One of the most common questions in small group ministry is how do I find enough leaders? Right on it’s heels are two other very common questions:

• How do I recruit leaders (once I’ve identified them)?
• How do I develop leaders (once they’ve been recruited)?

(All three of these questions were well represented in my recent survey on the questions you are asking.  Click here to take it yourself!) How Do I Find and Recruit Enough Leaders? This is a very common question.  I’ve asked it.  You’ve asked it.  Here are a few of the best ways to find leaders:

1. The easiest way to find leaders is the Connection strategy.  You’ll find a four part series on how to do it right here.  The key to its effectiveness is that the Connection identifies leaders at the event.  Especially in a growing church or church with a lot of new or unknown attendees, this is a huge advantage.  In my experience, once a church is larger than about 300 adults it reaches a stage where there are attendees that are recognized by sight (maybe even by name), but their ministry experience, work experience, and leadership potential is unknown.  The Connection strategy will help you find the leaders you need.
2. The HOST strategy is another great way to find potential leaders.  Best used with a church wide campaign (like One Month to Live, Live Like You Were Dying or Life’s Healing Choices), the HOST strategy allows you to recruit potential leaders from beyond the core.  If your whole leader identification strategy has been to tap the usual suspects…you need to shift your focus to the people you don’t know as well.  HOST will help you do that.  Important: Many churches believe they have tried the HOST idea, but unless you’ve made the ask this way you’ve only used an unreasonable facsimile.
3. Ask your existing groups to consider taking a small group vacation.  Many small group systems or strategies have an apprenticing concept built in (i.e., every leader needs to be developing an apprentice who will one day leave to start their own group).  There are a couple challenges with the apprenticing idea.  First, it instills the notion that it happens over time.  If you need leaders now, strategies that might produce more leaders in 18 months are little consolation.  Second, many groups are full of people that really ought to be leading a group.  Identifying one as an apprentice allows the others who ought to be leading to breathe a sigh of relief as they all point to the apprentice!  The essence of the take a small group vacation idea is that the whole group agrees not to meet as a group during a church wide campaign.  Instead of meeting together they pair up and help launch multiple new groups.  Read more right here.
4. Well down the list of strategies to find new leaders is the turbo group idea.  This has been around for years and is essentially an invitation for potential leaders to join a group led by an experienced leader with the expectation that at the end of the study they will each launch their own group.  It works best if there is some exclusivity to the invitation.  That is, the turbo group is led by someone it would be appealing to rub shoulders with.  Additionally, this is a limited duration group (8 to 12 weeks) that uses a study chosen as a way of modeling how to lead.  Once the group begins, members of the group take turns leading the group under the supervision of the leader.

In the next article I’ll cover several strategies for developing leaders.  If you’re not set up to automatically get the update…you can do that easily right here.

One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is how to choose a small group model (or system).  It’s also one of the most important questions.  You’ll find some helpful hints in my article on how to choose a small group strategy or system.  In this article I want to simply highlight what I think are the most significant elements of each model.

Remember, no model is truly problem-free.  Wise leaders simply choose the set of problems they’d rather have.  That said, here are the most common small group models:

