Worship attendance? 6000+
Number of small groups currently meeting?
Offsite Adult Groups: 250+
Onsite Women's Groups: 50+
Jr. and Sr. High: 50+
Children: 180+ small groups
Ministry Teams: 100+
Number of people currently in small groups? (these are not mutually exclusive)
Offsite Adult Groups: 2,500+
Onsite Women's Groups: 500+
Jr. and Sr. High: 500+
Children: 1,500+
Ministry Teams: 1000+
Background
When Grace Community Church was birthed from Faith Missionary Church in 1991, over 400 people came to the first service. In a few months, 30 small groups were launched to care for the people of Grace and provide the best environment for them grow in Christ. From the beginning, philosophically small groups were to be critical to the growth of the church body. However, practically, church leaders struggled with those who were convinced that Sunday school was the way for spiritual formation to take place. Despite this opposition one of the founding Pastors, Jim Falk, built a strong volunteer team of coaches who faithfully grew groups over time.
The Vision and Leadership Environment
Over the last 13 years, Grace has moved from philosophically a church of small groups to practically a church of small groups. In many ways I believe we've practically made this shift, because it's the environment where we can best live out our mission "to love people into a responsive and maturing relationship with Jesus Christ." Also, it's practically how we will see us move closer to our vision "to be a new community of Christ followers that reveals God and His Kingdom in the world." So today, every major life-stage area in the church shepherds people in small groups.
To support our small group leaders, all ministries are set up in a team-based approach so that we can give people the opportunity to experience ministry in community. For example on my staff team, I have a team of three Regional Pastors, each who oversees and shepherds a team of Area Leaders. These volunteer Area Leaders oversee 5-15 groups with the help of experienced leaders we call coaches. Just this September, we launched 240 groups and our team of Area Leaders and Coaches supported these new "hosts" through weekly calls, emails or face-to-face contact.
What happens in your church's small groups?
Our Core Values are the best markers we use to emphasize what our small groups are to be living out. Our Core Values (www.gracecc.org/core_values) are in the form of an acrostic from the name of our church: G-R-A-C-E. We want to see each of these values lived out or practiced in each group. So, using these values as our guide, it's easy to take people to the place of what we want emphasized over the life of a group:
- G-God-centered - worship, prayer, study of God's Word, surrender of our lives
- R-Reaching Others - inviting others, personal and group outreach
- A-Authentic Relationships - practicing interdependence, being real, etc.
- C-Changing Lives - growing to be like Christ through the Holy Spirit's work
- E-Empowered to Serve and Give - discovering and using your gifts, talents and resources for God's Kingdom work
What has been done to grow the involvement of people in Christian community?
It seemed we've tried every strategy known to man to involve people in community. It does not surprise me that we struggle. Our enemy is hell-bent on destroying unity in the chuch, whether it's marriage or small groups. Also, our culture is extremely lonely and isolated.
For us, we needed to be extremely intentional in order to put teeth into our vision and mission to "love people to Jesus, turn them into communities and launch them into God's revolution." So, one year ago, we made small groups the strategic initiative or ministry focus. At that time, only about 1500 of our 4500 adults were involved in a small group. We approached Brett Eastman with LifeTogether to help us. After five months of prayer and planning, we launched the Grace Groups: Growing in Grace Together (see www.gracecc.org/gracegroups) with the goal to connect our entire congregation into small groups where they can grow in living out God's purposes/values and ignite a movement to reach our community through community. We're just on the front end of this movement. We launched 240+ groups with 2,100 adults participating. As of the time this case study is being published, we will be preparing for our second wave of groups for February. Check in on us a few months to see what God is doing.
What has happened as a result of what has been done?
Even though we are still in the early stages of a different approach to launching small groups, I will share three keys we are learning and three unanswered questions:
Three Key Learnings:
- We're growing emerging leaders through the host concept – We had way more people step up the plate to "host" a group for six weeks than just recruit leaders. It surfaced a lot of people who were willing to "practice hospitality" and provide a grace-filled environment.
- Our Sr. Pastor is our key small group champion and recruiter—For years, Community Groups represented one ministry of Grace Community Church. With the Grace Groups Initiative, our Sr. Pastor became the key small group champion and host recruiter. It gave so much credibility to our efforts when our Sr. Pastor said he's was hosting a group and he was behind this all-church initiative.
- We still have to do the hard work of raising up and investing in coaches—Even though we are using a turbo-charged way to launch groups, nothing beats a dependable team of Coaches and Area Leaders to sustain your growth beyond the launch.
Three Unanswered Questions:
- When and how will we achieve full integration with other life-stage areas? While we have had a solid kick off with many off-site groups, we still need to integrate more with our women, men and young adult ministries.
- How can we broaden and deepen leadership development beyond the launch? One of the keys for sustainability and in-kind multiplication will be the development from the host to a leader. We believe through ongoing training and coaching, we'll be able to help lead these people on their next steps.
- What's next to make groups more relevant to seekers who are not ready to engage in conversations on God's purposes or values? One of the unanswered questions is the role of common-interest groups in helping our people use what they love to do recreationally as relational bridge-builders with their friends. We have a handful of these types of groups, but have yet to go broad with anything just yet.
Lessons learned
I believe after nearly 13 years of small group experience as a church and nearly 20 years of small group experience as a person that we're just getting started! Honestly, it seems we have a "fresh wind, fresh fire" from the current small group initiative we are in. I'm so excited to see my neighbor James, who has never attended our church, being drawn to Christ through his participation in our neighborhood Grace Group. Our senior pastor is more fired up about groups than ever before, because he, too, is seeing life-change happen right before his eyes!
My encouragement to you is to keep modeling small groups in your church and get your leadership to do the same. Andy Stanley said vision casting is easy when you first live it, celebrate it and then cast it. So go live it!!
