincere personal invitation is in my estimation 90% effective in growing a ministry be it a small group, welfare or worship.

I've been trying to get a new small group up and running for a couple of months now but I've just been running into barrier after barrier. I've got people lined up, a study area and some exciting ideas to experiment on them with but the venue had been elusive.

The small group I run at the moment used to meet out of our house but recently we have been meeting at another couples place because they have a lovely new little boy and he needs to get some sleep! It's been quite good not having the group at our house every week, not because we don't want people around, we love having people around, but because after 4 years it's good to share the load a little.

So with that and another reason in mind I didn't want to start this new group out of our place. The other reason is I want it to be closer to part of the community we are focusing on at the moment and since a lot of them don't have transport our place would be a little too far.

I chose to meet in the cottage at our church. We have a main church building, a large hall, a manse as well as an old fibro building we call the cottage which houses the office and some space for Sunday school etc.

The cottage is on the same street that we are reaching out to with our soup kitchen so it seemed like a good idea go there and be close to the action. That way anyone curious about the Christian faith and wanted to know more can come along easily.

I've taken a brave step with this group, although I'm the one who started it up and recruited people to come (it is my job after all), I decided that I do not want to be it's leader. Last week I called up someone I have been mentoring in my home group to come and take over the reigns of this group.

If a church is going to develop a healthy small group community then it needs to be able to grow, and if it want's to grow it needs new leaders. I firmly belive that these leaders should come from apprenticing group members in existing groups so I thought I really should model that myself instead of just taking control.

So now I have a leader, a venue (and the keys!!!), and people to start with and I'm really looking forward to where God is going to lead us!

In one months time we start up our church wide bible study. I've nevery had to organize something on this scale before and it really is a learning curve. I'm trying to get 150 people (half of which are in groups) into groups which means creating new groups, get the study completed and to the printers and create a whole bunch of new leaders to lead the new groups.

Besides having a study to do, I think that getting the right leaders is the most important step here. A good leader can turn lemons into lemonade where a bad leader will just end up cutting people and squeezing the lemon juice into the wounds.

So how do you choose a leader?

This isn't a question of is a leader born or made, but really about picking the right sort of person for the role. My first stop was to ask the existing group leaders who they thought would make a good leader. I'll blog on this a little more later but I have something I call the group health check. It's a bunch of areas that I feel important for a group to be working in such as developing community, getting stuck into Scripture and reaching out together into the greater community. One of the other items on the list is "Are you identifying a leader to take over from you?" If we are aiming to grow our groups then at some point the group will need to divide and start over but that can't happen unless there is someone to take the other half.

So my first port of call is to those people that are being mentored and trained in existing groups including my own.

While all the leaders haven't come in this way, it's a principal that should really be held too as much as possible.

Recently some people have been talking to me about keeping their group on track. Every small group seems to walk on a thin line between becoming a social group or a study group. It's not a new problem and in fact it's one that pops up in my group from time to time.

Nothing is wrong with either of these if that's what your looking for in a group, but the purpose of Explore: groups is to find the balance between Community, Scripture and Outreach.

A pure study group (Explore: Scripture) will sit down bible in one hand, commentary in the other and purposefully dig down into Scripture to find out exactly what it means and how it applies to their lives.

A pure social group (Explore: Community) will sit down with coffee in one hand, biscuit in the other and purposefully dig down into the lives of everyone there and discover how they are travelling.

Like I said, nothing particularly wrong with either of these but that's not the purpose of Explore: groups at our church. Explore: groups exist to create community, that's getting to know each other and how God is working in ourlives as well as balancing that with getting a God's eye view of life and how we are meant to live it.

If you find your group polarizing towards one extream or the other and you don't know what to do about it might I suggest these two approaches.

Firstly, talk to your group about what they think the point of it all is. You may discover that they too and unsatisfied with the direction of the group or maybe they want to drag it all away across to one side. In that case you might have to raise up a new leader and move on somewhere else.

Secondly, to try and achieve balance and really find the time to explore the real issues of life and faith why dont you use the mullet strategy. That's business at the front, party round the back :)

The mullet strategy requires some dicipline and commitment from your group to show up on time and get down to business. For my group, business is the study and the party is community. When we start off with community we often run out of time and end with community. It's not bad but we all miss out on learning together.

When we adopt the mullet strategy in our group something kinda weird happens, the community time doesn't take as long. That's not because we are rushing against the clock but because a lot about our lives and week have already been shared in the context of the study.

So not only do we get the time to share about our lives, but we have talked about how God works through it as well and that's pretty great! I always leave more refreshed and feeling more connected not just to God but to my fellow groupicans as well.

So why don't you try for a bad hair day too?

