Recently I had a great question from a reader who wanted some feedback on establishing a policy on a very sensitive matter.  I’ve edited to provide some clarity, but here’s the question:

We discovered that we have some unmarried couples (who live together) in couples’ groups and at least one lesbian couple attending a women’s group.  While we truly believe that small groups are the optimum environment for life change, we don’t want to give the impression that we are condoning these lifestyle choices.

I’d like to establish a guideline that while everyone is welcome in groups, unmarried couples (gay or straight) cannot be in the same Life Group (our structure consists of married couples groups, men’s groups and women’s groups).

If you have advice to share or can direct me to resources dealing with this issue, I would greatly appreciate it.

My Response

My initial response was to ask, “What is the purpose of these particular groups and groups in general in your small group ministry?  The purpose of the group determines who it is designed for, who would be eligible to attend, and who would be encouraged to find another group.”

One pattern for small group ministries is to establish specific groups for married couples (coed), and separate groups for men and women.  It’s probably more common for ministries to also have catch-all groups that are a true mix of couples and singles, men and women, but the pattern chosen by the church in question isn’t unique to that church.

I’ve mentioned many times that there are no problem-free solutions.  Every solution to a ministry issue comes with a set of problems attached.  Wise leaders simply choose the set of problems they’d rather have.

You can see in the reader’s question an interest in establishing a policy that is marital status specific, with an asterisk to cover the possibility of a gay or lesbian marriage (at least, that’s how it will appear).

Here’s my advice:

1. You may want to consider adding a type of group that is more inclusive.  Remember, the well-worn path never leads to a new destination and it may take a new thing to connect people you’re not connecting now.  Groups for couples and singles may provide the kind of first step that allows everyone to feel accepted, loved and cared for as they are while being encouraged to become like Jesus (for more on this, see John Burke’s No Perfect People Allowed).
2. Whether you add a coed type of group or not, you need to develop an FAQ that covers why you offer groups for married couples (marital status) and separate groups for men and women (gender specific).  A clear purpose for each will be a requirement and you’d be wise to test your premise on some very crowd sensitive people.  It’s amazing how reasonable things appear to insiders and how obviously out-of-touch and insensitive they can appear to the very people we hope to reach.
3. In addition to an FAQ, it will be essential to develop a clear, winsome way of promoting the kinds of groups that you offer.  Whether you’re promoting grouplife in a bulletin, on the web, in a newsletter or verbally, you’ll need to use language that clearly defines the purpose of the group (i.e., “If you’re looking for a way to improve your marriage, sign up today for the Couples Small Group Connection on January 30th.”). By the way, carefully thinking through the degree of difficulty in promoting a kind of group that is gender specific with a sexual partner asterisk may force you back to the drawing board.

I really think this is an important conversation.  I hope you’ll come back tomorrow for a look at how Gateway Church in Austin looks at the issue of sexuality and small groups.  If you’re not signed up to get my updates, you can do that right here.

What do you think? What would you add or what would you say different? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

What have you done this week that’s had the most impact?  Was it meeting a small group leader for coffee?  Writing this week’s sermon-based study for the groups following the message?  How about the conversation you had with the new couple looking for a group right after the 11:00 a.m. service?

What have you done this week that’s had the most impact?

First of all, I get that your individual wiring plays a big part in your specific answer.  Where you personally have the greatest impact is influenced by your wiring or your SHAPE.  That’s true.

Working In Your Ministry

But…and this is really important…all of those examples are what I’d call working in your ministry.  That is, you’re personally investing in a coach or a leader or a potential member.  And that’s great.  And you may feel satisfaction in knowing that the individual coach benefited or that leader benefited or that potential member benefited.  But that’s almost never the most important thing you do.

Working On Your Ministry

Leaders of small group ministries have their greatest impact when they’re working on their ministry.