• MetaChurch: First popularized by Carl George’s Prepare Your Church for the Future, the MetaChurch model is a system that finds its roots in the cell church model.  The importance of every leader having an apprentice, the notion that healthy groups grow and birth, and that “everyone needs to be cared for by someone and no one can care for more than 1o” are all keys to the model.  I’ve devoted a full article to the MetaChurch model right here.
• Sermon-Based groups might be the oldest model.   More than likely, the earliest disciples used a portion of their “house to house” time to talk about what they’d heard in the Temple courts.  When you hear about sermon based groups today though, you’re probably hearing about a system like the one popularized by Larry Osborne and North Coast Church in his book Sticky Church.  If you’re looking for a way to unite your whole congregation in an ongoing discussion about a central topic, this is a pretty good way to do it.  I find it to have a couple significant downsides (emphasis on one topic system-wide has some limitations and it is less appealing to neighbors and friends).  You’ll find a more complete overview right here.
• Semester Based has been popularized by books like Activate and to some extent Dog Training, Fly Fishing, and Sharing Christ in the 21st Century.  The main idea of Semester Based is that people more readily make a 13 week commitment than an indefinite one.  On the basis of that idea there are usually three “semesters” a year offering a catalog of topics.  Prospective members select from the available topics, spend 13 weeks together, and are free to choose a different group in the next semester.  It should be pointed out that members usually have the chance to continue in the same group for the next semester and often do.  You’ll find a more detailed review right here.
• Free Market is a model based on the central idea that groups based on interests (dog training, fly fishing, Bible study, etc.) will attract a broader range of people.  After all, everyone has an interest…or at least, that’s the premise.  Free Market is often used in combination with a semester based strategy and interest based groups make up the catalog for the semester.  Fly Fishing, Dog Training and Sharing Christ in the 21st Century has some great ideas about how to implement this model.  I’ve found the two main downsides to be that it’s difficult to generate enough new leaders and it is not conducive to a church-wide campaign approach.  You’ll find a more detailed review of the model right here.
• Connecting Church is based on Randy Frazee’s book by the same name.  The Connecting Church details a strategy that takes advantage of natural neighborhood affinities to trim down the number of activities and groups a person is part of (small group, Sunday School, bowling, neighborhood social group, etc.), allowing them to make room for life and focus all of their attention on one group.  There are definitely some advantages to the model.  There are also some clear challenges (geography doesn’t guarantee affinity).  You’ll find a more detailed review of the model right here.

Looking for information about another model?  I cover the Cell Church, G-12, North Point and the Church-Wide Campaign Driven approach in part two right here.  Don’t want to miss an update?  You can subscribe to my updates right here.

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 that almost leads itself.  That said, here is how I train leaders to stimulate better discussions.

Five Keys to Stimulating Better Discussions

First, think ahead of time about where your members need to go…  You don’t need to spend a lot of time on this, but it does help to think about the individual needs of your members as you’re looking over the upcoming session.  Although this is a challenge in a newer group, it gets easier the longer a group has been together and the more you know about your members.  One way you can speed up the process is to have each of your members take the Purpose Driven Health Assessment and develop a Health Plan.

…and tailor the standard-issue questions in your upcoming session to fit the needs of your group.  Not as hard to do as it might seem.  Often it’s simply a matter of being aware of the needs of your members.

Second, learn to use guiding statements to keep the session headed in the right direction.  Guiding statements are simple modifications that can be dropped in right after the question.  For example:

• “Let’s each take 30 seconds to respond to this question.”
• “What one word summarizes your feelings.”
• “What does this verse say to you?  Boil your response down to one sentence.”
• “This is a good warm-up question.  How about 2 of you giving us your answer.”

Third, rephrase the question and ask it again.  If the discussion drifts off topic, it can be redirected by rephrasing and taking a second pass.

Fourth, use redirecting statements as necessary.  You may feel a little awkward, but your members will appreciate your help keeping things on topic.  For example:

• “That sounds like something we should discuss another time.”
• “Let’s keep working on this question.  We may have time for that one later.”

Fiftth, recognize and celebrate each baby step along the way.  Affirm your members when they take a risk or make progress on the steps they need to take.  For example:

• “That’s great!  Thank you for sharing that.”
• “That is a really important step to share your feelings with the group!”
• “We’ve taken some steps as a group tonight.  I think all of us have acknowledged that we need to have a regular quiet time and we’re ready to give it a try.”

• “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 group pastors, directors and champions.  You might as well admit it…we’ve all made those observations at one time or another.  I was right there with you until I discovered the secret of priming the leadership pump.  Here’s what I do:

First, I begin training every group leader to rotate facilitators.  This little step seems innocent and really not a big deal, but it is huge.  By training group leaders to rotate facilitators you counteract one of the most common objections of potential leaders.  “I could never lead a discussion” is an objection that melts away once a member begins to take a turn leading now and then.

I actually begin talking about the importance of rotating leaders in the HOST or Leader orientation.  I have them pull out the Small Group Agreement, work my way through the agreement, and tell them how to make rotating facilitators happen right out of the gate.  “If you start your group by asking one other person to help you lead it, you’ll be way ahead.  That’s assignment #1 as you leave this orientation.  Think about who you’d most like to have in your group and ask them to help you co-lead the group.”

