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What keeps you up at night…

April 18, 2011 / / 2 Comments

…reveals what’s important to your heart.

Here are things I’m wrestling through:

  • Is our small groups system really creating disciples?
  • Is our small groups system a great picture of Gospel community?
  • What does it look like for our whole church to be moving in the same direction?
  • What’s next?
  • Am I leading in such a way that others are growing to love God and people more?
  • Is my ministry online truly helpful?  What needs to change so that it does more good?
  • Am I leading my family well?  How can I do a better job?
  • Is my son growing towards being a man of God?

These are the things keeping me up at night.

If you’re leading an organization…what is it that is causing you to sweat, go to work early, pray more, fast more, sleep less, and work harder?

If you don’t know what that is, maybe you should stay up at night and figure it out…

One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night. At daybreak he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles… – Luke 6:12-13

 

 

An open letter from church visitors

April 15, 2011 / / 5 Comments

Dear local church,

You do weird things.  And please don’t tell me you have no idea what I’m talking about.

  • You eat tiny crackers and drink tiny glasses of grape juice.
  • You sing.  Loudly and passionately.  And it’s 8:30 on a Sunday morning.  Seriously, who sings, out loud, where others can hear them before 9:00?
  • You ask people to come down front.  Nobody at my son’s baseball game has ever asked me to make a big life decision right in front of the whole stadium.
  • You tell me I need to go somewhere else, into someone else’s home, to really connect.
  • You pass a bucket for me to put money in.  Do I have to pay to worship here?
  • You lay hands on people to pray for them.  Never seen that one done in a helpful way in a PTA meeting.  Never.
  • You preach from the Bible, and keep referring to it as an authority in your life, but I don’t see it like that.  It’s a bit strange that you would put such weight into such an old document.

I’m not saying that these things are wrong.  They’re just weird to me.  I need you to help me understand why I need to do them.  Why they’re important.  Why you do them every week.  Why I need to join in.  Why I feel like such an outsider when I’m there.

I don’t want to be an outsider. Nobody does.  I’d like to feel like I’m a part of you guys…but I need you to be patient.  Walk me through understanding and doing.  It took you lots of years to get where you are…help me get there.  But don’t assume that, after 2 weeks, I’m going to “get” it.

Because when you don’t help me understand, you push me away…and it seems you don’t care that I come back.

Signed,

 

-Church visitors

 

Don’t be “too good” for me

March 27, 2011 / / 7 Comments

I am a learner.  And as such, I actually enjoy learning.

And when I started out as small groups pastor at Grace Community Church, I had no idea what I was doing.  Some days, I still feel like that.

So I started looking for a tribe.  I read books.  Blogs.  Twitter accounts.  I went to conferences.  Sent emails.  Made phone calls.  I just knew there had to be a tribe out there.

And I grew a ton through this process.  But I got a myriad of no-responses.  Or responses that went something like,

Well, I will be at this conference, and we can talk there…if you’re able to get to Dallas…tomorrow by 6 am.

I was just trying to build some relationships and learn from guys who had been blazing the path I was peering down.

The problem was that these guys were ‘too big’ for me. They were a bit too important to talk with a rookie in Tennessee. (although rock stars Heather Zempel, Alan Danielson, Mark Howell, and Rick Howerton (just to name a few) actually did take time to answer emails and phone calls…thanks guys!).

I never want to get so important that I can’t schedule time to talk with another person who wants to learn from my mistakes.  I never want to be the big shot that can’t walk someone else through principles that have helped me grow as a young pastor.

If I ever get that ‘important’ I have done something wrong.  The day that happens, please unfollow me on Twitter, block me on Facebook, and unsubscribe to my blog.  I’m not worth following at that point.*

Pride goes before destruction,
and haughtiness before a fall.

Better to live humbly with the poor
than to share plunder with the proud. – Proverbs 16:18-19

Will you give up the plunder with me?

*Note to future self: you’re not as awesome as you think you are.

 

Healthy community is not comfortable

March 22, 2011 / / 11 Comments
Reid Smith (on Twitter and Facebook) is the Director of Adult Ministries for the 20,000 member multi-site Christ Fellowship Church in South Florida and is a regular contributing author to smallgroups.com and rightnowtraining.com through his small group training and resource ministry called 2orMore.  This is a series of posts where small group experts share how group life has impacted them personally.  The entire series can be found HERE.

___________________________________________

One of my first small group experiences is still fresh in my memory.

