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 kick-off) can generate a lot of momentum.

Eventually…you come to the end of the campaign and it’s time for what’s next.  The time to begin to make the turn is not when you reach the bend in the road.  Like what happens in a NASCAR race, you need to start thinking about the turn before you get there (so you’re in the right spot to begin making the turn).

Here are a few things you need to be thinking about now (before you even hit full speed on the straight-away:

• What curriculum will you provide at the end of the campaign to help your newest groups continue?  Remember, new groups are much more likely to continue if you begin talking about what’s next in week 3 or 4 (out of 6) of the launch series.  This is so important, I call it one of the 5 Keys To Sustaining New Groups.  It’s also one of the Secrets of a Successful Small Group Launch.
• How will you promote what’s next?  Remember, your senior pastor is best promoter.  It’s also helpful to actually script the promotion of what’s next.  Here’s how to do it.
• Remember, sustaining what you launch is actually part of the definition of a win for a church-wide campaign.
• How will you help those who missed the campaign join a small group for the follow-up study?  This isn’t a bad time to hold a small group connection.

These are just a few of the most important questions you should be asking right now.  And trust me…right now really is the time to be thinking this way.  If your church is like mine, you really don’t want to get into the turn to start thinking about coming out the other end.

If you’re still working on the details of a church-wide campaign, here are my Top 10 Articles on Church-Wide Campaigns.  You might also want to take a refresher Thinking Strategically About the Fall Season.

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 Christian.  This will get the attention of the men in your congregation.

In addition to the individual study guide, the Leader’s Pack includes DVD, study guide and Surprisingly Simple (a leader resource with tips and ideas on engaging adults in discussion).

Each session includes a short DVD segment featuring Dungy talking about the people and events that shaped him.  These segments have the feel of the answers to interview questions and help set up topics that have immediate application.

• Developing Uncommon Character Inside and Out
• The Uncommon Power of Putting Others First
• Becoming an Uncommon Friend and Brother
• Making an Uncommon Difference in God’s Kingdom
• Finding an Uncommon Purpose and Plan
• Using Your Uncommon Gifts for God’s Glory
• Building on the Foundation for an Uncommon Life

The study is easy to use and each session includes a variety of activities.  More than a collection of questions, the session plan is a combination of readings, surveys, trivia (with answers in the back), fill in the blanks, DVD segments, and discussion questions.

Although it is not essential, this study is a great companion to Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance, Dungy’s best-selling autobiography.  Each session in Dare to Be Uncommon features an optional reading assignment from the book.  An additional resource that could serve as a powerful kickoff event is an Uncommon Event (a DVD kit that can be used as a kickoff or finale to the study).

If you’re looking for small group studies that the men in your congregation will be attracted to, this is a great selection.   Dungy’s name is so well known, this study will have immediate appeal and could easily serve as a launching event for a men’s small group strategy.

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 manual contains 5 daily assignments (each assignment can be completed in 20 to 30 minutes).

The real life discipleship training manual was developed as a companion to Real Life Discipleship (reviewed here last week).  As I mentioned in my review of Real Life Discipleship, making disciples is serious business at Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, Idaho.  One of the fastest growing churches in America, they’ve seen more than 4,000 conversions as they’ve grown to 8,500 in 9 years.

Describing the training manual, founding pastor Jim Putman notes that “there isn’t much theory here.  Instead, it is the day to day, boots-on-the-ground game plan that we use every day at our church.”  In the introduction of Real Life Discipleship he wrote that “the overriding goal is to train disciples who know how to disciple others.”

The 12 week journey takes you through the same process described in Real Life Discipleship (share, connect, minister and disciple) and works through the issues of how to disciple a person through the stages of spiritual maturity (spiritual infant, spiritual child, spiritual young adult and spiritual parents).  The individual sessions help develop the ability to put these principles into practice.

The final week provides a detailed examination of the storying methodology developed by Avery Willis (known as orality).  This concept is very transferable and is a way to fully engage the members of every group.

The training manual features a Leader’s Guide section in the appendix.  Because the manual is intended to be a group experience, the Leader’s Guide includes instructions on how to begin and commitments to be made.  The weekly meeting of the group will center around a guided discussion of the daily experiences (completed in preparation).

You can clearly see the influence of Avery Willis in the workbook pages.  Willis, the author of MasterLife, passed away earlier this year but not before he had a chance to play a part in the discipleship process at Real Life Ministries and the development of the real life discipleship training manual.

Many churches without the time to develop their own process will find this off-the-shelf resource to be exactly what they’ve been looking for.  If you’re looking for ways to raise the discipleship bar in your church, this is a training manual you’ll want to see.

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 intentionally selected.  Other times it just became “the way we do things around here” without much thought.