The next thing I train new leaders to do (once they’ve recruited a co-leader) is go over the Small Group Agreement with their group, talk about the value of rotating leaders (30 seconds), finish session one of their first study, and then have everyone turn to the small group calender (provided if their group isn’t using curriculum with a built-in calender).  One of the columns on the simple calender is a sign-up opportunity to take a turn facilitating the group.  When the leader asks if anyone would like to take a turn, the co-leader can be the first to say “yes.”  That often gets at least one other “yes.”

An obvious requirement: In order to pull this off you’ve got to be using curriculum that makes it easy to lead.  DVD-Driven is a great choice.  You’ll find some good possibilities right here.  The key is to choose curriculum that has a just-add-water format that emphasizes discussion and downplays the importance of teaching a concept.  Look for transformation, not information acquisition.

The second thing I do is downplay the birthing idea.  I do like the idea of apprentice leaders and groups that birth.  I’ve just found that in practicality it rarely works.  Better to celebrate groups that develop rotating leaders and are becoming what Brett Eastman calls a “crockpot of leadership development.”

The third thing I do is create regular opportunities for groups to take a vacation and help start new groups.  I’ve written about how to build in the idea of a small group vacation into your annual calender right here.  Essentially, all you’re doing is leveraging an annual church-wide campaign to ask existing groups to consider not meeting for the six weeks of the campaign and instead, step out and help launch some new groups.

By building these three elements into your system you’ll be able to overcome the two biggest complaints of small group point people and raise up a nearly unlimited number of small group leaders.

Yesterday we talked about the core philosophy that drives an exponential group system.  If you missed step one, you can read about having a crowd-to-core philosophy right here.

Today I want to talk about step two in the process: Diagnosis: Brutal Honesty About Your Present.   Sounds harsh.  Brutal even.  But without an honest evaluation of right now, you can’t possibly build an exponential system.  So how do you evaluate your present?  What are you looking for?  Here are the questions I use:

Is group life promoted year-round as an essential ingredient of spiritual growth? So that we’re clear, here’s what I mean about each of these terms:

• Group life must be a life-on-life activity.  It can’t be a purely educational experience.  It’s about interaction.  Can it happen on Sunday a.m. in a classroom setting?  It can, but it will take work to create the right environment there.  At the same time, it takes work to create the right environment in a living room.
• Group life must be promoted.  By promoted I mean talked about, highlighted, mentioned, and referred to.  It needs to happen in your pastor’s messages, in announcements, in testimonies, on your website, your e-newsletter, and your bulletin or program.
• Group life must be promoted all the time, not once a season or when it’s recruiting time, and certainly not in a kind of rotating emphasis where equal time is given to every ministry or program.  This is a very important question about where you are right now.  Without year-round promotion, you can’t get to exponential.
• Group life must be seen as an essential ingredient of spiritual growth.  From a practical standpoint, it really needs to be seen as one of a very few essential ingredients.  What are the others?  Gathering for corporate worship and serving in a gift-based, passion-driven ministry.  You’ll have difficulty getting to exponential if there is much there beyond those three.

How are you doing so far?  When you evaluate the way things are right now in your ministry, is group life promoted year-round as an essential ingredient of spiritual growth?  The next diagnosis question is:

How obvious is the path to connect with a group in your system? In other words, once I begin hearing about how essential group life is, will my next step be obvious?  Can I see it prominently promoted on the website?  Can I walk out into the lobby right after service and see what to do?  Is the next step obvious?

Next, how easy is the first step?  Can I take a baby step?  Or do I have to be a world record long jumper like Carl Lewis?  An example of easy is a six week test-drive on a timely and broadly engaging topic.  An example of a difficult first step is Experiencing God or The Truth Project.  Great studies, but at 12 to 14 weeks are too long for a first step.

Last, does the first step lead to a next step? This is a very important part of getting to exponential.  It’s not that every group must survive or every person who joins continues.  It’s that you’re doing what you must to build in the greatest possibility of survival.