• Impact the System: When you as the small group champion invest time clarifying what a win is for your ministry you’re investing in an activity that can impact the whole system.
• Influence Neighborhoods: When you as the point person invest time designing the steps that lead to a larger HOST sign-up, you’re investing in an activity that can influence neighborhoods.
• Transform Cities: When you as the small group pastor/director invest time in the conversations that lead to your missions pastor and missions team re-thinking the way local mission outreach is done, making it possible for whole groups to serve together, you’re investing in an activity that can transform cities.

I really want to encourage you to think this way and to design your week this way.  If you’re not giving time every week to working on the small group ministry in your church…you’re missing your opportunity to have the greatest impact on the largest number of people for the longest period of time.

Work on your ministry so that you can impact the system, influence neighborhoods, and transform cities.  I really believe there is a Parable of the Talents, Parable of the Minas, truth to this.  For the greatest impact, the greatest return, invest your time and your energy in working on your ministry.

Resource:  I really think that reading The 7 Practices of Effective Ministry could be one of the most effective things you do in the next few weeks.  If you haven’t read this important ministry tool by Andy Stanley and Reggie Joiner, it’s time to make the investment.  If you’ve already read it but you’re spending most of your time working in your ministry…it’s time to take it down from the shelf and read it again.  Maybe with your team!

Comments?  Does this make sense?  I’d love to know what you think about this challenge! You can jump into the conversation by clicking right here.

Who will you connect in 2011?  Will you focus your efforts on the usual suspects?  Those still unconnected folks that already attend your weekend services a couple times a month but have been resisting commitment since before there was Sunday School?

Who will you connect in 2011?  Will you take a shot at connecting the folks that only come a few times a year…but might come to a small group connection if the topic was right?

Who will you connect in 2011?  Will this be the year that you choose a church-wide campaign that is actually designed to reach the neighbors and friends of the folks in your congregation?

Can I tell you something?  I already know who you’ll connect this year.  It’s not a magic trick either.  Want to know what I know? (more…)

In case you missed them, here are my 10 most popular articles for November, 2010.  As is often the case, not all of them were written in November.  There was one from 2008 and two from 2009.

1. This Road Doesn’t Go “There”
2. Where Do You Want to Go with Your Small Group Ministry?
3. How to Launch Groups Using a Small Group Connection
4. Escaping the Straightjacket of Conventional Thinking
5. Accelerate GroupLife in 2011: T – 6 Weeks
6. The Unexpected Twist in Saddleback’s Exponential Growth Formula
7. Top 10 Reasons Saddleback Has Connected Over 130% in Groups
8. Four Steps That Help Groups Survive the Holidays
9. Connections Pastor Position in a Great Church
10. How to Build an Annual GroupLife Calendar

Are you ready for a year that might double the number of people connected?  How about triple it?  There really are things you can do that will exponentially impact grouplife at your church (and in your community), but they’re only rarely accidental.

Most of the big system-wide moves in small group ministry are the result of planning and preparation.  In the first post in this series we talked about beginning to develop an annual calendar for 2011, specifically nailing down a date (or dates) for a small group connection in late January/early February, and starting the process of selecting the right curriculum for that connection.  If you need to get caught up, you can read the first post right here.

This Week’s Assignment

Like last week, there are two things you can do right now that will help generate more excitement and enthusiasm for your connection event. (more…)

Kathy asked a great question yesterday about GroupLife Is Different at Crowd’s Edge (a post I wrote recently).  Here’s her question:

Working the edge sounds very exciting.  I am interested in the practical approach you take to capture these folks.  How do you recruit?  How do you train?  How do you monitor?  Can you point me in the direction of more specifics on how to pull this off?  Thanks!

To begin with…great questions!  Love that you’re excited about the potential of working at the edges of your congregation and even the crowd.  It really is where life is most carbonated.