In college I remember falling in love with God’s Word through the Bible study I did in community with others. The contributions of others revealed the richness of the Scriptures to me. Each discovery energized the faith of those of us huddled in Jesus’ Name, drawing out further insights and encouraging conversation.

My small group helped me to take risks in sharing my thoughts about spiritual things with others. This too was foundational for what God was preparing me to do in the future. I walked away stronger from the Bible studies in my small group because I knew I was growing closer to God and I wasn’t alone in the process.

I don’t think I realized how much that small group was encouraging me in things that seasoned Christ-followers can far too easily take for granted like praying aloud in the company of others, sharing a revelation that may (or may not) be obvious to others reading the same Bible passage, or responding to a prompting by the Holy Spirit to serve another in God’s household in some unique way.

My pursuit of the divine felt like an adventure with my band of brothers. They gave me permission to add to the conversation and influence. The power of the Word was demonstrated to me in how God inspired each one through our sharing. I loved the fact that even though I read a passage repeatedly, I could never see everything that came out in our conversations.
One other empowering experience through this early small group experience was our road-trip to downtown Washington, D.C., where we fed the homeless and talked with people on the sidewalks of Georgetown about Christ. It was one of the most terrifying and uplifting experiences I had as a newer believer. I remember my hesitancy, but knowing that what we were doing was right.

It was the prayer and encouragements of those in my small group that help me and everyone else to step out of our comfort zones. As a result, I encountered Jesus through our serving (Matthew 25:40). I saw God break-through to a seeking heart that received the Gospel despite the mocking of his friends. Community brought me to places where I saw God at work. Places I would never have visited if it weren’t for the fellowship of others in Christ.

Small groups may not always seem glorious from the outside looking in, but somehow God used that community of young believers to turn me inside-out for His glory. I fell in love with small groups early on because they helped me fall in love with God, His Word, and the communion of saints that enabled me to be Jesus to those who were in search of Him.

Have you ever been a part of a community that stretched and shook you?

Are you willing to do whatever it takes to have that healthy community?

 

The future of magazines?

February 15, 2011 / / 3 Comments

I made fun of myself in my last promotion (HERE) of the Small Groups Digizine.  I’ll not do that again, thank you very much.

But I will heartily recommend the new edition!  Partly because it’s free (you can snag your copy HERE)…mainly because it’s awesome.

Sam O’Neal and the SmallGroups.com team have done a phenomenal job compiling a great resource for small group leaders and pastors.  I really think that this format (the digital magazine, a.k.a. the ‘digizine’) could be the future for many magazines, because of the speed of distribution and the low cost of production.  In addition, the interactivity is so much greater than reading a traditional magazine.  Instead of reading Sam’s editorial intro…you can watch it.  Instead of a mere reference to worship songs…you can listen to them right there in your browser while reading the rest of the content.  It’s heaven for a multi-tasking, multi-sensory generation.

But I’d like to offer a couple of suggestions for improving the digizine in the future.

Room for improvement

1. Social media – give me a chance to interact with my online community while I’m reading.  I’d love the chance to link to direct

2. iPhone/iPad app – I tried viewing this on my phone, and, yes you can pull it up…but it’s tiny.  If you try to zoom in, things get wonky.  If you try to view it in landscape mode, it shows 2 micropages at once.  I’d love to be able to read this more easily on my iPhone…maybe even in an app (I don’t think there’s another small groups app out there).  And I could definitely see something like that driving the reader count through the roof, even for archived content on SmallGroups.com, as the app links to “suggested resources.”

3. Publish it more often! You guys are onto something big here…capitalize on it!  Twice/year isn’t enough.

4. Add more hyperlinks. Make this digizine even more interactive, providing links back to SmallGroups.com and outside sites.  You’re being incredibly generous in offering this resource for free…but providing links for other resources, sites, and ideas is a way to take generosity to the next level.

Have you grabbed your free copy yet?

 

Building Biblical Community

February 7, 2011 / / 16 Comments

Congrats to Tiffany Malloy for winning this prize pack!

I review small group curriculum.  A lot.  Some of it’s good.  Some of it I wish I had never wasted my time looking over.

But I’ve just stumbled on a great study from Lifway.  Which, to be honest, is shocking to me.  Lifeway has been putting out Sunday School curriculum for years in the form of quarterly material that you subscribe to.  And I had no interest in figuring out how to fit Sunday School curricula into our small groups system.  They’ve found a format that works for small groups, and brought together a couple of small group veterans (Steve Gladen and Bill Donahue) to help facilitate the DVD portion of the material.

