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Glossary of Terms for Small Group Leaders

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You hear the word “discipleship” and become excited. You see fellow believers and can’t wait to find ways to help them grow closer to Christ. 

But what do you need to know? 

As a leader entrusted with group discipleship, you need to have an understanding of basic small group language. Whether you’ve been leading for years but have actually never learned the definition of some terms or if you’re simply looking to get a foundational understanding for starting your small group leadership journey—this glossary of terms is for you.

  • Small Group:  Groups of people who meet together outside of the church building for Bible study and community are often referred to as “Small Groups.” These groups will usually meet in someone’s home, a neighborhood or apartment clubhouse, a coffee shop or restaurant, or a breakroom at the office. While most small groups will have some type of Bible study as a part of the meetings, the drive to gather is built primarily on the desire for community. The study portion is facilitated by a host, rather than taught by a teacher. These groups will typically meet weekly or bi-weekly.
  • Sunday School: Groups who meet on a church campus (normally during the Sunday morning worship hours) are often referred to as “Sunday School groups.” While community can be encouraged  in a Sunday morning group, the drive for these groups to meet is primarily Bible study. A Sunday School teacher will prepare a lesson plan based on the agreed upon curriculum, and participants are encouraged to follow-up with personal study during the week. These groups meet weekly.
  • Discipleship:  This comes from the singular command Jesus left us in Matthew 28:19: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.” By definition, a disciple is a learner. We are constantly learning what it means to be more Christlike in our everyday lives. The ultimate goal of every group or relationship should be to help someone else become more like Christ—to create disciples who create disciples.

If your group is going through a traditional Bible study, then the differences below should be noted.

  • Bible Study Book: This is the core resource for your small group members. Bible Study books are just that: a group and personal use resource (essentially a workbook) that guides you through studying the Bible. Typically, Bible study books are formatted in “sessions” that correlate to a one-week period. Often, groups use session 1 for week 1 of their group meeting and continue with 1 session per week through the rest of the study. Each Bible study session typically includes content that sets up the video session, discussion questions for your group, and concludes with “personal study” portions. This personal study is often in the form of follow-up devotions for group members to continue the study’s content between the small group meetings.
  • Leader Kit: This is the core resource for you as the small group leader. Leader Kits include not only one copy of the Bible study book but also additional materials. These kits contain the DVDs for the study which include the teaching videos as well as various promotional materials to spread the word about the Bible study. The videos correspond to each session of the Bible Study book and typically are 10 – 15 minute sessions directly from the author. The kit also has a download code if your group does not have access to a DVD player and a redeemable code for the WORDsearch Bible—a resource with additional Bible study materials to enhance your knowledge as a group leader.
  • Group Use Videos: These video options allow you to access the teaching content (included on the DVDs in the leader kit) without purchasing a leader kit. Instead of a physical disc, these are downloadable videos that provide the same instructive content to aid your group’s Bible study journey. They are available for purchase or rental.
  • Individual Use Videos: If you are not completing a Bible study as a group but are engaging with the resource for your own personal use, you can purchase or rent the individual use videos. These videos are the same teaching sessions available on the leader kit’s DVDs but are downloadable and priced at a lower point since they will not be shared between multiple group members.

No matter your experience leading a group, we can all grow in our knowledge as small group leaders. One term at a time, let’s keep striving to make disciples who make more disciples.

 

Group Leadership

Hungering and Thirsting for Righteousness in Unprecedented Times

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You’ve heard it said, many times by now. These are unprecedented times.

Truth is, they are in many ways. But it’s also true that these times are exposing things in our life, work, relationships, and goals that might seem unprecedented. Yet, these times aren’t revealing just inward realities. They’ve once again called to our attention the underlying realities of deep injustice amid a time of global health crisis.

Derwin Gray shares about the desire for a deeper justice in his newly released Bible study “The Good Life: What Jesus Teaches about Finding True Happiness” (partially excerpted below):

America is in the middle of a mass shooting epidemic. The past year has been filled with news of sexual abuse that religious leaders were covering up. These leaders were supposed to represent Christ and protect children. When we think about the many homeless men and women sleeping on the streets, children without parents, the thousands of abortions that will happen in one day, and the many other injustices that occur daily in our broken, grieving world, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the magnitude of the needs.

Perhaps prolific injustice has even led some of us to wonder how there can really be a powerful, loving God if there’s so much ugliness in the world. If you find yourself there today, keep reading. Whether or not you realize it now, your anger, disappointment, and desire for the ugly realities of our broken world to be fixed are a longing for the beauty of God. Consider this question:

How do we know something is unjust unless we believe there’s a standard of justice?

