Mark's Blog

Building a Church of Small Groups

Few churches have had as much influence on how small group ministry happens as Willow Creek.  And very few books have as large an impact on how small group ministry happens as Building a Church of Small Groups.  While a lot has changed at Willow Creek  since Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson first published it in 2001, it is still required reading if you're trying to figure out how to build a church where nobody stands alone.  Some books are written by theorists.  This one was written in the trenches by practitioners.

Based on an adaptation of Carl George's Meta Model, what developed at Willow in the 90s and the early part of this decade was the practical working out of how to recruit leaders, how to train and develop them, how to care for leaders, and how to develop healthy groups.  If you're trying to figure those things out, this would be an important book to spend time in.  You can order your copy RIGHT HERE.

Church Is a Team Sport

Picked up a copy of Church Is a Team Sport: A Championship Strategy for Doing Ministry Together by Pastor Jim Putman of Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, Idaho.  With attendance of 8,000 on the weekend, this 8 year old church is one of the fastest growing churches in America.  Even more impressive?  They're in a city of 10,000 and a drive-time population of 100,000.   Even more significant?  They've connected over 7,000 adults in small groups!

We hope to have their team on our Small Group Fraternity soon.  Very interesting stuff.  Want to check it out for yourself?  You can order your copy RIGHT HERE.

Church Unique

Looking for a resource that can walk you through the development of a cohesive and compelling vision, mission, values and strategy concept?  There are plenty of books out there, but I haven't come across any as complete as Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create Movement by Will Mancini.  Whether you're the lead pastor or the small group ministry director, this is a book that will not only help you think through the concept but act on it as well.

Church Unique is more than theory.  Detailed chapters on vision, mission, values, strategy and measures are designed to take you carefully through the concept and help you develop actionable plans.

• Defining your vision frame (Vision)
• Developing a missional mandate (Mission)
• Identifying missional motives (Values)
• Developing a missional map (Strategy)
• Clarifying the marks of success (Measures)

I am always looking for resources that will help small group ministries become more effective.  Church Unique will help you develop a more thoughtful approach to the mission you are living.  You can order your copy right here.

Walking the Small Group Tightrope

One of the challenges in small group ministry is coming up with practical leader training.   There's just not a lot out there...and what is out there is not always the nuts and bolts of becoming a better small group leader.  One exception?   Walking the Small Group Tightrope by Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson.

The first thing that struck me about this little book is that in some ways it's a more detailed continuation of Leading Life-Changing Small Groups.  Taking six very important leadership tensions and breaking them down with illustrations and practical take-aways, this is a book that you could use to enhance your leader development.

The six tensions covered in Walking the Small Group Tightrope are:

• Truth vs. Life
• Care vs. Discipleship
• Friendship vs. Accountability
• Kindness vs. Confrontation
• Task vs. People
• Openness vs. Intimacy

See where this goes?  Using the metaphor of a tightrope to frame the discussion, Donahue and Robinson share personal leadership experiences that make the issues very clear and then lead to next steps.  As the authors point out,

Small groups cannot thrive by focusing on either end of the continuum.  They cannot choose friendship over accountability, kindness over confrontation, or task over community.  Rather, effective life-giving small groups must embrace both ends of the continuum, in healthy opposition, and walk the tightrope between them toward authentic community and life-change (p. 21).

One of the most helpful features of the book is that each of the six tensions is supported and enhanced by a group exercise; taking it beyond information to application.  This is an important step and makes Walking the Small Group Tightrope a resource you ought to own and incorporate into the ongoing development of small group leaders in your ministry.

Prepare Your Church for the Future

When Carl George published Prepare Your Church for the Future in 1991 it was not the first book on small group ministry.  In fact, at the time it came out there were already many books on the idea of gathering in community with a few others...for Bible study or prayer or accountability or care.  If you've been around for a while, or have access to the library of someone who's been around for a while, you've seen other books that predate George's entry into the small group foray.  But you really won't find many others that have been as influential.

