LifeWay

Group Ministry

Conversations on Group Practices

Church Leadership

Five Tips to Helping your New Group Last the Whole Year

By

Stepping out to start a new small group can be a scary experience. All of us have the same questions starting out: Will anyone show up? Have I invited the right people? Have I picked the right study? How will I disciple everyone in my group? And the biggest question of all: Will my new group survive? Statistics say that around 70% of new businesses will eventually fail within five years. I would hazard a guess that it’s around the same for new small groups in the first year. We all have the best of intentions at the start, but life happens and good intentions get derailed.

However, there is hope! There are a few things that you can do now that will help your small group survive and thrive through the whole year. Here are five tips to starting and finishing strong.

  1. Consistency

Inconsistency can derail a small group from the start. There will be weeks where it is extremely tempting to just cancel. A few group members start dropping out early in the week, and now it seems easier to cancel and punt to the next week. After a few weeks of last minute canceling, most people will give up on showing up. Resist that urge to cancel, and stay consistent with your meetings. Some of the most impactful group meetings I have been a part of was with just a few people. Start the group off with a covenant or agreement stating that members will need to be consistent with their attendance throughout the semester, or join the group at another time when their schedules allow.

  1. Substance

Most people are already involved in a small group. There are smaller groups of people we interact with every day. We have groups at work, groups at school, groups at the football game, groups at the park, and on-and-on. For your small group to be compelling enough for someone to give another time slot to, it has to go beyond the surface and offer opportunities for people to grow deeper in their faith and love for Jesus. If your “study” time consists of 10-15  minutes of shallow conversation about the sermon from Sunday, or how their week was, that’s not enough.

To love God, we have to know God, and that will come from those deeper conversations inspired by a well written study of God’s Word. Check out lifeway.com/balanceddiscipleship for a robust Bible study plan.

  1. Care

Another difference in what you are offering and what people can get anywhere is genuine care. Your group members are needing more than a social time and a Bible study. The goal is to have your small group feel like family. Families care for one another and are there for each other when circumstances are great and not so great. We should celebrate and weep with our group members equally.

  1. Variety

Even the best experiences will get old when repeated too many times. If your small group meetings are always the same, the group will quickly become stale and group members will start to fade out. Change it up occasionally with the type of study you are doing. If you are consistently doing studies through books of the BIble, try a more topical study for a few weeks. If your group always uses a video driven study, change it up with discussion driven study for a semester. Also, build in nights where the group just does something fun.  Plan a night every six weeks that is a game night, or something fun outside of the normal meeting location.

  1. Empowerment

If you are a leader who has to do everything in the group – host, provide food, facilitate the discussion, handle the prayer request, schedule the activities, etc – then you are not empowering your members to discover their spiritual gifts and take ownership in the group. Consumers will feel the freedom to move on when the group no longer fills their needs. Owners have a stake and will feel the responsibility to help the group fill other’s needs. Start the group off with the expectation that everyone will eventually contribute to the life of the group. This will help create owners and not consumers.

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.
Church Leadership

6 Ways to Minimize the Stress of Leading a Group

By

by Dwayne McCrary

If you have led any kind of Bible study group, you are familiar with the stress that comes with it. As soon as the group time is over, another one sits in the future awaiting your attention. Responding to individual’s questions that come from the group time just adds to the stress all the more. And it always seems that some crisis at work happens right before a group meeting. Here are a few things we can do to address the stress of leading a group.

