Burnout appears in many different ways. It encompasses everything from physical exhaustion to deep cynicism to escape into sin. Now, you may be asking yourself why I’m addressing burnout on a blog about small groups and discipleship. Some of you are burning yourselves out, and it’s completely unnecessary. Here are some ways to beat burnout:
Start with Your Physical Health
Focus on your physical wellbeing before you focus on the emotional or spiritual part. This may seem counterintuitive. In fact some may attempt to pray away burnout as an attack of the enemy or ask for supernatural strength. God could do that, but consider how God dealt with Elijah after the showdown at Mount Carmel. Elijah slept and ate and slept and ate and repeated (1 Kings 19).
If you don’t feel good physically, you don’t feel good about anything. Your temper is shorter. Your work is twice as hard. Maybe your brain is in a fog. Now, I’m not going to give you a list of 40 things you need to do every morning to succeed, because to me just the notion of 40 more things to do dooms me to failure. In your own way, factor in these things:
Sleep. Get adequate rest. Most adults require 8-9 hours of sleep per night. I know that Elon Musk only needs 4 hours of sleep, but you aren’t Elon Musk. Put your electronics to bed an hour before your bedtime. Turn off the TV. Maybe read. Then sleep. Try to wake up without an alarm clock.
Eat. Everybody knows what’s healthy and not healthy to eat. If you need a guide, follow The Daniel Plan by Rick Warren, Dr. Daniel Amen, and Dr. Mark Hyman. Don’t do extreme diets. Eat your vegetables. Drink water. Lay off the bad stuff. As Dr. Daniel Amen says, your brain consumes 30% of all of the calories you take in. What you eat affects how you think!
Exercise. Do something physical every day. Combine exercise with something else you like to do. I walk 150 minutes per week. When I’m walking alone, I talk to God. When I’m walking with my wife, I invest in our marriage. Don’t put this off. Don’t buy a gym membership. Don’t buy a new outfit. Don’t put a new Peloton on your credit card. Open the front door of your house and take the first step. Find an exercise video on Youtube. Do something to move every day.
Get a Check Up. Don’t skip your annual physical. If you have a concern about your body, talk to your doctor. Don’t Google it. While a physical ailment can set you back, worrying that you have a health problem also adds to your stress.
Then Move to Your Emotional Health
After you’re getting adequate sleep, exercise, and nutrition, then move to your emotional health. Improving your emotional health doesn’t require a trip to the counselor’s office, but it could. Choose a couple of things from this list to focus on:
Have you laughed several times today?
How do you talk to yourself? Is it positive?
What amount of time this week did you spend living in the present?
How are you relaxing and recreating?
What is your level of cynicism? Cynicism is often repressed anger, which comes from fear.
What are you over-doing? Over-eating, over-screentiming, over-anything.
Have you forgiven the last three people who offended you?
How much is envy affecting you? Most people are depressed after using social media.
Who have you talked to about your feelings?
How can you delegate strategically? Find someone to share the load. Empower your people.
Finally, Focus on Your Spiritual Wellbeing
When people sense burnout, they immediately want to reduce their stress, which is good. But, in many ways stress is caused by your perspective. Perspective is based on spiritual things.
Make Your Requests of God.Philippians 4:6-7 is my power verse for beating burnout. (It might be my life verse).
Honor the Sabbath. God worked for six days in creation, then rested. You are not better than God. For pastors and church staff, Sunday is not your Sabbath. Designate a day to rest from your work. Spend time with your family and friends. Relax. If you can’t manage a full day, start with half of a Sabbath.
Manage Your Expectations. I would never accuse a pastor of laziness. That’s why I’m writing an article on burnout. While you want to fully give yourself to the cause of Christ, Jesus will build His church. While you might consider your effort as diligence and faithfulness, you have to be careful that it’s not really co-dependency. Do you need to be needed? If you do, then you have to ask yourself: “Who is this about?”
Make a Joyful Noise. Sing praise to God. You can sing in worship services. You can sing with Youtube videos. I keep an old hymnal handy. Singing praise will lift your mood and your perspective.
Repent. Confess your sin to God and turn from it. Don’t try to justify or excuse it. Get rid of it. “Confess your sins to one another that you might be healed” (James 5:16). If you could stop on your own, you would have stopped. Break the power of sin in your life, which is the secret. Tell somebody. Call somebody. Confess to an Uber driver. Break it today.
Practice the Presence of God. Remind yourself that God is always with you. Thank Him for every little thing you can be thankful for as you go through your day. Stop and ask for wisdom when you need it. God is with you.
Concluding Thoughts
I’ve heard people say, “I would rather burnout than rust out.” I don’t think either ending is good. I believe God intends for you to wear out gradually.
Start with your physical wellbeing: Sleep, eating, and exercise. Start today. Don’t make a big plan. Just get going.
Let’s face it — people are tired of social distancing, staying home, Zoom meetings, and church online. While some choose to gather in-person, COVID numbers tend to dictate against meeting together. Whether your people are being kept apart by mandate, by fear, or by caution, the mission remains the same – the church is called to go and make disciples.