If we long for goodness, beauty, and justice, there must be one who created these things. That Creator must exhibit those things because we can’t give away what we don’t possess. As we yell and shake our fists at all the wrongs in the world, we’re longing for God to make the sad things untrue, to make the ugly beautiful, to heal the hurt.

Read Psalm 33:5 and Amos 5:24.

How do we reflect God’s character when we long for justice?

How does knowing God is righteous and just change the way you feel about the injustice you see around you?

The triune God made creation good, and we messed it up. We introduced death and decay, but God didn’t leave us in our mess; He joined us in our brokenness. He even allowed all the sad things that have happened to us to happen to Him on the cross. His resurrection births a new creation in the heart of the old. The righteousness and justice we long for walked out of a tomb in Jerusalem. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, He wants us to become actors in the divine drama of redemption. We become His agents of redemption.

We can seek to be agents of redemption in a time of brokenness and darkness, even as we rely on Christ to keep transforming the brokenness sin causes inside of us.

Derwin Gray has much more to share about how we hunger and thirst for righteousness as he unpacks the Beatitudes in his new study, partially excerpted above. Engaging with this content will walk you through lamentation, peacemaking, humility, mercy, and more.

Find a free sample and other resources at lifeway.com/thegoodlife as we all strive to better bring glory to Christ during these particularly difficult times.

Church Leadership, Group Leadership

3 Ways to Virtually Hangout with Your Small Group

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Over the last month, you have seen practical blog posts on how to virtually lead your group during this time whether through FaceTime, Zoom, Google Hangouts, or other means. Hopefully this has positively impacted your group!

But if you have been a reader of this blog for any length of time, you know that group discipleship goes hand in hand with simply hanging out as a group. Outings, fun group meetings, game nights. These “lower pressure” times are just as important to growing in faith in your small group as the more study-focused meetings. But that presents us with a challenge. 

How in the world can we possibly “have fun” in this season? 

Glad you asked. Here are 3 ways that we’ve seen small groups keeping the fun in their group meetings. 

  • Zoom Backgrounds. If you haven’t yet heard of the app Zoom you might want to think about looking into it. Similar to Google Hangouts or Facetime, Zoom allows conference calls between people and can easily be downloaded from the internet. The fun part? You can add in virtual backgrounds to your Zoom meetings. Want to be on a beach? Go for it. The jungle? You got it. Maybe an astronaut in space? We all wish. You can upload any image as your virtual background and simply have fun with it.
  • The House Party App. This app is designed to not only let you see other people but to play games with them as well. Invite your small group to this free app, and you can talk to each while choosing to play a variety of games with one another. Each “room” can have up to 7 people in it, and you can play different games such as trivia, heads up and others! 
  • Host a Cooking Show. Ever watched Chopped? Or Iron Chef? You get the idea… If you have a few people in your group that like to cook, jump on your video platform and cook together! Share recipes, watch the progress, and maybe have a little cooking competition and let your non-cooking friends judge. Obviously, you’re only judging on the presentation, so if you can’t cook, good news…. It just has to look good. 

In these unprecedented times, sometimes it’s just best to embrace the weirdness of the situation where we find ourselves. Acting like everything is normal (when it is clearly not) can sometimes lead to more anxiety. When doing these video calls, there will be technical glitches, people will talk over each other, and sometimes you will have that one person that can’t quite figure out their video camera. As we navigate this season let’s approach these odd moments of disconnection with humor and grace–and maybe just a little more fun.

 

Group Leadership

Four Ways to Deal With Tricky Questions in Your Group

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If you teach a Bible study group long enough, someone is going to ask you a tricky question. It’s just bound to happen. It’s one of the most uncomfortable things that happen to group leaders. I’ve seen two categories of tricky questions in the groups I’ve taught. “Category 1 questions” are what I’m going to call “innocent” tricky questions. They are asked with pure motives, but can be hard for a group leader to answer. The second category of tricky questions is what I’m going to call “malevolent questions.” These tricky questions are not asked with pure motives. In fact, these are asked by group members when they are intentionally trying to stir up something in the group. Here are four ways to deal with each category of questions.