I want to get you thinking today about taking a serious look at the why behind the way of your small group ministry strategy.  Another way of saying it is that you need to take a serious look at the assumptions that are driving the way you do small group ministry.

Why?  Why is it so important?  Examining the assumptions that drive what you do is important for a number of reasons, but one huge reason is that you may find them out of date or incorrect.

In When Growth Stalls, a really helpful article over at HBR, authors Matthew S. Olson, Derek van Bever, and Seth Verry share some powerful ideas about the causes of stall-points in organizational growth. Let me be quick to add, you may not see what you’re wrestling with as a stall-point.  I get that.  But the truth is, if you’re stuck on the way to a church of groups, if you’re consistently averaging 55% of your weekend adult worship attendees in small groups, or if you just have a hard time convincing very many of your adults about the importance of being in a group…you probably need to examine your assumptions.

Here are two of the key reasons for growth stalls they discovered in their study:

• Leaders must bring the underlying assumptions that drive company strategy into line with the changes in the external environment.
• Assumptions that a team has held the longest or the most deeply are the most likely to be its undoing.

Let me unpack these statements.  First, one of the main reasons for a growth stall is that the leaders have underlying assumptions that don’t match up changes in the external environment.  For example, participation in sermon based small groups might have leveled off at the same time your student or children’s ministries are attracting large numbers of unchurched families.  It may be time to look at the assumptions that drive your use of the sermon based approach.

Second, lets say you have a perennial challenge finding enough leaders for your free market small group ministry.  The people who are enthused about leading a dog training or fly fishing group, or for that matter a Bible study group, are not reproducing as fast as the need for groups.  What do you need to do?  You may need to reexamine the assumptions that drive the why behind the way you’ve organized your ministry.

Examining underlying assumptions is a challenging venture for many of us.  I’ve written quiet a bit about it over on StrategyCentral.  You may want to take a look at these articles:

• The Danger of Unexamined Assumptions
• Is It Time to Change Your Strategy?
• Ready to Go on an Assumption Hunt?
• Andy Stanley on Assumptions

At the same time, it may be that the best thing you could do is get the perspective of some fresh eyes.  Click here to find out about scheduling a coaching call or a consulting visit.

“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 embrace the assumption that it will happen this year.  It just won’t.  For several reasons:

First, moving to a significantly new trajectory almost always requires persistence over several seasons (contrary to the fantasy that you can move from a church with groups to a church of groups in one ministry season).  You can get there from here…but you can’t do it overnight.  It takes a steady hand and commitment to a new destination.

Second, continuing on a new trajectory requires determination and resilience in the face of the tension to go back to the land of previous, the land of familiarity, the land of comfortable.  Only determination and resilience will sustain a trajectory that can escape the gravitational pull of the status quo.

Third, commitment to a new trajectory requires a locked on sense of ultimate destination.  Like a rocket to the moon, you might only be on course 98% of the time, but you need to be unwavering about where you’re going.

Fourth, arriving at a new destination requires a commitment to the last 10%.  Regardless of how passionate you are, how fervently committed to the vision of church of groups…there will always be a determined resistance more passionate than the Taliban or the Tamil Tigers.

You’ll find the rest of the top 10 fantasies of churches with groups right here.

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 improve the odds?  There might be.  At least for me, this is too good an idea not to act on.

Exhibit A

In a study designed to examine why some college students donate (saints) to a canned food drive and some don’t (jerks), a team of researchers asked the question, “Can we alter the situation so that the jerks give, too?”   Chip and Dan Heath refer to this as smoothing the path in their most recent book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.

The first step for the researchers was to determine which students were predisposed to a charitable response and which were not.  Once they knew which students were charitable and which were uncharitable, they were ready for the second step.

The second step was to send a letter to the students announcing the food drive.  Important: They sent two different letters.  Some students received a basic announcement that told the dates of the drive and a specific well known location to bring the canned items to.  The rest of the students received a more detailed letter, that “included a map to the precise spot, a request for a can of beans, and a suggestion that they think about a time when they’d ordinarily be near (the drop-off area) so they wouldn’t have to go out of their way (p. 182).”

Can you guess what happened?  When the saints received the basic letter, only 8% responded with a donation.  None of the jerks responded.  On the other hand, 42% of the saints responded to the more detailed letter…and so did 25% of the jerks!

The Takeaway

When you’re designing the process of recruiting hosts for your next church-wide campaign, including a detailed letter that specifically lays out the steps will deliver a higher sign-up to show-up percentage.

(I also referred to Switch in Cultivate Identity Before the HOST Ask).

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 had at their weekend service he had my attention.  When he began telling me a few of their core discipleship expectations I was more than a little intrigued.