Your next step is to pull together a conversation about how things really are right now in your ministry.  You’ll need the right people around the table.  It will take time.  You’ll have to be honest.  But here’s the thing.  You’re kidding yourself if you think you can get to exponential from just anywhere.  You need to rearrange the way things are today if you want to get somewhere different tomorrow.

What makes a group system exponential?  What makes a church exponential?  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, but my convictions on the matter string together some important concepts acquired over the years.

But before we get to the keys to building an exponential group system, let’s define it.  In some ways it’s kind of an “I’ll know it when I see it” thing, but basically an exponential system is one that is about multiplication as opposed to addition.  Take a look at two examples:

Example A

• if you have 10 groups and 7 of them agree to take a small group vacation
• and out of those 7 groups you ended up with 18 additional hosts who opened their home for the church-wide campaign
• and you used a campaign topic that was engaging to the crowd (i.e., Live Like You Were Dying)
• and 13 of those 18 new groups determined to keep meeting after the campaign
• you’d double the number of groups from 10 to 20.

Example B

• You have 10 groups
• You talk with each group leader challenging them to birth a new group in time for the church-wide campaign
• and you choose a topic for the campaign that is about building up believers (i.e., Just Walk Across the Room)
• 8 of the 10 group leaders say they’re not ready to birth, 1 of the 2 apprentices announces they’re moving
• You challenge each group to invite a few new folks to their group for the upcoming church-wide campaign
• At the end of the church-wide campaign you’ve added one group and the total number of people in groups has grown by 20.

Example A is about multiplication.  Example B is about addition.  If you want to have an exponential group system, you’ve got to think multiplication.

The first key to building an exponential group system (or church) is to understand what you have right now.  A kind of diagnosis.  If you pull up to the Ferrari repair shop and complain about poor performance, the first thing they’re going to do is lift up the hood and take a look.  When you lift up the hood on your group system, you need to figure out if you have a “crowd to core” philosophy. Or more of a “core to crowd” philosophy.

What is “crowd to core?”  Easy to understand, especially if you’re familiar with Saddleback’s concentric circle concept.  Essentially a crowd to core philosophy is designed to help people in the crowd take an easy step into the congregation, the folks in the congregation take a step into a deeper commitment and the committed step into the core.

Core to crowd is the opposite arrangement.  It is the idea that if I focus on the most committed people, building into them, investing in them, discipling them, they will reach the community.  It is the concept behind services and programs designed to build up the believer with the idea that once they’re equipped they’ll reach out, they’ll disciple others, etc.

Can’t a group system (or church) with a core to crowd philosophy of ministry experience exponential growth?  Isn’t it really just a matter of preference?  An extension of “it takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people?”  Yes and no.  While it may be theoretically possible for a core to crowd philosophy to experience exponential growth, it rarely happens in practice.  More often than not it becomes about growing deeper, losing the potential vibrancy of new life that comes when you reach into the crowd.

You may be thinking, “Skip exponential!  We’d settle for growth.”  Can’t we get that with a core to crowd philosophy.  Yes you can, but unless you’re living in a very stable community where few people ever move away, you probably won’t realize the long-term potential of building into your core.

So what kind of system do you have right now?  Are you operating with a crowd to core philosophy?  Or more of core to crowd?  The problem for many, many churches?  Wanting (and even expecting) exponential results while building a core to crowd system.

The first key?  Make sure you’ve got a crowd to core philosophy and that your strategies match up.  What’s next?  You need a brutal assessment of the present.