The topic of being a servant leader seems to be strictly a Christian concept these days. Sure, there are some management books that still advocate it in the workplace but I cant remember the last good one I read.   

This is an article I wrote last year to teach small group leaders about the concept. Basically it's a short essay on how Moses was an effective leader who learnt how to be a servant of his people by first becoming a servant of God. Afterwards there are a series of reflection questions to help draw out the concepts into your own life.

I hope you get a lot out of The leadership qualities of Moses.

So, what does a Small Groups Pastor do? When I decided to take up the role at my local church I sat down with a blank sheet of paper and asked myself exactly that, what am I supposed to do?

I was given a job description that goes along the lines of "grow the network for small groups" and that's about all. It wasn't laid out as a matter of numerical supremacy, the directive is to in the first instance get as many people in our church as possible into a small group for their own spiritual development, then see where it goes from there.

My sheet of paper blank, my brief in front of me, I prayed and asked God to lead me on with a vision for the small group ministry in this church that would be valuable and effective in developing the spiritual lives of those inside and outside the church. No mean feat!

At college we are encouraged to discover our philosophy of ministry (we all have one even if we don't articulate it). I believe my philosophy of ministry centers around the concepts of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. You have probably heard of the former and not the latter.

Orthodoxy is all about having right beliefs where orthopraxy is all about putting those beliefs into practice.

To effectively lead this ministry and grow and develop it I need to have both the right concept of it's goals and model the right steps to see it happen.

As I sat down with my pen and paper I jotted down everything that God was telling me about the priorities of the ministry. I reflected on those for a while and saw that they grouped themselves into three categories:

• Community
• Scripture
• Outreach

I'm going to expand on those each in separate posts but I want to focus now on rebranding a ministry.

I have the brief and my focus areas but how do I do it? How do I get a church excited in small groups again?

Taking a leaf from all those marketing people I used to work with, I've gone with rebranding the ministry. The vision of the church is to move people from complacency to being compelled in their faith so my part in that is to get people to explore their faith in a new way.

So "Explore: groups" are born. Each small group is now focused on:

• Explore: Community
• Explore: Scripture
• Explore: Outreach

This is not just marketing but a re-imaging of how a small group ministry can run in the context of our church.

But where do you go from here? You start investing this in the leaders and modeling it to them.

You don't know this yet, but when I took on the Pastor to Small Groups role I inherited a project that involves the whole church.

The vision of our church for 2008 is to lead people from a place of complacency to being compelled in their relationship with God. To open their bibles when they are outside church, to pray more and to put legs on their faith and be involved in the lives of others.

The project I inherited is part of helping people move to compulsion in their relationship with God. It's a church-wide small group study based around the Beatitudes in Matthew 5.

My wife was on the project team with an Elder and a former pastor who put the study together. Although it's blown out from 6 to 13 weeks in length, I'm proud of the work she has done along with the rest of the team to put the study together. It's a challenging piece of work that when studied will really challenge people to examine where they are in their walk with God and live out their faith in the way Jesus intended.

The reason I am mentioning it now is because I've reached a milestone with it. I was handed the completed draft of the study just over three weeks ago and it has taken me this long to read it, format it, and introduce an overall structure and narrative to the text. It has survived the transition from PC to Mac, a computer blowing up and being shuffled around between computer and USB drive that many times that I thought it would get corrupted.

So yeah me!

I am thinking about releasing it as a Creative Commons licenced resourse after we complete the study as a church. Hopefully others can use it to further their relationship with God as well.

Today marks a change in my status in ministry. Up to this point I've been working at my local church placement in a purely volenteer capacity. It's a requirement of my ACOM degree to perform 40 hours of ministry per subject. But today I signed my first work contract into a paid pastoral position!

I'm working part time for 4 hours a week, I know it doesn't sound like much but that is in addition to all the other ministry tasks I undertake.

So now I am officially the Pastor to Small Groups at Penrith Church of Christ.

It's a bit of a change in focus from what I have been doing which was focusing on developing the Young Adult population but when you being paid you go to where the need is :)

I have a real passion for small groups. I’m not just saying that because of the role, I believe small groups have the power to transform churches from places where people gather infrequently to places of real community. I believe that those who lead small groups have a special spiritual role, they have taken up the challenge to Shepard a group of God’s people and have taken responsibility for helping to grow their relationships with God and each other.

The reason I have a passion for small groups is because a small group changed my life! When I first started attending the church at Penrith, nearly 10 years ago, a pastor there created a small group and invited me along. In that place I made friends, learnt from Gods word, and for the first time in a very long time felt safe. Without that small group holding me up and showing me Jesus, I can’t honestly say that I would have come to know Christ.