Posts by Mark Howell
Review: Not a Fan
Ripped open the packaging for Not a Fan earlier this week. For me, not many small group studies are as eagerly anticipated as anything new from Kyle Idleman and the crew at City on a Hill Productions. The first production that I ran across was H2O and it was really groundbreaking. Not at all a…
Read MoreBush on Small Groups
Sponsored Post Have you seen this video? It’s worth checking out. Available over on worship house media, I think you’ll be asking yourself, “Is it really W?” It could be used for your next small group campaign or for a leader training event. You can click here to take a look. And don’t ever misunderestimate…
Read MoreNow Is the Time To Think About What’s Next
Here’s reality. The best way to sustain the momentum of what you are about to do…is to be ready for the turn at the end of this straight-away. Much like a NASCAR race, there are straight-aways and there are turns in every ministry season. Preparing for and then launching a church-wide campaign (or a fall…
Read MoreReview: Dare to Be Uncommon
New from Group, Dare to Be Uncommon: Discovering How to Impact Your World, is a new men’s Bible study that is definitely worth a look. Featuring Super Bowl winning coach Tony Dungy, this DVD-driven study will be of immediate appeal. Dungy has great name recognition and is well-known to be both a winner and a…
Read MoreReview: real life discipleship training manual
Looking for a way to equip disciples who make disciples? You may want to take a look at the real life discipleship training manual, written by Jim Putman, Avery Willis, Brandon Guindon, and Bill Krause. New from NavPress, the manual is designed to provide the content for a 12 week experience. Each week in the…
Read MoreThe Why Behind the Way of Your Small Group Ministry Strategy
We all have reasons for the way we’ve designed our small group ministries. You use a particular strategy or system for a reason (or a lot of interrelated or barely related reasons). You may have chosen your system or you may have inherited it when you came on the scene. Sometimes the system was very…
Read MoreThe Last 10% Leads to a Church OF Groups
“We are committed,” he said. It is time and this is the year that we become a church of groups. Being a church with groups is just not getting it done. We’re all in this together to make it happen this year.” Love the determination in those words. Love the spirit. Love the hope. Cannot…
Read MoreMake It Easier To Fulfill Commitments to Host by Smoothing the Path
We all know the situation…20 people commit to host a group and 10 follow through. Or 100 commit to host a group and 65 follow through. I call it the “sign-up to show-up ratio.” What if there was a way to improve the ratio? What if there was something you could do that would exponentially…
Read MoreReview: Real-Life Discipleship
I first started hearing about Real Life Ministries back in 2007 when Avery Willis came by the Lifetogether office to talk about his latest project. The fast growing church in Post Falls, Idaho was and is an amazing story. When Avery mentioned that they had about the same number of people in groups as they…
Read MoreGroups Interactive’s New Version Takes a Big Step in the Right Direction
I had a chance recently to connect with Andy Ivankovich, the founder of UpperRoom Technologies, and take a look at the newest version of Groups Interactive (A friend of mine from Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, where Max Lucado pastors, put me onto UpperRoom a couple years back). I saw several things that will…
Read More