Four ways to deal with tricky, but innocent, questions:

  • ADMIT – Learn to use three powerful little words: “I don’t know.” It’s OK to admit that you don’t have an immediate response for the person. Use this when you really don’t care to address the question. You’ll earn people’s trust and respect by not simply making up an answer—because everyone knows when we do that.
  • AFFIRM – Say something to the person who’s asked the question like, “That’s a good question,” or, “You’ve helped me see this in a different way.” You can affirm their question, but you don’t necessarily have to stop to address it. Move on. Keep the lesson on track. Affirm the person by saying, “You’ve given me something to ponder.”
  • ASK – This is where it gets fun! Turn the tables, as Jesus did (Luke 20) and simply say, “Now that’s an interesting question—how would you answer it?” 9 times out of 10, the person is eager to share their insight. They asked you, but now you’ve asked them.
  • ACKNOWLEDGE – This is a cousin to the first solution above, Admit. The difference here is that you admit your lack of knowledge and you commit to do further study. You simply acknowledge that you don’t have an answer, but you also promise to do some further study and get back to the person and/or the group.

Four ways to deal with malevolent questions:

If you’ve ever been put on the spot intentionally by someone during a Bible study, don’t despair! This happened to Jesus at various times. In Luke 20 a group of men came to Him to trick Him, and He turned the tables on them. He wouldn’t respond to their question before they responded to a question He decided to throw at them. The result? They dared not ask Him any more questions! I think there is some humor in the Bible, and that’s one of the spots—I would have loved to have been there to see Jesus expertly handle a group of people with a malevolent question!

When you sense that a question has been asked to derail the study or to challenge you, take a deep breath, compose yourself, and choose one or more of the following ways to deal with that malevolent question:

  • DEFLECT – Deal with that potential barbed question by deflecting it. Say, “If I have time before the Bible study is over, I’ll get to that question. If not, I’ll visit with you after class. Let’s continue our study…” I never get to the person’s question (imagine that!). If I sense that the question was asked to do me or the group some level of harm, I always want to isolate the person and not give him or her a platform in front of the group. I always meet with the person afterwards.
  • DEFEND – On occasion, when I really do want to bring correction to the person asking the snarky question, I choose to respond. Jesus did this in Matthew 24 when He was asked an intentionally tricky question about which was the greatest command in the law. Sometimes the best course of action is to confront the person and give your response. Defend your position. Use Scripture. Stand your ground—but do it humbly and gently.
  • DIVIDE – This is a great response that normally puts the person in their place, and causes them not to ask challenging questions anymore. When asked one of those malevolent questions, say: “John has posed a hard question. Let’s divide into groups of 3 or 4 and work quickly to respond based on Scripture. Elect a spokesperson for you group. You have 5 minutes. Go!” What always happens is that the groups of people end up “policing” the person with the malevolent question. They put the questioner in their place using Scripture, and you don’t have to say a word. It also give you, the teacher, time to think about a response while the groups are doing their work.
  • DIG – Normally when you are asked a malevolent question, there’s a question behind the question. Do a little digging and find out the real issue. Say, “Wow—I didn’t anticipate that kind of question in our study today. Why do you ask that?” Continue probing with an even more pointed question, “Why is it important to you that we answer that right now?” or, “Help me see how that question connects to our study.” Just keep digging and ultimately the person will either back off, or that person will reveal the true reason he or she is putting you on the spot.

Ken manages the Ongoing Adult Bible Studies and Church Trainers at LifeWay. He has been a group leader for 6 years, and has over 20 years of church education ministry experience. He blogs daily about groups at kenbraddy.com.

Group Leadership

3 Ways to Use Silence in Your Group

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We are afraid of silence, especially as small group leaders. If there is silence in the room, then that means no one is talking. And if no one is talking, then we are surely failing as facilitators. But I believe we are missing out on an effective tool if we completely eliminate silence from a group meeting. There is something powerful about creating intentional space in a group meeting. In fact, there are examples throughout the Bible where silence and solitude are commended:

“After the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was a voice, a soft whisper.” – 1 Kings 19:12
“a time to tear and a time to sew; a time to be silent and a time to speak” – Ecclesiastes 3:7
“My dear brothers and sisters, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.” – James 1:19
“I wait quietly before God, for my victory comes from him.” – Psalms 62:1

So how do we plan for and best utilize the power of silence in our small groups? Here are three ways to take advantage of silence in your group.

1. Use silence to encourage group members to speak.
It seems like an oxymoron to use silence as a tool for participation, but it works. An effective facilitator should only be talking 30 percent of the time. Remember that you have read the questions ahead of time. It will take everyone else a few moments to process the material before they are ready to answer. It’s uncomfortable to let a question sit there for a few beats, but if you can let the awkwardness go, that silence will eventually be broken by someone. You can miss a great conversation by speaking too quickly.

2. Use silence to allow a moment to sink in.
There will be moments during a Bible study where the group needs a few seconds to take in what was just read or said. Effective speakers use pauses in their speeches to make important points resonate. It’s the same thing with a group discussion. Next time a powerful verse is read or someone makes a thought-provoking comment, pause a second or two before moving on. Those two seconds of silence will make the moment stickier.