  1. Prepare. This may be a shock, but winging it only adds to the stress. We may buy into the “I want the Holy Spirit to be free to work in the group time” excuse, pretending that our failure to prepare is somehow more spiritual. The truth is the Holy Spirit is at work outside the group time just as much as He is during it. Sharpened axes tend to be the most effective.
  2. Start Early. It is one thing to prepare, it is another thing to prepare on your way to the group meeting. The urgent adds stress and gets in the way of us doing our best. The moment the previous group time concludes, we can start our preparation for the next group time. This gives us time to think about the group time and put together a great experience.
  3. Delegate. We can’t do everything and we shouldn’t. The more we take on, the more we cheat someone in the group of using their giftedness within the group. Delegation is a subset of starting early; asking a person to volunteer the day of the group time is unfair.
  4. Use a Plan. Half of the stress of leading a group is deciding what will be studied and when. Rely on your church leaders and other experts like LifeWay to create a well thought out study plan for your group. Adapt as needed, but having some plan to adapt removes the pressure of deciding on your own.
  5. Get feedback and act on it. Ask someone you trust in the group to evaluate the group time. Look for constructive actions you may need to take to improve as a leader. This is not about being perfect, but about being better.
  6. Remember you are not alone. Nothing adds to our stress more than feeling like we are on out on the limb will all eyes on us.The Holy Spirit is present in our preparation, present in the lives of the believers in our group, and stands with us during the group time. God shows up when His truth is examined and we are in partnership with Him.
Dwayne McCrary is a project team leader for ongoing adult Bible study resources at LifeWay, including the adult Explore the Bible resources. He also teaches an adult group and preschool group every Sunday in the church he attends.
Church Leadership

Remove Your Masks

By

by Tyler Quillet

It’s that time of year when kids (and some sugar-craved adults) are running around your neighborhood in crazy costumes to collect candy. Each Halloween, we all think to ourselves at some point, “I wonder who is under that mask?” If you are a small group leader, you’ve probably asked that question about folks in your group as well. They may not be wearing a Spiderman mask to small group, but they certainly aren’t revealing their hearts either. So, how do we as small group leaders create an environment where the masks come off? It’s an important question, because masks hide important issues and struggles.

Nine years ago, my wife and I experienced our first of many miscarriages. We were broken. As much as we wanted to cancel small group that week, we knew that as leaders we had an opportunity to be vulnerable with our group. This could go a long way toward us all doing life in Jesus together in the years ahead. We were done with our study and it was time to share prayer requests, so we shared our news from that week. We wept as we opened ourselves up and shared our hurt, our anger and our confusion. The group’s response was something we could have never imagined. Crickets. Nobody said a word. They just sat there and stared at us. It took awkward to new levels. They didn’t know what to do or say, so they did and said…nothing. I finally broke the prolonged silence by praying a general prayer and as people left that evening, a few of the ladies gave my wife a hug to say they were sorry. That was it.

It would be really easy for me to get angry with our group for this. Clearly, we were hurt. We were a newer group of young couples and people weren’t totally comfortable with each other quite yet. However, do you know where the blame lies for that awkward evening? Right at my feet. As the leader, I hadn’t created an environment of transparency. I hadn’t yet modeled vulnerability. To that point, our new group was a bunch of people wearing masks who got together to eat good food and read the Bible together. We didn’t yet trust one another, and so everything shared up to that point as a group was fluffy and superficial. I had failed them, and so when we opened our hearts up, it was something they hadn’t experienced before and they didn’t know what to do.

A good friend of mine who I co-led a group with years ago often jokingly used the phrase, “It’s time to get naked.” Now, please don’t take this literally at your next small group meeting. It won’t go over well and you’ll end up in jail! But I love what that entails when it comes to our hearts. It’s time to strip away the pride, the embarrassment, and whatever else you are trying to cover your heart up with. It’s time to take the mask off of your heart and allow those you are in community with to see your struggles, your hurts, your emotions, your flaws, and your desperation for Jesus.

Doing this once isn’t going to make you a transparent group (see story above). However, modeling a transparent heart, asking transparency of your group each week, and loving and encouraging each other through the transparency is, over time, going to bring you all closer to one another. More importantly, it’s going to bring you all the closer to Jesus.

It’s up to you to ask the Lord for discernment in what to share with your group and when. As group leaders, we have to lead the way in bringing our people to a place of transparency. It may be difficult at first, but true discipleship begins to happen when we are doing life together, sharing our hearts and pointing one another towards Jesus each step of the way.

May your group continue to grow in heart-level sharing with one another, may you be faithful to care for one another as you share from the depths, and may you pray fervently for those who take off their masks and share what they desperately need from Jesus.