In order to answer your questions, I need to point you to several keys.  At the same time, it’s more information than I can fit in one post…so follow along and I’ll build the idea as simply as I can.  Here we go: (more…)

Ready for all 2011 could be?  I’m putting a kind of countdown series together over the next 6 weeks to give you some ideas about how to make 2011 a grouplife year to remember.  If you’re just getting started…here’s what I’d be thinking about.  If you’re already firing on all cylinders…here are a few ideas that might help you tweak your 2011 plan.

The first thing I do is begin putting together a calendar for the whole year.  To make sure you’re thinking strategically about the whole year, take a look at my article, How to Build an Annual GroupLife Calendar.  A key here is to recognize that there are best times to do certain things.  Unlike the idea that there’s always room for jello…there really are times that maximize the impact potential of a church-wide campaign or a small group connection. (more…)

Have you ever actually thought through where you want to go with your small group ministry?  Have you ever looked further ahead than this year and dreamed about what things will look like in 10 years?  I mean really took some pains to describe the preferred future of your small group ministry?

Tom Peters described vision as a “picture of a preferred future.”  I love that definition.  Vision is seeing word.  I’ve been using this diagram* to describe a number of important concepts in small group ministry.  My article, This Road Doesn’t Go There illustrates the fact that only a new trajectory arrives at the preferred future.  You Are Here begins to tease out the idea that where you are today is a result of decisions you’ve made in the past.

Today I want to focus on the preferred future for your small group ministry.  This really is a huge concept, much more than we can talk through adequately in a single article, but we can begin to look at it.  Here are three aspects you need to see:

1. The preferred future has elements of your probable future.  Remember, we’ve already pointed out the fact that once you really know the truth about your present, you will be very close to knowing how things will turn out in 10 years if nothing changes.  But you probably wouldn’t want everything to change.  Some of what you’re doing is already good or even great.
2. The preferred future also has elements of the possible future.  One of the most important steps in defining your preferred future is to dream broadly about what could happen.  Use flip charts and markers.  Pull together the dreamers in your organization and think about what you’d do in small group ministry if you knew you couldn’t fail.  What are all the things that are possible?
3. I also want you to notice that some of the preferred future in the diagram is actually outside the lines of what’s possible.  That is intentional.  You need to think that way.  You need to think beyond what you could reasonable expect to do in your own power.  That’s where God comes in.  You also need to realize that some of what can happen in the future is outside the boundaries of today but won’t be outside the boundaries tomorrow.

This third aspect of the preferred future is very significant.  You can’t know what it will be exactly…but you need to be able to stretch your imagination beyond what you actually think is possible.  Thinking beyond what is possible today and moving as close to the edges of what’s possible is what puts you in striking distance of what scientist Stuart Kauffman calls the adjacent possible (described in Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From).

“The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways the present can reinvent itself (p. 31, Where Good Ideas Come From).”

Here’s a quick illustration of how the adjacent possible works:

• The development of DVD-driven curriculum made it possible for people with the gift of hospitality to lead a small group.  You don’t need a teacher if you have Rick Warren on the DVD.
• The Small Group Connection made it possible to connect people without a prequalified leader and for leaders to be identified during an event.
• The HOST concept made it possible to connect people who didn’t come to an event.  Asking volunteers to host a group and invite their own members made it possible to connect the friends and neighbors of everyone in the congregation.
• The Church-Wide Campaign made it possible to jump-start a large number of groups at one time, even to have more people in groups than you have at your weekend services.

That’s where we stand right now.  It is now possible to ask for volunteer hosts who have no teaching gifts or abilities, to host a vibrant group where disciples are being made.  Who would have thought that 10 or 20 years ago?

Are we now on the final frontier of what is actually possible?  I say we’re not.

What if a topic was identified that people outside the congregation could choose to form a group around?  What if a compelling topic was identified and then developed in a way that people outside the congregation (or on the very edges of the crowd) would pick it up and form their own group?

That’s a taste of the adjacent possible.  What have you got?  I’d love to hear your idea!