I’m regularly asked how Saddleback can have more adults in groups than they have in worship.  People everywhere scoff when they hear the numbers.  And I have to admit, it is pretty wild.  After all, during Life’s Healing Choices, their most recent church-wide campaign, they had over 4,500 groups with over 35,000 people in them while their worship attendance was averaging 22,000 to 26,000!  (By the way, that’s not preacher talk.  Their database supported those numbers in September)

Ever looked at their numbers and shaken your head in disbelief…or amazement?  Here are my top 10  keys to understanding how they do it:

1. Saddleback talks about groups all year long.  While there may be certain weeks where group life gets even more attention (early fall as they launch their annual church-wide campaign, first of the year to catch people who have just made commitments at a Christmas Eve service or want to start the new year fresh, just after Easter for the same reason), they talk about the importance of being in a group every weekend.
2. It doesn’t matter who’s preaching (Rick Warren, Doug Fields, Tom Holiday, etc.), they talk about groups every weekend.  They talk about the power of group life and they mention their own group.
3. It doesn’t matter what message series they’re in, they talk about being in a group every weekend.  For example, during a 2007 message series on recovery they featured a different testimony each week on the power of being in a group (Celebrate Recovery, Divorce Care, Grief Care, etc.).
4. They have systematically made it easier to start new groups.  “If you have a heart for unconnected people, are willing to open your home for 6 weeks, serve a few refreshments, and tell a few friends…you can be a host.”  This is a huge point because they’ve recognized that there will be problems, they acknowledge going in that not all of them will make it, and yet they are committed to helping as many begin as possible because they know that every host is the best person to reach certain people.
5. They have systematically lowered the bar in terms of who can lead a group.  If you’re inviting your own friends and neighbors, why should you have to be Jesus Jr.?  They’ve provided great next steps for new hosts designed to help them get started and grow in Christ, but they’re not waiting until they have it all together.
6. They regularly develop new DVD-driven small group curriculum that is easy to use and can be facilitated by new and inexperienced leaders.  Just-add-water and plug-and-play accurately describe the degree of difficulty.
7. They immediately connect each of their newest leaders with a coach who can help them through the beginning stages.
8. Their newest groups are given a follow-up curriculum that is equally easy to use.  They don’t wait until they ask what’s next.  They actually begin talking about what’s next before the first series is completed.
9. Their topics for church-wide campaigns are carefully designed to appeal to the crowd.
10. A regular strategy is to ask their existing small groups to consider taking a small group vacation during church-wide campaigns and instead of meeting together, step out and help start new groups.

I believe an underlying principle for Saddleback is that they are always looking for a better way, an angle, that will help them connect more people.  I remember when everyone thought the Connection idea was crazy even as it launched over 800 groups and connected over 7,000 people in them.  I remember when the HOST idea first began to be used and many people thought it was completely crazy to allow someone to sign up to open their home.  What will be next?  It’ll probably seem crazy.  It may or may not work.  And I’ll be holding my breath…because if it works who knows what could happen!

I’m asked about G12 a few times a year…not near as much as free market, semester based, or sermon based…but often enough to have had many conversations over the past few years.  Here’s what I know about the G12 small group philosophy:

First, at it’s essence G12 works like this: the key leader forms a group with 12 members.  The leader invests in the members, holds them accountable, encourages them, shepherds them, etc.  Each of these members is then expected to form their own group of 12 where they’ll serve as the leader…doing to their members what has been modeled to them.  And then, those members are expected to form their own group of 12.  Pretty simple concept.

Second, there are other key ingredients in the model.  Encounters, or weekend retreats, are used to help jump-start leader development.  Groups are almost always separated into men’s groups, women’s groups and children’s groups.  You can find other aspects in this article over on Wikipedia.

Third, unlike most of the other small group systems I’ve referred to, G12 is really more of a church growth concept.  Where most small group systems are strategies to help members grow in Christ and be encouraged through community, G12 is the engine that drives the churches who use it.

Two Cautionary Keys:

There are two keys for me as I have observed churches in the United States and Canada attempt to implement the G12 idea.  First, I’ve found that the pace of life in developed countries (I’m probably misusing the term, but you get my meaning) is too fast to actually pull off the idea that I’m in one group as a member and another as a leader…and they meet simultaneously.  Generally speaking, the majority of adults have too much going on to actually make that happen.  If anyone can really do that they are in the distinct minority.  Anytime you base a system on what a minority will do…it is not likely to succeed.

Second, when you google G12 you’ll notice that the first page or so are negative articles about the system.  Just to highlight one, Joel Comiskey’s Concerns About the G12 Movement is much more developed than what I’ve written here.

Thoughts?  Questions?  Use the comments to let me know what you’re thinking.

