MarkHowellLive.com

What are you training your coaches to do?  Have you trained them?  Or is it every man for himself?
I’ve found there are four key questions that every coach should be asking.  Here they are:

What is the best thing that happened in your group meeting this week? (Praise) Notice that it’s not a question about numbers.  [...]

When you meet with a personal trainer one of the first things they ask you is what do you wish was different?  They may phrase it a lot of different ways, but essentially they’re asking, “Where do you see that you need to change in order to be healthy?”
What if you taught your leaders to [...]

We talked about using a small group agreement in a recent article.  One of the reasons I recommend using an agreement in a group is that it provides an easy way to begin talking about two very important values in group life.  Rotating facilitators and host homes are two significant predictors of groups that thrive.  [...]

Reminder: Two of my core assumptions are (1) if I want to make it possible for everyone to be part of a group, I need to lower the bar for leaders (and raise the bar for coaches and coaching) and (2) part of lowering the bar for leaders is that I need to provide material [...]

“I can’t find enough leaders to take care of the number of people who want to be in a group.”
“Many of the people with the most potential to lead are just sitting in groups as members and won’t leave to start a new group.”

Sound familiar?  Those are two of the most common complaints of small [...]

One of the most important ingredients in group life is a small group agreement or covenant.  It doesn’t have to be complicated.  It can be a pre-printed handout (or download) or you can simply offer a set of guidelines and ask each group to write their own.  I’ve found an agreement to be very helpful [...]

Q: “What is the best way to close a group meeting in prayer?”
A: Great question!  There are several parts to my answer.  First, the entire meeting structure ought to vary according to the needs of the group’s members.  After all, new groups will be much less willing to share genuine needs.  Long-term groups may spend [...]

Great post today over at Big Ideas about Small Groups about saying the last 10%.  Whether you’re talking confrontation or leader development there is always a temptation to say a lot of what you need to and then walk away without saying the last 10%.  Take a look at what Carter has to say about [...]

How do you deliver training for your small group leaders?  The guys over at Community Christian Church  are testing an interesting idea by delivering training on key topics via YouTube.  You can see a few of their short training videos right here.  Definitely not really high tech, these are a good example of how easy [...]

Ready to think about helping your small group have a better experience in 2008? It’s that time again! Time for all good groups to get going! And get going on the right foot.
There are several important keys to getting off to a great start in the new year. First, if you didn’t already set a [...]