3. Use silence to meditate on Scripture.
Before launching right into prayer time at the end of the discussion, take a few moments to allow the group to meditate on the Scripture from the Bible study. Ask someone read a key verse or two aloud and then be silent as you allow God’s Word to prepare your hearts for prayer. This time doesn’t have to be long—maybe two to three minutes—but fight the temptation to break in too soon. Meditation can help lead to application.

Chris Surratt is a ministry consultant and coach with more than twenty years of experience serving the local church. Chris served on the Executive Teams at Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN., and Seacoast Church in Charleston, S.C., prior to becoming the Discipleship and Small Groups Specialist for LifeWay Christian Resources. He is the author of  Small Groups for the Rest of Us: How to Design Your Small Groups System to Reach the Fringes. You can follow his blog at www.chrissurratt.com.

 

Group Leadership

All Means All, Whether Big or Small

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by Michael Kelley

Pretty Seuss-ian title, right? But let’s get down to it:

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose.” —Romans 8:28

That’s arguably one of the most quoted verses in the Bible—the stuff that sympathy cards are made of. But there are two ways that I think we typically misunderstand this beautiful promise from God’s Word here.

The first way happens by replacing in our thinking the word “good” here for the word “comfort.” God does not work all things for the comfort of His people; He works all things for their good, and those are two very different things. A yearly physical at the doctor’s office might not necessarily be comfortable, but it’s good for us to have. And eating three gallons of ice cream might be a very comfortable thing for us to do on a Saturday but that doesn’t mean it’s good for us. The promise here, then, is not that we would, as the people of God, be supremely comfortable in our big houses with our big incomes and our big lives, but instead that God will engineer and work everything for our good. So what is that good, ultimately, for us?

That we might know Him in a deeper and more full way. That we would be conformed, little by little, into taking on the character of Jesus. And that we might learn the true value of the kingdom and the King and help others see the same. God is actively—all the time—working things for our good.

Couched in that promise is a three-letter word that deserves some extra attention, which is the second misunderstanding we might bring to this promise. The word in question is this:

“All.”

The way we read this word betrays our obsession with the big and important. When we read that God works all things together for our good, we tend to think of the most significant, life-altering situations we’ve ever experienced. We think of the cancer. The job loss. The death. The difficult relationships that go on for years. On the good side, we think about His miraculous provision during times of need. The healing. The wonderful friendship of another. The child. We take stock and look back over the course of our lives and realize that, in both the best and worst of times, God has been working for our good, even (and perhaps most especially) when we could not, for the life of us, perceive how.

But those are all big things. The milestones. The dividing markers. Curious, though, that the verse doesn’t say that God works the big events of life for our good. In fact, we could go so far and say that if we only think of this promise in terms of the “big” then we are failing to grasp the true—and somewhat ironic—immensity of what we find here. “All” is, if I could say it like this, much bigger than just the big things.

“All” means all.

It means the daily commute. The casual conversation over coffee. The date night with your spouse. The almost nightly discipline of your children. The prayer before dinner and the bedtime stories at night. “All” means all. “All” even goes beyond those events of which we are immediately aware. It means those things right now happening halfway across the world we have no idea about. It means political decisions made at the highest levels. It means acts of nature and random news stories we read about. Somehow, even these things are for our good. Such is the amazingly intricate work of God—that God might be working in yet unknown ways and in yet unknown people to provide for His people in yet unknown ways.

The group environment provides a unique opportunity to reflect together on “all”—not just the big, but also the small. It affords us a chance to view the everyday with new lenses, confident together of God’s enduring presence and work.

“All” means all. Breathe it in. Because it’s happening right now.

Michael Kelley lives in Nashville, TN, with his wife, Jana, and three children: Joshua (10), Andi (7), and Christian (5). He serves as Director of Groups Ministry for Lifeway Christian Resources. As a communicator, Michael speaks across the country at churches, conferences, and retreats and is the author of Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal: A Boy, Cancer, and God; Transformational Discipleship; and Boring: Finding an Extraordinary God in an Ordinary Life. Find him on Twitter: @_MichaelKelley.

Church Leadership, Group Leadership
Group Leadership, Uncategorized

Free Groups Webinar on Coaching Leaders

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How can you develop an effective coaching system for your group leaders? That is the topic that we are going to tackle in this free webinar on August 6, 2019, 11am – 12pm CST. Here are a few of the questions that myself and our expert panelists will take on:

  • Why should a church offer coaches for leaders?
  • What do you look for in an effective coach?
  • What kind of expectations should you have for a coach?
  • How do you recruit coaches?
  • How do you train a coach?