Tyler Quillet is the Discipleship Strategist for the Custom Bible Study team at LifeWay Christian Resources. He lives in the Nashville, TN area with his incredible wife, Cathie and two boys, Cylas and Bowen. Tyler spent 15 years as a pastor in Ohio before moving to the Nashville area and is passionate about serving churches and pouring into church leaders in a variety of ways.
Church Leadership

What Backflipping Has Taught Me About Small Grouping

By

by Scarlet Hiltibidal

 

(That’s me, by the white fence, upside down, back tucking with horrible form – so horrible that one second later my teammates were pulling grass out of my teeth.)

I was a cheerleader in high school. Not the pom-poms and “go team” kind (I didn’t understand football then, and I still don’t today). I did the three hours of practice a day, taped-up wrists, crying and sweating and winning national competitions kind of cheering.

Being on the competition team was serious. It was my everything. And if I play out our first national championship winning routine in my mind from start to finish, and remember seeing Jen Granado stick that last heel stretch after having just landed my roundoff-backhandspring-backhandspring-tuck, I can easily trigger a full-blown weeping session of joy and nostalgia.

My job on the team was to tumble. I did flips. So I was, pretty much, just responsible for my self—hitting my mark, doing my tricks well, and making the appropriate theatrical, corny faces to go with it. If I really stuck the landing, I would turn to the judge’s table with the biggest, fakest open-mouthed smile I could contort my face into while underlining the “DCS” on my chest with both hands.

I hate myself.

I was really bad at what we cheerleaders called “stunting”—the thing where we throw each other into the air and catch and lift. I hated it. I didn’t want to get my teeth knocked out.

So, I was good at flipping by myself and bad at working with the rest of the team.

In the first couple of years, my coaches would challenge me by having me spot the girls who flew in the air. The first time I spotted, the flyer landed on her back and sprained her elbow. The second (and last) time I spotted, our star flyer landed on her coccyx. I didn’t jump backward and away, covering my face while my teammates were falling to their death on purpose. It was instinctive self-preservation!

Again, I know! I was the worst! NOW WILL YOU STOP TALKING ABOUT IT, PLEASE!

Back then, I loved the buzz of being on the team, but I enjoyed the most isolated role. This wasn’t only a cheerleading thing for me. It was also, really until the last few years, how I functioned in relationships.

As a cheerleader, I liked wearing the team uniform, but only if I could do my own thing and not be dependent on anyone or have anyone dependent on me. In life, I always want to be at the party, but you can count on me having to go to the bathroom or slipping out the back door as soon as you go from small talk to deep talk. No thank you.

This tendency led to me hurting a lot of people. I’d be friendly, they’d misconstrue my friendliness for actual openness and love, and I would either fail to meet their expectations as a friend or tell them upfront, “Hey…let’s not even go where you’re going, because I’m going to fail to meet your expectations as a friend.”

Living this way wasn’t good for them and it wasn’t good for my soul, either. I thought I was okay because my life has always been very busy and full. But, I wasn’t growing. I wasn’t allowing God to use me to do anything in anyone’s life, and then I fought the guilt this brought by distracting myself with more busyness.

This has been my pattern until the last couple of years. I joined a small group at church a few years ago, and instead of being at arm’s distance, I actually got involved in these people’s lives and let them into mine. When I was afraid to do something that I knew God wanted me to do, I would tell this group instead of hiding it. I would ask them to pray.

They didn’t bulldoze my walls and force their way into my life. They actually didn’t ask anything of me at all. They just lived like Jesus in front of me, and that compelled me to put my defensive arms down. Their Christlikeness helped me notice my own un-Christlikeness and want what they have.

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. – Proverbs 27:17

I’m doing things and living in ways that would have scared me to death years ago, and it’s bringing me joy. My friendships have deepened and become sources of encouragement, rather that stress.

Letting myself be fully on a team with a group of people—tossing and catching and praying and diving under the person who is falling, and letting them catch me when I fall has proven to be such an extreme joy—it’s worth any head bump or bruised coccyx that has come with it.

So much has changed since flipping was part of my life. No longer am I the nervous show-off doing, whatever it takes to keep everyone on my team at a safe distance. Now I’m a nervous show-off who does life with people that make me want to be less like me and more like Jesus.

Scarlet Hiltibidal is the author of Afraid of All the Things. She loves sign language with her daughters, nachos by herself, writing for her friends, and learning how to be a pretend-farmer with her husband in Middle Tennessee. Follow her on Instagram at @scarlethiltibidal.