The concept of the metachurch finds its roots in Prepare Your Church for the Future.  At the time of its writing it meant the next step beyond mega, but not in the sense of size.  More in the sense of organization.  Although size was a factor in its necessity, the concept really unfolded on the realization that in order for churches to grow larger they must grow smaller (sound familiar?).  Taking his cue from churches like the Yoido Central Full Gospel Church in Seoul, Korea, George proposed that the "organizational principles of a Meta-church allows a church to maintain quality, no matter how much numerical success it experiences (p. 53)."

What are the underlying assumptions on which the meta-church capitalizes?  Take a look at these seven:

1. Churches of the future will be committed to making more and better disciples.
2. Churches of the future will be more concerned with the size of the harvest than with the capacity of their facilities.
3. Churches will be known primarily as caring places rather than as teaching associations.
4. Pastors will genuinely encourage ministry by the laity, despite centuries of modeling to the contrary.
5. Lay ministry assignments will involve leadership of a group.
6. Laity, given the opportunity, will invest time, energy, and money to learn the skills required to do a competent job of pastoring.
7. Pastors and people will remain dependent on the Holy Spirit to make His gifts available for mutually edifying one-another ministry.

The question might be, "Why read it now?"  After all, if it was published in 1991, isn't it pretty much out of date?  The answer is "no".  In fact, when you read Building a Church of Small Groups: A Place Where Nobody Stands Alone or Creating Community: Five Keys to Building a Small Group Culture your understanding will be enhanced because you'll be aware of some important foundational concepts that are found in the organizational structures of both Willow Creek and North Point.

Ready to add to your foundation?  You can pick up your copy RIGHT HERE.

Creating Community

Looking for a way to think about how to design your small group ministry? That might be the most helpful thing about Creating Community: Five Keys to Building a Small Group Culture. Although it's a short book (190 pages), it contains some very important keys to building a small group culture in your church. Most important? North Point's fundamental bias is to be intentional about the what and the how of everything they do. This is a huge lesson for the rest of us...one not to be missed.

Like the 7 Practices of Effective Ministry, Creating Community takes you sequentially through the process of making some challenging decisions as you begin to develop a small group ministry. Learning to ask three questions can provide a good foundation: (1) What do we want people to become?, (2) What do we want people to do?, and (3) Where do want people to go? These questions are all about "clarifying the win" and "thinking steps not programs" (two keys to the Seven Practices).

While Creating Community doesn't tackle how to take apart your existing program, it does a great job of providing a way of thinking about what a better approach might be. For all of us who are wrestling with systems that are less than effective, this is a good addition to the arsenal. At the same time, if you've got the tough work of taking apart a preexisting structure, you may want to consider John Kotter's Leading Change as a companion!

Organic Community

Organic Community: Creating a Place Where People Naturally Connect

Looking for help in designing an environment that encourages authentic, lasting connections?  Organic Community by Joseph R. Myers could be just the ticket to help your congregation move in that direction.  In the same way I found Myers' previous book, The Search to Belong, both intriguing and irritating, there's a lot to be learned in his newest offering.  If you've ever attempted to follow someone else's master plan and found that it really didn't work in your setting, this will be a book that is both comforting and challenging.  Comforting in that it may explain some of the difficulties in porting a strategy into a new setting.  Challenging in that becoming an organizational environmentalist is not a problem-free pursuit.

This is a how-to book, "but not one with step-by-step instructions. These pages do not contain a secret master plan only now revealed. Herein is no promise of grand success.  This is a different kind of how-to book.  This is a book that discusses a transition of thought (from the introduction)."

Pointing us to the inherent problems of adopting another organization's strategy, Myers identifies nine organizational tools "that will help you discover whether you are following a master plan approach or an organic order approach."  This is a book that could easily be used to frame a very healthy discussion about vision and direction.  It may not fully persuade on every point, but it will definitely challenge your assumptions and provide a more thorough understanding of your environment.

Ready to get started?  You can order your copy RIGHT HERE.