* I first saw this diagram in Turning the Future into Revenue, a business book by Glen Hiemstra.

I am a huge fan of innovation.  I always want to try out the newest gadget.  I love seeing what the new thing can do.  I even love trying new foods.  Although I have my favorites, if I see what I think will be a great new combination of tastes on the menu, I’ll pick that a lot of the time.

I’m like that in ministry, too.  Let me hear about a new way of doing things, a new strategy that seems to be working, and I’m just curious.  I want to discover what’s next.

After meeting with Tim Sutherland while candidating for the position at Parkview, he told the rest of the team, “Just know that if you hire Mark Howell you’re hiring a mad scientist.”  I loved that!  I want that on my business card!

I want to find strategies that work better.  That’s why I test new ideas when they come along.  That’s why when I began hearing about the Small Group Connection I wanted to try it.  I was in a church that was too large to know all of the potential leaders.  The Connection identifies leaders during the event.  What’s not to like about that?  Admittedly, when the Host strategy first came along I wasn’t quite ready to ditch the Connection idea, but I did like the idea that HOST connects people who don’t come to the event.  That’s a big idea.

I’ve got 3 articles that I really want you to read.  All three are about exploring what’s next in small group ministry.  I really hope you’ll take a few minutes and read them.  It just might be that they’ll help you re-think an area where you’re stuck:

• This Road Doesn’t Go There.
• Escaping the Straight-Jacket of Conventional (GroupLife) Thinking.
• The Unexpected Twist in Saddleback’s Exponential Growth Formula.

I write what I write because I want you to succeed at what you’re doing.  I want all of us to connect more people, to make more disciples, and to impact our communities.  And I’m convinced that the next idea might make it happen.  I want in on that.  And I hope you do, too.

Have you ever been completely turned around in a mall or an amusement park, desperately looking for a directory?  One of those big maps with a large red star that says “You Are Here?”  Sometimes that red star simply helps you see where you are.  Sometimes it is an essential ingredient in getting to where you want to go.

This illustration is from one of my most requested talks. I explained it recently in an article called Different Leads to a Church OF Groups.  Today I want to highlight another important aspect of the concept, a teeny tiny detail with huge implications that often gets overlooked.

Last week I wrote that “the only way to get to there (the preferred future) is to move over to a new trajectory.”  Although I didn’t spend any time on it, you can see right away that the current trajectory leads to the probable future.  And as you can imagine, the probable future is not much different than today.  In fact, we could say that if nothing changes about your strategy or execution, tomorrow will be pretty much like today.  That’s why I say “the well-worn path never arrives at a new destination.”

Today I want to point out that where you are today (the present in the illustration) is a direct result of decisions you’ve made in the past.  Where you are right now (the state of your coaching structure, the health of your small group system, etc.) is actually the probable future of sometime back in the past.

Think about that.  The decisions you’ve made over the years have actually created the present state of your small group ministry.  You’re having trouble finding enough leaders?  It’s largely because of decisions you’ve made (or a predecessor).  Can’t make a coaching structure come together?  Probably a result of a string of ideas, strategies and tactics from the past.  Stuck at the same level of group participation?  You got it.  The most likely culprit is the set of past decisions.

Andy Stanley says, “Your ministry is perfectly designed to produce the results you are currently experiencing.”  Want different results?  You’ve got to change the design.  Want to arrive at a new destination?  You’ve got to move over to a new trajectory.

How do you move over to a new trajectory?  You learn to think differently about things like building an effective coaching structure.  You open your eyes to new ways to launch groups like the small group connection or you lower the bar in terms of who can lead a group and embrace the HOST concept.  You move to a new trajectory by unleashing the exponential power of a perfectly executed church-wide campaign.

Memo: It won’t be easy.  If your present is the direct result of decisions made in the past, escaping the straight-jacket of conventional thinking will be difficult.  But you can do it!  And you must do it if you want to arrive at a new destination.