 

Church Leadership

Three Key Areas to Target in Group Studies

By

by Deborah Spooner

Yesterday was the day.

While the first week of September means Labor Day plans for many, many overlook September 6th: National Read a Book Day.

Read a book day? Yes. If we want to lead, we need to read. If we want to grow, we need to read. If we want to bring others deeper into God’s Word, we have to digest words ourselves. After all, a key way God gave us His message was through the written Word itself.

What would reading specifically targeted studies do for you, your group leaders, and your groups? We often miss out as we chose and read studies, but we can make a change. Be intentional as you use studies to…

  1. Develop your group leaders.

You have your leaders leading studies; yet are you prioritizing developing them as not only group leaders, but also followers of Christ? With a little more intentionality, you can help prepare your leaders to maximize their time with the group. When they’re better at what they do, they can better guide others.

This developing is simple. Help develop their understanding of why groups and classes matter through studies such as Allan Taylor’s Sunday School Matters: 12 Matters that Matter to Your Church. Fuel their passion for their role as mentor through studies such as Chuck Lawless’s Mentor: How Along-the-Way- Discipleship Will Change Your Life.

  1. Equip others to engage with culture.

Culture. It’s a buzzword, but we often get caught in the buzz and don’t engage the world around us deeply through our words. We share opinions, but are we sharing strategies and tactics to both truthfully and lovingly engage real people in real places? If we are not intentional in equipping our groups to engage, they will turn elsewhere to learn how.

We can constructively discuss social and political issues through studies such as Russell Moore’s Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel. We can delve deeper into issues such as sexual immorality and abortion through David Platt’s Counter Culture.

  1. Catalyze groups to rethink the mundane.

What if ordinary was actually opportunity? People in our groups can become so disillusioned with life’s daily tasks that we miss what life could (and is) able to be. Daily can mean daily opportunities to make a difference, and each moment is a chance to not only serve but also to actually be happy. 

Start shifting perspectives through delving into how we can, regularly, make acts of service a part of life’s rhythms in Tony Merida’s Ordinary: How to Turn the World Upside Down. Uncover how, each day, God doesn’t even just want us to be happy but also commands it through Randy Alcorn’s Happiness: God’s Invitation to Delight, Celebration, and Joy. 

Reading matters. Not just on National Read a Book Day, but every day. Targeting specific, often underemphasized areas to read and study might just even bring more growth to your group than you think.

Deborah Spooner is a Minnesota-born analytical creative serving as a Marketing Strategist for LifeWay’s Groups Ministry. As a pastor’s daughter with a background in Digital Communications and Media and Biblical & Theological Studies, you can find her at her local church, in deep conversation, or with a book or pen in hand as she seeks to know Christ more and make Him known.

 

Church Leadership

Tuesday Thoughts: Being on Mission

By

Okay, we’re talking about the three distinctions of a biblical small group, if you remember. The first one is discipleship, so we want to make sure that we are creating disciples in our small group. Second, we want to make sure that we’re building community, that discipleship happens best within the context of community, so we want to schedule it into our group meetings and into our calendar. And then third, what I want to focus on today is mission. How can we make sure that our group is on mission? So I’m gonna give you four things to maybe look at to think about for your group to help your group to start thinking missionally. The first thing you want to do is you want to study it.

Choose study that forces your group to think missionally. Lot of the studies that we do are something that we’re passionate about, so kind of revert back to the same types of topics. So if you’re not naturally, if your group’s not naturally bent towards being on mission, choose a study that forces them to think about serving people outside of themselves. So maybe you go to lifeway.com, look at the balance discipleship plan and choose a steady from the serving God and others category, something that’s about six weeks long and take some time to study what does it look like to be on mission and then number two you want to plan for it.