Senior Pastor Jim Putman’s first book, Church Is a Team Sport, told the story of how Real Life Ministries began and describes their transition from a ministry near burnout from the personal load on the staff to one of watching God work through the congregation.  His most recent book, Real-Life Discipleship: building churches that make disciples was written to “show how Real Life Ministries makes and trains disciples.”

Written in three parts (Setting the Stage for Discipleship, Mastering the Discipleship Process, and Letting Disciples Emerge as Leaders), Real-Life Discipleship thoroughly describes the intentional, relational and strategic pattern of making disciples at Real Life Ministries.  The pattern is taken straight out of the Gospels and described in detail as share, connect, minister, and disciple (SCMD).

In describing the stages of a disciple’s growth, Putman introduces the pattern of spiritually dead, spiritual infant, spiritual child, spiritual young adult and spiritual parents and illustrates the concept with a diagram he calls the spiritual growth wheel.  It’s a helpful reference that he comes back to a number of times.

Part Two, Mastering the Discipleship Process, teases out the practices that introduce the element of intentionality.  The five chapters provide detail to the concepts and strategies behind:

• moving the spiritually dead toward life (share)
• nurturing spiritual infants (share)
• guiding spiritual infants (connect)
• training young adults (minister)
• releasing spiritual parents (disciple)

What you have to appreciate about Real-Life Discipleship is the book’s thorough description of the practices that will move people through the stages of spiritual life.  For example, the chapter on nurturing spiritual infants provides rich detail on recognizing spiritual infants, meeting the needs of a spiritual infant, and many of the specific steps a discipleship process will need to address in helping an infant begin to move toward maturity.  The appendix provides a rich additional resource with a summary and profile of each spiritual stage.

Part Three, Letting Disciples Emerge as Leaders, is no afterthought.  For many of us, this may be prove to be one of the most important aspects of the book.  One of the great challenges in most systems is how to develop leaders of leaders.  The final two chapters of Real-Life Discipleship give and excellent overview of the kind of person that makes a leader of leaders and how to create a leadership development factory.

If you’re looking for a resource that will provide depth to your discipleship process, Real-Life Discipleship should definitely be on your radar.  This is a book that will be both challenging and instructional as it provides an under the hood look at the philosophies and practices of one the most effective churches in America.

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 be really helpful…for lots of churches.  Their new version is even easier to setup, has a very good search function, can be easily added to your existing website, and best of all…is really affordable.

I asked Andy what prompted the leaner, simpler version.  Here’s what he told me:  “While working with small group pastors around the country over the past four years we’ve gained what we think is a really valuable insight into what works and what doesn’t in a small group application.  In 2006, we saw an explosion in all things social networking including software applications for the Church.  Approaches that sounded good at the time, didn’t work out as well in practice or even match up with human behavior.  In some cases, larger more complex systems called for time intensive management at the church level that hurt more than it helped (emphasis mine).”  Like many of you, I knew just what he was talking about!

He went on to say, “One of the biggest lessons learned is that internet users have a limited amount of time to spend online.  This time is almost always going to be used where they can have the most contact with the most people.   A survey conducted by churchwebsiteguide.com found that 88% of respondents use the internet on a daily basis but only 5.6% of them visit their church website often.  When we saw those figures we realized that instead of trying to bring members into a church login system, churches need to do a better job of leveraging existing social networks to facilitate small group communication.”

He added that “since the majority of communication is happening within social networks, we’ve turned our attention to helping churches make finding a small group really easy.  Once members are in a group…they can communicate in whatever way is easiest for their members.”

As I looked at the new version, four big ideas jumped out at me right away.  I bet they will for a lot of churches:

First, the setup is really easy. In fact, setting up Groups Interactive is almost as simple as using it.  An administrator can either set the system up manually or by using the easy import tool.  If your groups are already part of a church management system they can be imported straight from there.  Since it doesn’t create a second database…it plays well with others.

Second, I was impressed by the visual search capabilities. Giving users multiple ways to find a group (zip code, type of group, specific tags, etc.) and tying neatly into a package powered by Google Maps, finding a group is a simple process.

Third, the new version is really streamlined on cost as well. At $50 per month (with a $100 discount for churches that pre-pay for a full year), it is very affordable.

Last, it can be easily integrated into an existing website. Copy and paste a little bit of code into the page on your site that will contain the small group finder and you’re in business.  Very nice.

Want to know more?  You can Email Desmond Lewis or call him at 210-639-6800 to set up a short demo to show you how Groups Interactive can help your small groups ministry.

Want the latest ideas in small group ministry?  Sign up right here to get my updates.

One of the key components of the church of groups conviction that it will take all kinds of groups to connect everyone.  Conversely, one size doesn’t fit all.  One type of group really won’t work for all of the people who are part of your congregation.  And as we’ve talked about frequently, if you hope to reach into the crowd…it will definitely take all kinds of groups.

