Already jazzed about four locations in 2009! 

• February 19-21, Lake Forest, CA
• March 26-28, The Woodlands, TX
• April 23-25, Norcross, GA
• May 14-16, Cincinnati, OH

You can find out more or register right here.  I'll have more on my breakouts when the details become available.  For now, put down the dates and join me at a location near you!

Can't make one of these locations?  I'll also be here.

One of the most commonly accepted truths of the small group movement is that every leader should have an apprentice.  Many churches have practiced the idea that before you could start a new group you had to have a leader and an apprentice.  Many churches measure the percentage of their groups that have an apprentice in place.

The "how important is it to have an apprentice?" question is asked very frequently,  But…misses the question before the question.

What's the question before the question?  Here it is: "How will you identify and develop enough leaders to provide a way for everyone in your congregation to connect in community?"  (OK, I know that's two questions.  Just work with me!)

Ever wrestled with those questions? They must be asked first, because they determine how much stock you'll put in the apprentice idea.  Let's tackle them one at a time.

First, how will you identify enough leaders to provide a way for everyone in your congregation to connect in community?  That begs a prior discussion.  Before you can know how to identify enough leaders, you'll need to know how many Unconnected Adults you have.  How do you find that out?  Here are the questions:

• How many adults are part of your congregation?  Careful!  It's not enough to know your average adult attendance.  You need to know how many adults attend your church (usually over the course of a month).  That may take a little work, but it will be worth thinking through.  As a shortcut, you might use your Easter or Christmas Eve adult numbers.  In many churches that is a pretty accurate representation of the number of adults that attend your church.  This is "Total Adults."
• How many are already connected?  How many adults are in your groups?  Real numbers.  This is "Already Connected."

Once you know those two numbers you can do the math.  Here's the equation:

Total Adults – Already Connected = Unconnected Adults.

What did you come up with?  Now divide it by ten.  That's approximately Enough Leaders to take care of the number of adults who are currently attending. 

Tracking?  How big is that gap?  The one between the number of leaders you have and the number of leaders you need?

Here's the next questions: "Can the apprenticing idea resolve that gap?  Can it resolve the gap in time?"

How Important Is It to Have an Apprentice (Part Two)

One size rarely fits all.  Oh, you might be able to force your foot into the shoe or fit your body into the t-shirt…but one size rarely fits all.  And it’s the same with small group launching strategies.  What works well in the fall might not work as well in January.  What works off of a special day like Mother’s Day may be a real bomb off of Father’s Day.  That’s why you need to develop a year-round strategy if you want to launch groups year-round.  Here are some key principles:

1. Plan your approach with the whole year in mind.  Viewing the year as a whole will help you balance your approach to keep it fresh.  As much as you’ve become a fan of the HOST idea, you will quickly nauseate your congregation if you use that strategy every time.  Ok, nauseate is pretty strong.  But you will definitely get a diminished return if you use it too often.  What’s the antidote?  Use a variety of strategies to launch groups.
2. Keep in mind that the impact potential of every season is directly affected by what precedes it and what follows it.  This is often missed but is very important to understand.  For example, what makes fall the best time to use the HOST strategy is that summer precedes it.  Easy to use August to recruit HOSTs, September to promote the church-wide series and then launch late in the month.  What about January?  When will you recruit HOSTs?  Not in December.
3. Keep in mind that the two best times to launch waves of new groups are late September/early October and late January/early February.  What about Easter?  Easter can work, but it usually so late in the spring that it doesn’t give new groups enough time to firmly establish new connective tissue before summer.
4. Keep in mind that each season of the year has its own distinctive qualities.  For example, fall will bring new attendees who are new to the area.  They’re often looking for a church like the one they left behind.  Other times the summer has convinced them that THIS is the year they need to get their kids into a church.  They’re unconnected.  Ripe for an opportunity to get involved in a church-wide study.  On the other hand, the first of the year brings people who’ve just resolved to get involved in a church.  A very different motivation.  They’re not new to the area.  Just to the idea of attending.  That motivation provides an opportunity to use a small group connection with a study that appeals to people looking for a fresh start. Each season presents an opportunity to design an approach that definite distinctive qualities.
5. You will not catch every kind of fish with the same bait.  If you want to catch ‘em all, you’ll have to use a variety of baits.  Some will respond to a church-wide campaign.  Others a well-timed connection event.  Still more to a topical approach that targets a need and then offers a bridge to a next step.

Ready to get started?  The first step is to look at the year as a whole and plan with the specific needs and opportunities of each season in mind.  Right now is the time to plan for the first of the year.  January and February offer a chance to provide easy and obvious next steps for New Year’s resolutions.  Why not put a team together and begin to plan your small group strategy for 2009?