Choose somebody in your group that will organize something that you can do maybe on a weekend and something that fits the skills of your group. So choose somebody, talk about it, talk about where are we skilled, and then pick a project for your group to start with to start thinking outside of the group. And the number three, it’s pretty obvious, but we want to do it. So actually make it happen. We can study it, we can plan for it, but if we don’t actually go out and do it than it was for nothing. And so make sure you get a good day and time when the entire group can do something. Maybe a weekend, Saturday morning, a couple hours where you can serve alongside another organization and become missional. The number four, and this is important and we forget this part a lot of times, is talk about it. So as soon as possible, maybe the next group meeting after your project, take some time to debrief. How did it go? How did it make you feel? What can we do differently or better next time? Because what we want to do is we want to move the mindset from a project to a lifestyle. So we go from just thinking about how do we do this project to how do we actually live missionally day by day. So study it, plan for it, do it, talk about it, and let’s become missional as a small group.

Chris Surratt is a ministry consultant and coach with over 22 years of experience serving the local church. Chris served on the Executive Team at Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN, and was on staff at Seacoast Church in Charleston, SC, for 15 years. He is also the Small Group Specialist for LifeWay Christian Resources. Chris’s first book, Small Groups For The Rest Of Us: How to Design Your Small Groups System to Reach the Fringes, was just released by Thomas Nelson. You can follow his blog at chrissurratt.com or follow him on Twitter @chrissurratt.

Church Leadership

Three Ways to Improve Your Skill as a Small Group Leader

By

When I enlist leaders for new groups, I look for one key trait:

a teachable spirit.

The value of any teacher—whether he or she has never led a group or has been leading groups for fifty years—is his or her desire to learn—and keep learning. Unfortunately, too many leaders assume they know exactly how to lead a group, and that assumption is based on how someone once led them. Too often, bad teaching skills are simply passed down through the years.

But even for those among who do know how to facilitate a group, it’s wise to keep learning. The message of Scripture never changes, but methodologies change. Different generations process knowledge and interact with one another in different ways. Culture has an impact on the teaching-learning process, so there is great value in continually looking for ways to improve. And if our desire is to honor Christ through our groups, wouldn’t that include a desire to give Him our very best?

Let me suggest three ways you can invest in your group members by becoming a better leader.

  1. Self study. Pick up a book and read it! Many books are available on creative teaching, facilitating a group, and leading effective Bible study groups. A set of books I have found especially helpful over the years are written (or co-authored) by David Francis. Each book is intensely practical. Although short (48 pages), each book is not one to breeze through. Read a chapter, mull it over, and consider ways to apply it to your leadership.
  1. Group planning. If your group is a part of a planned, strategic discipleship strategy in your church (and I sincerely hope it is), consider getting with other group leaders to plan. When the leaders are studying the same book or using the same curriculum, they can come together and share ideas. Some churches do this weekly; some do it monthly. I can immediately call to mind specific stories of how my group study was enriched because of planning beforehand with others. On some occasions, I have walked into the planning meeting with a solid plan in place, but as we discussed ideas for leading, I left with an even stronger plan. On other occasions, I struggled with how I would approach a certain issue or part of my plan. As I shared my concern and we discussed it, I left the meeting with a great solution.
  1. Conferences. Check around for Bible study training occurring in your area. Some denominations (Southern Baptists, for example) offer training events on a state and local level. These conferences are led by experienced practitioners and offer great tips for working with different age groups, developing a creative study, facilitating a discussion, and on and on. One benefit I particularly enjoy is interacting with leaders from different churches. We learn from each other.

Leading your group has kingdom impact. It is significant! That reason alone should be the impetus for doing what you can to continually hone your skills as a group leader. Take advantage of the opportunities before you.

Lynn Pryor is the publishing team leader for Bible Studies for Life. He is serving a Nashville church as their transitional interim pastor. Lynn and his wife, Mary, have survived raising two sons to adulthood. A graduate of Southwestern Seminary, Lynn has previously pastored and served churches in Texas. Read more from his blog at lynnhpryor.com. Follow him @lynnpryor.

 

Group Answers Podcast

Group Answers Episode 65: SBC – Chris Swain on Discipleship

By

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:57 — 29.1MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | RSS

Join in with Chris Swain at SBC as we talk about the ministry “Replicate” and how they are helping to change the discipleship culture in local churches. How is Bible study best approached? How do we increase Bible engagement in our church? What does accountability look like in our group’s life? Listen as we talk about Jesus approached these questions.