Developing All Kinds of Groups (Convictions and Principles)

1. The easiest way to launch groups is still the church-wide campaign.  There is no question that a campaign done correctly gives you the best way to help the most unconnected people take a 6 week test drive.  It will catch a lot of people once a year.
2. While the majority of your groups might be a basic community group style, that won’t work for everyone.  There will be a need for recovery groups (Celebrate Recovery, DivorceCare, etc.) and an opportunity for more intensive specialty groups  (Financial Peace, Parenting, etc.).
3. Interest groups (Dog Training, Fly Fishing, etc.), are a great way to add another easy first connection.  The challenge with this strategy is when it becomes the main way you’re trying to connect people.
4. Developing a community aspect in all of your serving opportunities is another key component to the church of groups concept.  While it is challenging to get the same things done while serving in a ministry, building in elements of shepherding, prayer for one another, and mutual care for team members goes a long way in the effort to become a church where nobody stands alone.  It’s easier for many adults to connect first around an opportunity to have an impact.
5. If you want to reach beyond the usual suspects, into the crowd and even the community, you need to develop an awareness of the kinds of experiences, activities and interests that appeal to them.  The notion that the same concept will engage everyone falls well short and misses this opportunity.
6. Regardless of the types of group offered, a key component in becoming a church of groups is to build in an element of journey to everything.  Stagnation develops when a particular group (or type of group) becomes the destination.

The idea that all of our groups can use the same curriculum is one of the top 10 fantasies of churches with groups.  If you want to connect everyone, if you want to be a church where nobody stands alone…you’re going to need to offer all kinds of groups.

You never really know where the next idea will come from.  If you’ve got your eyes open…they really can come from almost any source.   My latest ideas come from Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Chip and Dan Heath’s most recent book).  You really need a little set-up to catch this one…so follow along.

One of the core tactics of the HOST strategy is to build in a series of messages that precede the launch of the church-wide campaign by 4 to 6 weeks.  In that series of messages there is a weekly ask, an intentionally designed invitation, for everyone who has a heart for unconnected people, and is willing to open up their home for 6 weeks, serve a few refreshments and tell a few friends to step up to be a host for the upcoming church-wide campaign.  With me so far?  Pretty standard stuff to here.

It’s my belief that when the ask is made correctly, virtually everyone ought to have a little bit of a pull toward responding.  Not everyone will…but almost everyone should have a pull toward saying yes.  After all, almost everyone knows a few people they could invite.  Still with me?  If you are, then you know what’s next.  More often than not, a really strong response is about 10 to 15% of the average adult attendance.  The average is more like 5%.  In other words, if you’re averaging 350 adults on Sunday, you ought to be getting host commitments from 17 to 52 of your adults.

So here’s the question…what if there was a way to set up a stronger response?  I think there is.  I think there’s a simple step that could be done first to cultivate a better response.  And I got this idea from Switch.

Here’s the Idea:

In a fascinating study cited in Switch, a researcher went door to door in an upscale neighborhood in Palo Alto, CA, asking residents if they’d allow a billboard reading “Drive Carefully” to be installed on their lawns.  Further, they were shown a picture of a large, unsightly billboard so “crudely constructed and so enormous that it obscured much of the front of their house.”

83% of the residents said “no.”  And no one is surprised.

Here’s where the study gets interesting.  In another upscale neighborhood the residents were asked to place a tiny “Be a Save Driver” sign in their window.  A little sign…”less than half the size of a postcard.”  As you would expect, a large number of homeowners said, “yes.”  And no one is surprised.

What is surprising is that 2 weeks later the researchers returned and ask those same homeowners to put up the large, unsightly billboard…and 76% accepted it!  Why?  They had already begun to cultivate an identity.  The postcard size sign helped them answer three identity questions, “Who am I?  What kind of situation is this?  What would a person like me do in this situation?”

Here’s what I’m thinking.  You know and I know that the people in our congregations should have a heart for unconnected people.  That is a no-brainer.  Not only do we know that, we believe that most of them do have a heart…they’re just not quite ready to be the one who says yes.

What if we helped them by painting the picture first and asking for something smaller?  For example, what if we used an insert for 2 or 3 weeks with space for names of people they would commit to be praying for, maybe with a tear-off commitment to pray for their friends.

Easy to do.  Easy to say yes to.  Your congregation wants to see themselves as people who care about their neighbor.  You can start by cultivating that identity.

What if it led to the host ask 3 weeks later.  Think it might influence the response?

This is the 1st of several posts with ideas from Switch.  If you want to be sure and catch them all, be sure and sign up to get the update right here.