If you want a chance to win a free copy of the material, keep reading!

What I like about Building Biblical Community

  • It starts by encouraging everybody to share their story. I believe that this is foundational to healthy, biblical community.  Without knowing people’s stories, it takes much longer to build authentic relationships.  Without sharing your own, it’s easy to hide.  Sharing your story, and understanding what expectations you (and the group as a whole) are bringing to the table help launch the group on the right foot.
  • There’s real interaction with Scripture. There’s no question that this is truly a Bible study.  Discussion is encouraged around the meaning of the text, both historically and practically.  And there is a distinct push for you to incorporate Scripture into your everyday life, asking questions that prompt you to integrate the Gospel into the normal flow of your day.  And I agree with Spence Shelton, that a Building Biblical Community, vol II focusing further on applying the Gospel to community life could be a great follow-up resource.
  • There are short, daily devotionals for in-between the week’s meetings. And these are built on the previous week’s discussions, which means that they’re not vital to the following week’s discussion.  So the homework is important, but if you don’t get to finish it, you won’t be lost in the following week’s discussion.
  • It’s simple. It’s often easier to say more, citing more Scriptures, and asking more questions than it is to say less.  Thankfully, Lifeway didn’t take the easy way out.
  • It’s short. It’s only 4 weeks.  I’ve found that longer studies seem to grow stale because they take so long to finish.  And, like I said HERE, change (even when it’s something as small as your group’s curriculum) feels like progress.
  • It’s a great overview of group life. It hits on each of the major areas of healthy small groups without spending too much time on any one category.  Here are the 4 sessions: Becoming a Celebrating Community, Becoming a Learning Community, Becoming a Loving Community, Becoming a Serving Community.
  • The leader notes are in the back. It saves money from having to buy another book.  Last time I checked…that was a good thing.  And leader notes give the group facilitator hints on how to continue the discussion, helping them feel even more comfortable in the role God has called them to.

How I’m going to use the study

  • New small groups.
  • Small groups that are restarting.

I don’t quickly put a curriculum into our regular flow of recommended curricula at Grace Community Church, where I’m on staff.  But this one’s going in the rotation immediately.

If you’d like a chance to win a free copy of this material (I’ll be giving it away on Friday, 2-11-2011), all you have to do is

1. ReTweet (or share on Facebook) this post.

2. Leave a comment below, telling us why you’d like to win.

 

A word for young pastors

December 13, 2010 / / 1 Comment

Rick Howerton is a good friend of mine.  What I love about Rick is the wisdom that he has…and shares generously.  He has recently transitioned to a new position with NavPress, where he’s overseeing small group life.  In my opinion, Rick is the foremost small group expert in the country.  You can follow him on Twitter HERE.  His blog is currently being redone, and will launch again in January.  When it launches, it’ll be a must-read for small group pastors and leaders.

When I spend time around people who have been leading in the church for longer than I’ve been alive, I love to soak up as much wisdom from them as I can.  I want to know what I should be thinking, reading, doing, and being…now…so I can grow into the husband, father, pastor, and leader God intends.  I asked Rick to share some wisdom for young pastors.  Because none of us wants to waste the influence God’s given us.

A word for young pastors

What you interpret as your “instincts” may be the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. Throughout my ministry life I have found myself instinctively making leadership decisions. For many years I followed those instincts and saw God’s blessing. As I grew older and learned the Scripture I realized those instincts were actually the whispers of the Holy Spirit guiding me down biblical paths. Today, when I have an instinctive moment, I check it with the Word of God. Bottom line… do not ignore what may seem instinctive, check it with God’s Word then move forward if you’re on the same page as God.

Make your family the people you are most passionate about discipling. We seem to be embracing discipleship like we never have before. I’m noticing that, in our mind’s eye, discipleship is finding a few other people of the same gender and giving our time, attention, and discipleship energies to them. We should do this but not at the expense of the discipling of our own children. Remember this… God created in your child a longing to know the love of and to have the knowledge of the dad and mom that God gave them. You were appropriately chosen by God to disciple your kids.

Never believe the lie that new ideas are the only right ideas. It seems that every generation of church leaders chooses to set aside anything that was birthed through the generation that came before them. In so doing, we oftentimes move away from biblical church to generational and cultural church. Cling to biblical church while allowing new methods to be played out, but don’t play out new methods if they demand you delete the parts of the Bible that aren’t cool or sexy… today.

