Accelerate GroupLife in 2011: T – 1 Week

Welcome back to my 6 week bootcamp series, designed to walk you through the steps of preparing to accelerate the growth of your grouplife system in 2011.  There really are some very basic ideas that make this timeline effective, and frankly, make any ministry timeline effective.  If you can learn to do the following things, you can accomplish a great deal:

• look ahead in your planning
• identify natural opportunities that are built in to the ebb and flow of the people in your community
• leverage the authority and position of your senior pastor
• over-communicate

You’ll still have limitations (i.e., the size of your community, the pace of life in your community, built-in systems, etc.), but these four things…you can do way more than you probably think you can.  And, if you’re on board with what God’s already blessing, there’s nothing you can’t do!

This Week’s Assignment

Because we’ve looked way ahead (we actually started on this project 5 weeks ago!), there are only a couple things that must be done this week.  And honestly, these two things should become part of your weekly agenda…they’re that important.  Here’s what to do:

First, make sure you connect with your senior pastor and reconfirm their participation in promoting the small group connection(s) that you are planning.  Senior pastors are busy; they’re often thinking about more than one initiative at a time; and they’re besieged from all sides by the leaders of other ministries and programs clamoring  for their attention.  Which makes it supremely important that you keep reminding them of their key role in promoting the upcoming small group connection(s).

This is probably a good time to remind you of one the most important lessons I’ve learned about communicating with senior pastors.  Here it is: Life-change stories are almost always the best way to get their attention.  So…when you connect with your pastor to talk about their upcoming role in promoting the connection, make sure you’ve got a story (or two) about the life-change that’s happening in your existing grouplife system.

Second, it’s always important to reconfirm some details that you’ve probably already nailed down (i.e., that you’ve chosen the study that your new groups will be using, that you’ve determined when it is has to be ordered, that the bulletin insert is being designed and will be ready for inclusion, etc.).

Question: Feelin’ the assignment? Does it make sense? Use the comment section to put in your two cents. You can leave a comment by clicking here.