How’s that for an awkward headline?  Familiar with Central Christian Church in Las Vegas?  We’ve mentioned a couple of their church-wide campaigns here.  They’re definitely onto some good ideas from a group standpoint.  Tripped across a relatively new blog by Tracey Smith, one of Central’s small group pastors.  Small Group Pastors might be an interesting one to watch…or even to jump in on!

And the Oscar for Creative Use of a Star Wars theme goes to…Fusion Church

Yoda Groups from Fusion Church on Vimeo.

Thanks to Monday Morning Insight for the link!

Redefine your evangelistic starting point.  God responding to the cries of a broken world.  That’s the starting point.  “I’ve heard your people crying.”  Exodus 3:6  When we stop hearing the cries of people…

Identify God’s response to the brokenness of your own life.  When we begin to feel like we’re fixed and we are now fixers…we’ve missed the point.  We’re still being fixed.  We haven’t arrived.  If we don’t know that, evangelism becomes information.  Not transformation.

Move from a basketball christian to a football christian.  When you’re a football player you run through the line, get knocked down, pounded, get back up and are ready to run again.  When you’re a basketball player you only have to be touched to go to the line for a free shot.

Identify and love the brokenness of the people in your church.  People are crying all around our churches.  People are crying in our cities.  We need to know it’s there and we need to do something about it.   “The only thing that travels faster than light is darkness running away.”

Reestablish your evangelistic priority.  Who’s your neighbor?  The church is the only organization ever created for the people who aren’t in it yet.  What will kill your ministry, your church, will be keeping it to yourself.  What won’t kill it?  Doing what Jesus did.  Going where He went.  Being with the people that He went to be with.

Oh my…I wish you had been here.

Dr. Will Miller was hilarious last night.  I have to tell you that that is a HUGE understatement.  When he was telling about driving someone else’s beater car I very nearly wet my pants, which according to Bill Search is about the bladder (as opposed to the bowels as John Burke mentioned).  Ever seen Will Miller?  Click here to see a short clip of a previous talk.

My cool friend Bryan Doyle gave me a copy of The Tangible Kingdom the other day and it caught me right away!  You won’t find a more engaging book about incarnational community.  The story of Hugh Halter, Matt Smay and Adullam will grab you by page 3.  When you get to the chapter on the 1700 Year Wedgie…you’ll be toast.  Good stuff.  If you aspire to get Hirsch but end up rereading the same line again and again…this one’s for you!

You can pick up your copy right here.

Looking for leader training ideas?  Simple Small Groups, newly released by Baker Books and written by Bill Search, a veteran small group practitioner, is a great new resource designed to make effective small group ministry simple.

Rather than over-complicate the subject, Search isolates three simple and essential ingredients that every effective group must have, identifies them with a single word, and then proceeds to explain the role played by each of them.  The best part?  He goes on to flesh out the nuts and bolts of how it works.

There are a number of really helpful sections.  My favorite aspect is that each section concludes with a diagnostic set of questions to help determine what your next step is in the development of each essential component.  I can easily see this getting a lot of use!

If you’re like me, you’re looking for resources that are about how it can be better. Simple Small Groups is one of those.  You can pick up your copy right here.

When do you start thinking about January?  Are you already there?  One of the most under-appreciated habits is looking ahead.  Do you have that one?  If not, you need to develop it.  I believe it is at the heart of what separates success from failure many times.  Why?  Like an Indy car driver who never learns to look ahead to the turn beyond the turn he’s in, you’ll always be a little out of control.

So how does it happen?  First, you need to develop the practice of looking at the year.  Schedule a time to talk with your pastor about the year.  I know, I know.  You’re not necessarily in those circles.  This is big though.  If your pastor wants to become a church of small groups (blah, blah, blah) this is not optional.  And you can tell them I said so!

Second, develop an understanding of the connection between the seasons, events and series of your church.  If you’re having to work too hard at it, there may be less of a connection than there needs to be.  A quick example?  Here you go:

November is a great opportunity to develop a mailer type invitation to your Christmas Eve services that will be stuffed in your bulletin all month in December.  “This is not for you.  It’s for you to give to your friends to invite them to our Christmas Eve service.  On Christmas Eve you include an invitation to your January blockbuster message series on a subject that the kind of person who comes to your Christmas Eve service would care about.  In January you promote a Small Group Connection and choose a study that is about “building a foundation for a great year.”

Does that give you enough?  The key to developing a connection between the seasons, events and series is thinking ahead and looking for opportunities to thread things together.

Third, to really work well this will be a “rolling” exercise.  That means you meet periodically and continue to look ahead beyond the next turn.  Meeting once a year isn’t sufficient because it will always be a week away from the 53 weekend.  Make sense?