GUEST: Chris Swain is the Executive Director of Replicate Ministries and serves at Long Hollow Baptist Church as the Equipping Pastor. After fours years of service in the United States Marine Corps, Chris served in full-time ministry for two decades in Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Georgia and Tennessee, leading ministries ranging from Students, to Collegiate, to Spiritual Formation. Most recently, Chris served as the Director of Student Ministry Publishing at Lifeway Christian Resources serving the Church in its mission of making disciples. Chris’s heart is to expand the Gospel through disciple-making in the local church.

The Group Answers Podcast is a weekly show designed to resource, train, and encourage small group leaders. Each episode considers current trends and resources as well as timeless truths and methods of discipleship. It is hosted by Brian Daniel, a Bible study and discipleship expert in LifeWay’s Groups Ministry, and Chris Surratt, the small group and discipleship specialist at LifeWay and author of Small Groups For The Rest Of Us.

Group Answers Podcast

Group Answers Episode 64: SBC – Michael Davis on Shame

By

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:55 — 27.7MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | RSS

This week on the Group Answers Podcast, Brian and Chris join Michael Davis at the Southern Baptist Convention. Brian, Chris, and Michael discuss how we confuse guilt, shame, and conviction. Even though believers’ sins have been paid for by Christ on the cross, it is easy to forget this magnificent truth in the midst of habitual sin. How do we fight against shame when conviction of sin oftentimes pulls us toward it? Listen as they address shame in the Christian life, and how it is antithetical to the gospel.

GUEST: Michael Davis is the Senior Director of Marketing, Communications, and Media at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). For more on this topic, listen to this podcast. You can follow Michael Davis on Twitter.
The Group Answers Podcast is a weekly show designed to resource, train, and encourage small group leaders. Each episode considers current trends and resources as well as timeless truths and methods of discipleship. It is hosted by Brian Daniel, a Bible study and discipleship expert in LifeWay’s Groups Ministry, and Chris Surratt, the small group and discipleship specialist at LifeWay and author of Small Groups For The Rest Of Us.
Tuesday Thoughts

Tuesday Thoughts – Discipleship Movement

By

Last time we talked about the three distinctives of every small group, the three things that your group should be about, if you have a purpose. They were about creating disciples, being in community, and being on mission. So if you have those three things happening in your small group, you should have a biblical community. So let’s talk about discipleship. How do you know that the people in your group are being discipled? What are you looking for? Well, you should be looking for movement. Everything that grows, everything that is getting better has movement. For instance, if you try to get physically fit and you started going to the gym or eating better, you’re going to see progress and movement. When you look in the mirror, what we should see is the same thing with the people in our group as they’re being discipled. So what kind of movement?

I think there’s two types of movement that you should be looking for when your group is being discipled. The first movement, the movement that you should see is his movement toward Christ. So as Christ is the center of your group and the people in your group are being discipled, they’re going to naturally become more like Jesus. You’re going to see fruit that is more like Jesus coming from your group members. If you look at the first disciples and in their life they moved toward Jesus. There was movement toward who he is, and so that’s what you want to see from your group members. As they’re becoming discipled, they’re becoming more like Jesus. The second movement that you want to see with your group members is toward each other. So as they’re being discipled, as they’re becoming more like Christ, they’re also moving to take care of each other’s needs. They’re loving one another. You can see in the New Testament, 41 times that word one another is used. They were busy, one another in one another, and so as your group members are becoming discipled, as they’re becoming closer to Christ, they’re going to naturally going to want to take care of each other’s needs. Love one another, reach out to others around them. And so look for those two movements. Is Your group becoming more like Christ and are they moving to a taking care of one another?

Chris Surratt is a ministry consultant and coach with over 22 years of experience serving the local church. Chris served on the Executive Team at Cross Point Church in Nashville, TN, and was on staff at Seacoast Church in Charleston, SC, for 15 years. He is also the Small Group Specialist for LifeWay Christian Resources. Chris’s first book, Small Groups For The Rest Of Us: How to Design Your Small Groups System to Reach the Fringes, was just released by Thomas Nelson. You can follow his blog at chrissurratt.com or follow him on Twitter @chrissurratt.