THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK
If you know anything about me, you know I love a plan. I have displayed on my office whiteboard, “Vision without implementation equals hallucination.”1 I believe in vision, and you’ll hear me talk quite a bit about it in this book. If you don’t have a plan for implementing your vision, you are wasting your time. After I wrote my first book, Small Groups with Purpose,2 I discovered people still needed a step-by-step guide for planning their small group ministries, and that’s the purpose of this book. If you read this book and complete its exercises, you will end up with a long-term plan, including specific twelve-month goals to start or accelerate your small group ministry.
Church culture is undeniably returning to small groups. And why not? The early church met to worship not only en masse but also in small groups, from house to house (see Acts 2:42–47). Thom S. Rainer published an article on May 10, 2017, titled, “Eight Major Changes in Churches the Past Ten Years.” One of these changes:
Today: Vital importance of groups
Ten years ago: Marginal importance of groups
Healthy churches today make groups (community groups, home groups, Sunday school, life groups, etc.) a high priority. Ten years ago, many church leaders did not see how groups could enhance the health of the church in discipleship, evangelism, prayer, ministry, and fellowship.3
Success involves the management of ideas. Ideas can provide wonderful breakthroughs for your ministry. However, trying to implement too many ideas at once can crush or fragment your ministry.
In order to effectively manage and execute ideas in your context, you have to understand your church or ministry culture as well as the systems your church or ministry currently has in place. Not only will this book build on the concepts I wrote about in my book Small Groups with Purpose, but it will also help you grasp more deeply how to work within the culture and systems your church has in place. We will also investigate fresh, new ideas and processes that will move your ministry forward in an effective, efficient, and—most important—God-honoring way.
It is important to grasp that God never calls you merely to imitate another church’s successful model. As I give you examples of what we do at Saddleback Church, I am not suggesting you do things exactly the same way. You know your church culture, and you know your ministry. So take the ideas we discuss and tailor them to your church environment. God has called you to your church, for your culture, in your location, for this time.
As you move through this book, you will be presented with a series of twenty planning questions, along with suggested practical answers, to help you develop a strategic plan. In my thirty-plus years of doing small group ministry, I have had to answer each of these questions, and you’ll need to answer them too. I’m confident that if these questions haven’t yet arisen in your ministry, they eventually will.
You’ll come up with many answers to these questions as part of your plan, but you don’t need to implement all of the answers at once. You do need to know what’s ahead of you. This book will help shed light on the unknowns of small group ministry and help you plan efficiently and practically. I will even help you prioritize and calendarize your plan. I want you to succeed.
So no matter your denomination, church size, church paradigm, church polity, or church’s location on this planet—if you will prayerfully, thoughtfully answer these questions, you will end up with a plan that will save you pain! (Smile.) Prayerfully approach each decision and idea, asking God to show you how it pertains to your ministry. Praying your way through this book will help you understand where the Lord is guiding your ministry.
Developing your ministry is not a linear process—step 1, then step 2, then step 3. Since this process is multidimensional and the order of your actions is unpredictable, I have structured the book around the metaphorical motif of building a home (which is kind of fitting, since most small groups meet in homes—but definitely don’t have to!). A sound, secure home needs a strong foundation, so part 1 focuses on the foundation of your ministry. This prevents you from building your house on the sand, so it won’t crumble when trouble comes (see Luke 6:46–49).
After that, in part 2 we will walk through five areas of the home, exploring four planning questions in each area:
Each area, with its cluster of four questions, emphasizes a different aspect of your ministry, each critical to complete and necessary for long-term effectiveness. Even though this book progresses from one area to the next, the actual implementation of your plan will involve roaming back and forth among different areas. Stay flexible, and discover all that is in your home.
Feel free to use this book with flexibility. It is a dynamic, working document that you can refer back to as you grow your ministry. Take notes, write in the margins, highlight—whatever works best for you.
In this book, you will learn from Saddleback campuses of varying sizes that have developed small group ministries. You will also read testimonies from people who have attended our Accelerate! conference, which focuses on building small group ministries. These attendees come from different size churches, different denominations, and different cultures. Their encouraging feedback is my motivation for writing this book.
For example, I received this email from James Whitely, small group pastor from Word of Faith Family Worship Cathedral in Austell, Georgia:
My goal was to gain a better understanding of how to shape our church’s small group ministry. Our church is a large, predominantly African American congregation, and there are not many effective models of authentic and effective small group ministries to research. So I attended the Accelerate! conference to start this journey, building a life-changing small group ministry in our specific church demographic.
I have studied several of the successful Caucasian megachurches, but I wanted a hands-on approach to building and organizing a small group ministry from the ground up. After returning from the conference to my church in Atlanta, we launched our small group ministry in January 2017 with fifty-one adult groups that engage over five hundred of our members. To God be the glory!
Your guidance helped me focus in on the main things, and then begin applying the principles to help build a thriving, authentic, and loving small group ministry at our church.
My prayer is that you, too, walk away empowered with a new arsenal of strategies and tools for starting your small group ministry or reenergizing the growth, influence, and reach of your existing ministry.