Is It Time for a System Update?
Finding yourself unable to break through certain grouplife barriers? Maybe you can’t find enough leaders? Or try as you might, you just can’t start enough new groups to keep up with the number of people looking for a group?
It could be that you’re using a system that just isn’t designed to do what you’re trying to do.
How could that be? Aren’t all small group systems or strategies really just different ways of doing the same thing?
Think about Telephones
I’ve found that sometimes a concept is easier to really
grasp when you switch fields for just a moment. For example, you might not go back far enough to remember using a telephone like this one. But you probably remember something earlier than what you have now.
Do you remember rotary dial phones? The ones you could actually dial? Do you remember when push button phones replaced rotary?
Do you remember when slimline telephones began to replace the big clunkers? What about cordless phones?
Do you remember the first cell phones? They were the size of a shoe! They were the size of shoe phone!
Today’s Telephone Technology
We dropped our land line two weeks ago. Don’t need it. Never used it. The only people calling were charities exempt from the “do not call” list!
Everyone else was calling on the cell phone!
GroupLife Systems
Every week I talk with folks who are scratching their heads, trying to figure out why they’re stuck at a certain number of groups or a certain percentage connected.
What’s easy to see when you’re talking telephones…is sometimes just harder to see when you’re talking about small group systems.
Few of us would expect to use this old Motorola cell phone to surf the web or come equipped with a built-in GPS system. We’d know intuitively that our iTunes music is not in there anywhere.
But when it comes to small group ministry…it’s just not obvious that a system dependent on apprenticing can’t quickly connect a congregation. It just not obvious that there might be large numbers of competent shepherds willing to open their home and host a group…if the teaching could be supplied via a DVD. You might be connecting the usual suspects over and over and never see that it’s the way your system is designed that makes that happen.
Sometimes it takes the fresh eyes of a strategic outsider to help you identify a system update that will help you break through a barrier. I’d love to help you…and you can find out how to schedule a coaching call or set up a consulting visit right here.