Don’t give too much of your attention to the great theological debates. If you do they will…

  1. redirect your energies from the transformation of hearts to theological treatises and coalitions that, in the end, will begin to shape a politician, not a pastor.
  2. lead you into ecclesiastical elitism… believing that those evangelicals whose theological perspective is different than yours are not as theologically astute as yourself or that the interpretations they espouse are heretical when in fact, both sides of the debate may simply be demanding a final word on what God is keeping a mystery (Deut. 29:29).
  3. force you into a pigeon-hole that will limit your ministry. Most of us want to affect the world in the name of Jesus Christ. Many have chosen to battle for a theological perspective which has limited the churches and movements they are welcomed into.
  4. become idols, taking the place of the Christ. You will know if this is true if your reputation is built on a theological perspective rather than Jesus Christ. Remember these things… What you speak of most passionately you will be known for. What you’re willing to go to battle for you will be known for. What we are to speak of most often and go to battle for is the person of Jesus Christ.

______________________

If you’re a young pastor or leader, I’d love to connect with you!  Please find me on Twitter, Facebook, or follow along HERE on the blog.  Learn along with me, from guys like Rick.

 

Mass Market churches

December 6, 2010 / / 2 Comments

Companies that are built around mass marketing develop their products accordingly.  These companies round the edges, smooth out the differentiating features, and try to make products that are bland enough for the masses.  These companies make spicy foods less spicy, and they make insanely great service a little less great (and a little cheaper). – Seth Godin, Purple Cow, 55

Seth Godin, above, is looking at businesses that are trying to have mass appeal.  The way that companies have tried to achieve their mass appeal is by trying to make their products (and services) appeal to everybody.

And in the process, they’ve made their products (and services) appeal to nobody.

And the same things can happen in our churches.  We can try to please more and more people, changing and adding each time another group of people comes along.  Accommodating more and more desires, saying, “Yes” to more and more ideas, and spreading the church staff and church body so thin that effectiveness and excellency go right out the door.  The more you juggle, the more likely you are to drop a ball.  Or all of them.

Instead of that, figure out what God’s calling you as a church to do and be…and go do that.  You can’t accommodate all styles of worship.  Or all styles of small groups (community groups, cell groups, Sunday School, discipleship classes, etc.).  Or all styles of teaching.  Or all of the truly good ideas that come along.

Simplifying is one of the most difficult tasks that an organization can do.  And it’s also one of the most important.

People want to be led.  And God’s called you to do just that.  Figure out what you, as a church, value the most, and start doing that.

 

Good small groups…

December 4, 2010 / / 1 Comment

I haven’t run into many people who say, “I want my small group to tank.  I want to lead my folks off of a spiritual cliff so that they’re further from God than they were before they even met me.”

Quite the contrary.

Most people want their group to succeed.  They want to grow spiritually, and help others grow as well.  They want to have vibrant meetings that challenge people’s faith and encourage them to love God and others more.  They want to help foster healthy marriages and strong, God-honoring parenting.  They don’t want the group meeting to be a drag on anyone.  Rather, they long for everyone in the group to look forward to the meeting because they’re building healthy relationships with those in the group.

These people are willing to do what it takes to craft a successful group…they’re just not always sure what they should be doing to make that happen.

This week on Twitter and Facebook, I’ve been talking about what good small groups (and good small group leaders) should be in the business of doing.  Here are my thoughts.

Good small groups

  • Communicate with each other more than once/week
  • Are filled with admittedly broken people
  • Embrace those far from Christ
  • Don’t just talk about the Gospel.  They apply it.
  • Serve their community as much as they serve one another.
  • Don’t avoid difficult relational issues. They work through them.
  • Looks a lot like a healthy church.

Good small group leaders

  • Embrace the messiness of relationships
  • Are quick to offer grace because they’ve been given so much [grace]
  • Ask for help
  • Look a lot like good pastors.
  • Are patient with group members who are difficult to love.

What else do you think good small groups should be doing?

What else do you think good small group leaders should be doing?

 

Somebody’s getting fired

December 1, 2010 / / 26 Comments

When you get a call from somebody telling you they want to be a small group leader…

be worried.

When you get a call like this…

quit your job.

Here’s the voicemail that was left on my office phone today: click HERE to listen.

*I’ve got my suspicions on who the mystery caller is.  And I’m working to get him fired right now.

UPDATE

Estavon Williams left another voicemail today.  Looks like I may be out of a job now.

Click HERE to listen to the second voicemail.

 
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