How do you start moving more people into biblical community through small groups? There are many ways, but two in particular highlight the decisions that small group directors and church leaders face. One way is to start with some hand-picked folks in one or a few pilot group (sometimes called Turbo-groups) and focus on Biblical community, outreach, leadership development, and group health. Live life together for a while and then send these folks out to start recruiting and leading their own groups with the vision that this process of growing, reproducing and multiplying will continue to happen over time.
Another popular way is to launch small groups is to use a campaign-program that gets a lot of people connected quickly with minimal leadership development up front. This second method of starting or expanding a small group ministry utilizes a program or campaign as a catalyst. Some popular ones today are: "40 Days of Purpose," the "50 Day Spiritual Adventure," and some stewardship campaigns among others.
Some say the first method emphasizes quality or group health at the expense of quantity—limiting only a few to enter community at first. And while it is true that this method does have a much flatter growth curve at first, quantity growth can increase rapidly as leadership multiplication continues through a few generations of groups and leaders. While this method certainly requires the ongoing training of the leaders, much of the training is built into the structure. Because of this, a highly developed centralized training system is not as critical since much of it happens organically through apprenticeship. In addition, group leader coaches and overseers naturally develop from the system, rather than needing to be forced into it. One of the down-sides of this model is that those outside the group can accuse those inside of being exclusive or cliquish. And in some cases if healthy practices are not passed on, the group will stagnate and healthy multiplication will stop.
On the other hand, campaign-driven programs, by their very nature emphasize quantity, making small group connections available to many people all at once. Campaigns involve the whole church or at least significant segments of it. They generally use a specific curriculum that everyone does simultaneously. This common purpose has the potential to build momentum, church-wide excitement, and unified vision. In this method, many new leaders or hosts are required who typically have little or no prior experience with group leadership. Oversight and follow-up of these new groups and leaders needs to be more centralized and is more challenging because any prior support structure is typically undersized compared to the rapid addition of leaders and groups. Group health is also more of a concern because in some cases leaders have not had healthy Biblical community modeled to them. This can lead to many groups shutting down after the campaign is over and the potential for some folks having misconceptions about what Biblical community in a small group should be like. There is a danger that even for the groups who stay together, some aspects of healthy Biblical community are never really embraced leading once again to exclusiveness and stunted growth.
So, what do you do? Start lots of groups quickly that get a lot of people connected into community and do the best you can on leadership quality and group health? Or, start slow and develop a few groups with some hand picked folks who focus on leadership development and hope the model continues to multiply and increase quantity? Is there one right strategy? Do you really have to settle for quality or quantity?
Several years ago, I used a 50-Day Spiritual Adventure (www.helpingpastors.com) at our church to launch a small group ministry and get a few hundred folks into groups all at one time. The 50-Day Spiritual Adventure was a forerunner of the more recent 40-Days of Purpose (www.purposedriven.com). Much of the mechanics of each program are the same. When done well, many folks will make a commitment to be in small groups, and enter into the life-changing pathway of Biblical community.
More recently I've been involved in a church model where we are focusing on building quality first, starting with a single group and now growing to several groups through multiplication. The numerical growth has been slow but steady. The spiritual growth and health have been very exciting. I've seen leadership develop character and competency in significant ways through this approach.
Having been involved with both, I know that either approach has its challenges and advantages. Both approaches have the potential to lead many into a life changing Christian community. Both have specific weaknesses and strengths in either the area of quantity or quality.
And if you don't think through the strengths and weaknesses and the try to address them, I can tell you from experience that what you start with most times is what you finish with. In other words, the values you instill at the beginning of either of these two processes are typically the values you will have when you finish. The old "bait-and-switch" doesn't work very well most times.
For instance, if you emphasize quantity—that everyone should be in a small group and that the group experience will take care of itself through curriculum or whatever program you use, then the quantity value seems to always be instilled in your people. When it is discovered that group health and leader development are suffering, a common response is often made to the affect, "Hey don't worry about it too much, things are still working because we've still got a lot of people in groups!"
On the other hand, if you emphasize quality only—that what happens in the group experience is more important than how many people are in the group—then new people are perceived as damaging to the group dynamics and potential apprentice leaders never get to the point of feeling qualified and empowered to lead. When personal growth and outreach and multiplication are emphasized from the outside, then the common response is: "Hey, we are not ready to add people or multiply yet; we need to grow and learn how to feed ourselves first."
By now, hopefully you have realized the important question is not about whether to choose quantity or quality in your small group approach. The real decision is how to provide an environment where quality AND quantity are valued from the start, regardless of the method or model you select. It's not "either/or," it should be "and/both." To give you some help along the way, here are some critical factors that can help quantity and quality co-exist from start to finish in your small groups:
Prayer. In addition to Biblical evidence, extensive statistical research has been done on what leadership factors and skills contribute to small group growth both in quality and quantity. The leading factor in group quality and quantity is leaders who pray daily for their small group members. When leaders are praying quality and quantity are much more likely to result.
Leadership Community. Bring your leaders into an environment of community themselves. It's very difficult to lead someone to a place you haven't been. Getting leaders to experience an environment of community for several weeks prior to leading their group, or having leaders experience the community of a leadership huddle regularly while they are leading a group is critical to processing the experiences they have while leading their own group. Get group leaders away on a retreat occasionally to have defining moments in their experiences of community. Ongoing training and coaching is critical to both quantity and quality of small groups and yet is always one of the most challenging things to do well. Make sure the development of individuals who can relationally coach other small group leaders is a high priority. Keep spans of care of staff/coaches to group leaders in the range of 1:3 to 1:5, even if it means having fewer groups. Help group leaders become empowered in their critical roles as group leaders and don't let other competing ministry activities crowd out leader's time to become involved in the lives of group members.
Reproducible Values and Mission. Keep group values and mission simple and reproducible. If group leaders don't have a firm sense for why they are doing what they are doing, it will be very difficult to sustain momentum over the long haul. Without the right underlying values, the inevitable struggles and problems that come up in group life will cause many members and leaders to "check-out" of the process. Two values that drive longer-term group quantity and quality that always tend to slip off the radar screen are outreach and multiplication. Research shows that outreach and assimilation of new people into the group actually improves the quality of a group over the long term, contrary to what is popularly thought. Outreach helps with the quality of a group and multiplication will increase the quantity of groups. Group multiplication almost never happens spontaneously in a group. Leaders and groups need to have the vision and processes of multiplication re-introduced over and over. Don't overlook these two values as something to emphasize "later." Emphasize them from the start.
Be Committed to Relational Ministry. Much of the New Testament is written in the context of churches meeting in homes with people in close relationship to one another. It is not surprising then that much of the New Testament instruction is of a relational nature. Consider the "one anothers" of scripture. Most deal with how we relate to one anther. Quality happens when we are doing these faithfully and in love. That means, when necessary, having hard conversation about problem areas. It means growing through conflict and rooting out bitterness. It means some groups may need to go on life-support or be shut down, particularly if isolated and unhealthy. If a group or leader is doing more harm than good and there is not a submissive and teachable spirit there, then we must value quality over quantity. In the long run, overall quantity and quality will improve for having insured the right kind of truth and environment is getting passed on.
By focusing on some of these issues, regardless of what approach you take to launch new small groups, quantity and quality can be a result.
