Want to lead a small group that makes a difference? Pay attention to these five leader essentials.
Leader Essentials:
- Invite personally. Don’t rely on announcements at church to build your group. The best way to grow your group is through personal invitations.
- Involve everyone. Encourage others to participate by facilitating the conversation, hosting a night, leading prayer, bringing snacks, or planning serving opportunities.
- Influence spiritual growth. Challenge others to create and keep personal spiritual disciplines such as time in God’s word, prayer, serving and disciple making.
- Invest outside of group time. Pray for them, connect with them socially, check in when they’re unable to attend, and serve them when the need arises.
- Inspire multiplication. All groups have a life cycle, and leaders must develop expectations of what healthy growth looks like for the group. Ultimately, it means you will reproduce.
Discussion:
- Initial reactions to this topic? What jumped out at you?
- Who are the people God has put in your path (spheres of influence) and on your heart through prayer to invite into your small group? How will you invite them?
- What are some “jobs” you can create and give to others to make your small group great?
- Rate yourself. On a scale from 1-10, how much do you tend to dominate the conversation in a group setting? How will you make sure to involve others in the conversation?
- What are some ways you can encourage your group members to create and keep personal spiritual disciplines?
- How will you encourage connection outside of the group? What are some things you can do as a group to serve each other and in the community?
- How will you communicate to your group that the goal isn’t to stay together for years but rather to grow and multiply? What tends to happen to groups that become “holy huddles”?
- Is there a step you need to take based on today’s topic?