Looking for information about other small group systems?  You’ll find more right here.

Looking for a leader training resource?  Finding the Flow: A Guide for Leading Small Groups and Gatherings, by Tara Miller and Jenn Peppers, is one you should take a look at.  New from IVP, it’s full of great leader training ideas, practices, and philosophy.  This is a book length training guide.  At over 240 pages (including a very helpful appendix), it is not a skim through manual.

When selecting a training resource, practical, hands-on experience, is very important.  Written in a very conversational way, this is also the story of two group life practitioners.  The authors

Looking over the contents you can get a pretty good idea of the style.  Chapters on knowing yourself, stages of group life, listening to God and others, asking good questions, navigating group conflict, developing new leaders and spiritual transformation let you in on the fact that this is not really a book about technique.  In fact, in the forward by Joseph Myers we learn that, “This is a field book for spotting the patterns people use to connect.  This is not a guide to clone groups.  This is a guide to help you develop environments where people can connect in organically ordered patterns.”

The book is based on the idea that small groups are “like a river.”  Out of that idea comes the notion that like a river, small groups need a water source, they need help charting their course, there will always be undercurrents and times when the waters are stirred.  The metaphor works very well because Finding the Flow is really more of a travel journal written by two very experienced travelers.  In the stories that are shared on almost every page you can sense that the depth is based on hands-on participation.

In addition to a liberal supply of great stories and illustrations, you’ll also find a steady supply of “Do This” tips that are very practical and will easily move from great idea to implementation.  Paired with a really practical set of appendices you’ll definitely get your money’s worth out of this resource.

If Finding the Flow has a downside, I think it’s that it will mostly be used by small group pastors and directors to develop training experiences and practices…as opposed to being used by group leaders as a work-through-and-discuss journal.  In my world of busy small group leaders, reading a 240 page journal is not high on the list of probabilities.  The upside?  You need this book.  Your coaches probably need this book.  It is the kind of reading that will inspire you to try a few new things.  And some of those new things will become part of your system and that will change the flow for groups in your church.

I’m often asked whether groups should be open or closed?  It’s one of those questions that kind of defines you as a grouplifer.  Open or closed?  It’s kind of like Coke or Pepsi…but not very much.

There are those that are a little wild-eyed about one perspective or the other.   And then there are those that don’t really care.  I’m not in either one of those camps.  To me, it’s all about the purpose of the individual group you’re talking about.  And that begs a prior question.  Before you can determine if your group should be open or closed you’ve got to answer at least one preliminary question.  Here it is:

“What are you trying to do in your group?”

There are other ways to ask this question.  Two great alternatives are: “What will you call success?” and, “What will you call a win?”  Any way you slice it though, what you’re really asking is, “What is the purpose of this group?”

Why is this important?  Why does it come first?  It comes first because the values and norms of the group must be aligned with the purpose or you end up with a mess.  What are some possible purposes?

• We exist to provide a safe environment to share our lives.
• We want to help each other grow spiritually.
• We want to be an easy first step for our non-Christian neighbors and friends.
• We like to eat pie.

I can’t tell you what your group’s purpose needs to be, but I can tell you that without clearly defined purpose–a win–you can’t answer the open or closed question very well.

Here’s how I personally answer the open or closed question.

1. The main purpose of our group system is to make followers of Jesus.
2. A secondary purpose is to connect people relationally.
3. Part of becoming a follower of Jesus is learning to set aside my interests for the sake of others (Phil. 2:4; Luke 14).
4. Therefore, the group shouldn’t be just about me and my needs.
5. “Come over to my house” is almost always easier than “come with me to church.”
6. Therefore, setting my own interests aside might include inviting my friends and neighbors to my group.
7. It is never easier to connect the friends and neighbors of the newest members of the congregation than in the first 3 to 6 months.
8. Therefore, setting my own interests aside might include encouraging the newest members of the group to invite their friends and neighbors.

Those are my reasons for preferring open groups to closed groups.  Doesn’t mean all groups all the time.  Just means as a general philosophy of group life…that’s how I roll.  Need more?  Don’t miss my Top 10 Reasons I’m a Fan of Open Groups.