Spots are limited, so register soon at the link below!

Church Leadership, Group Leadership, Uncategorized

Six Summer Strategies to Invigorate Your Group

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by Reid Smith

By the end of spring, It’s not uncommon for groups to want to change things up for the summer instead of starting a new Bible study. This comes from a common felt-need to take a break and get refreshed before school, ministries, and so many other things restart in the fall. 

However, if you only saw the summer as a chance to unplug, you’d be missing easy and effective opportunities to invigorate your group. Groups don’t have to break from being together in the summer and potentially breakdown their momentum of community-building. Rather, they can use this season to change gears with their regular meeting rhythms in order to find new ways to grow together in Christ.

  1. Mix it up! Instead of your usual, say, Tuesday, 6:30-8pm time – decide to get together every other Friday for dinner and a movie together. If you meet weekly, try meeting every other week. Or everyone could plan to attend the same service and afterwards do an outdoor activity together.
  2. Morph into a shared interest group. Discover who shares the same interests in your group and organize activities around them. Start out by asking:
  • “What do you enjoy doing the most with your free time?”
  • “If you could invite a few others to join you in an activity, what would it be?”
  • “What special interest, topic, creative hobby or sport do you enjoy doing?”

You don’t have to choose one! Create a “mixed shared interest group” out of the ideas that came up. You might do a specific topical study one week and then softball the next. Plan it all out, but don’t try to do too much; just enough to keep the relational connection and continue building upon the community that God has built so far.

  1. Schedule it! Before the onset of summer, ask group members to bring their calendars to a meeting and plan around the dates people know they are going to be away. Before scheduling, appoint somebody to find out what is happening in your surrounding communities during the summer like farmers markets, festivals, outdoor concerts, etc. Besides community events, other examples of fun activities to put on the calendar include:
  • Going out to a restaurant together and/or the movies.
  • Grilling in a local park or the backyard of somebody other than your typical host.
  • Going to a sports event together or doing an activity everyone can get into like bowling, paddle-boating, volleyball, hiking, etc.
  • Taking a day-trip to the coast, mountains, or state/national park.
  • Watching July 4th fireworks together (invite neighbors to join you and introduce them to others in your group).
  • Having group members pray for one person in their lives they can invite to your group by the end of the summer. (Take a meeting to pray for these people and for what group members hope to see happen in their personal lives by the end of the year.)
  1. Plan a servant evangelism project together. Click HERE for ideas and select a project that would be low risk for people in your group and shows God’s love in practical ways.
  1. Volunteer to help your church with an event or project.
  1. Encourage group members to discover and develop their spiritual gifts. Here’s a simple three-step process: 1) Read and discuss 1 Corinthians 12; Romans 12:1-8; Ephesians 4:7-16; 1 Peter 4:10-11. 2) Have each one complete a spiritual gift assessment. 3) Affirm the outcomes for everyone and brainstorm how they could use them to build up the group in the fall.

Group members who wouldn’t take on new responsibilities for the group in the midst of a study might be willing to do so during the different pace of the summer. Seize this season to “test drive” potential co-leaders by giving them bite-size responsibilities that will help you implement any of the strategies above. Also, seriously consider sub-grouping by gender when you change things up in any of these ways because it will help relationships grow deeper and develop new leaders for future groups so more people can be impacted with the love and message of Jesus Christ!

Reid Smith has been equipping leaders in churches of all sizes and stages of growth for effective disciple-making since 1996. He currently serves as a Pastor of Groups at Christ Fellowship in Palm Beach County, FL and has been a contributing author for various publications, including LifeWay’s Ministry Grid. Learn more about how to start and multiply healthy groups throughout your church at www.reidsmith.org.
Church Leadership, Group Leadership

Free Small Groups Webinar

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Can small groups really work in smaller size churches? That is the topic that we are going to tackle in this free webinar on March 19, 2019, 11am – 12pm CST. Here are a few of the questions that myself and our expert panelists will take on:

  • What are the greatest challenges to groups in a smaller church?
  • What is the best type of groups system for a church that is just starting to offer small groups?
  • How do you best utilize your budget (or lack of one) for small groups?
  • What does leader recruitment, training, and care look like?
  • and many more

Spots are limited, so register for this free webinar soon here.

Chris Surratt is a ministry consultant and coach with more than twenty years of experience serving the local church. Chris served on the Executive Teams at Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN., and Seacoast Church in Charleston, S.C., prior to becoming the Discipleship and Small Groups Specialist for LifeWay Christian Resources. He is the author of  Small Groups for the Rest of Us: How to Design Your Small Groups System to Reach the Fringes. You can follow his blog at www.chrissurratt.com.

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