Last year when the pandemic began, people were eager to try online small groups. But, in many churches when it came time to regathering groups online in Fall 2020, many groups chose to not meet and just wait it out, while others continued to meet online. But, let’s face it: online meetings just aren’t like in-person small group meetings.
Now you’re facing Online Groups Round 3 in January 2021. The reception to online groups (again) has met with a mixed reaction. Let’s talk about what’s not working, and then examine the bright spots that are working.
What is NOT Working with Online Groups:
Connecting with Strangers Online.
Even in the advent of online dating apps, people are less likely to join an online small group of strangers than to meet with them at their house. This seems counterintuitive to me. It seems like it would be easier to just open your laptop and join the group instead of driving across town, but it’s harder to get people to online groups.
2. Too Many Zoom Meetings.
If people are working from home, they are pulled into more online meetings than normal. While they may look at a computer all day and a TV all evening anyway, there is something about Zoom meetings that takes a toll. Maybe it’s the lack of chemistry. Maybe it’s the self-consciousness of looking at yourself all day. As Nona Jones says, “Zoom meetings are just the same thing over and over.” Or, maybe Zoom Fatigue is just the replacement for “I don’t have time for a small group.”
3. Trying to Replicate In-person Meetings Online.
This is definitely not working. You can’t have the same experience in a Zoom group that you have when the group meets in-person. It just doesn’t happen. There are no side conversations. There’s no body language or nuance. There are no brownies. It’s not the same!
4. Recruiting New Leaders for Online Groups.
Recruiting new leaders is tough anyway, but recruiting new leaders for groups for online groups is a whole other level of hard. Things have moved beyond “push play and pour a cup of coffee.” On top of that people’s lives have been turned upside down with any semblance of “normal” in the very distant future. Taking responsibility for a group feels like about the last thing they need right now.
5. Divisions Between Groups: Online and In-person.
If you haven’t noticed there is a strong difference of opinion between people in the U.S. these days. That rift carries down the middle of small groups. While some groups are ready to forget COVID and just get back together, others are erring on the side of caution and waiting for conditions to improve. Even when groups do meet in-person, there’s still a divide between the maskites and anti-maskites.
These are the struggles I’m hearing from the small group pastors and directors I talk to every day. (If you would like a free coaching call, click here). People are sick of taking precautions. People are tired of staying apart. But, people are unsure about returning to normal as much as they would love to.
What is Working Right Now
In all of this disruption, I have uncovered some bright spots with online small groups. Here are some things that are working.
Established Groups are Working It Out.
Groups are revisiting their group agreements and deciding what will work for everybody. If they are truly coming to an impasse, then groups are choosing to spin off part of the group into a new group. If groups can’t agree to meet 100% in-person or 100% online, they are dividing into separate groups: one in-person and one online. For some of these groups, this is a temporary fix until conditions change. For others, this is a permanent decision. When else have you heard groups volunteering to do that?
2. Offering Care and Conversation Digitally.
Churches have done an amazing job pushing out digital content. People are practically drowning in content. (Pastors, write a book already!) But, in addition to content people need care and conversation. They are getting a ton of information from all sides. They really need a place to talk about it. They need a chance to unpack the sermon. This could be a group. This could be a text exchange. People are on their smartphones for an alarming number of hours every day. Why not use that time and technology to encourage one another daily?
3. Short-term Groups with Different Formats.
As mentioned before, online groups are not the same as in-person groups, so make them intentionally different. Call them by a different name, so people know these aren’t your typical small groups or life groups. Designate a specific period of time for groups to meet, for instance between Super Bowl Sunday and Easter or between Easter and Memorial Day. These new groups are not intended to go on forever. Change the format. Shorten the meeting times. Use different online platforms – there’s more to online groups than Zoom.
4. Gathering Groups of Friends.
If your people are reluctant to join a stranger’s Zoom group, then encourage them to start their own with people they already know. Gathering groups of friends has long been a principle of the Exponential Groups strategy. After all, “Everybody is already in a small group” (Exponential Groups: Unleashing Your Church’s Potential, Hendrickson 2017, page 1).
5. Groups Championed by the Senior Pastor.
Your people will follow where your senior pastor leads. Things have changed for senior pastors in the last year. Prior to COVID, the common metrics for success were nickels and noses. There aren’t nearly as many of those nowadays. How does a church measure its effectiveness? The big word right now is engagement, but what does that mean?
Pastors can quickly get into the vanity metrics of one second views and ten second views of online services. Churches with a pre-COVID attendance of 100 now are online gigachurches with 10,000 views. Let’s keep it real.
Engagement means connection. What do you offer your online congregation? What next steps are in place? I spent many Sundays in 2020 watching Saddleback Church’s service. (We were members there once). At the end of every service, Pastor Rick Warren talked about the same three things: (1) starting a relationship with Jesus, (2) joining a small group, and (3) giving. Week after week during 30+ weeks of the book of James, every service ended exactly the same. At one point, Saddleback had started over 3,000 new online small groups. Giving has held steady. (They’ve retained 400 staff members). People are coming to Christ.
You are not quite out of the woods. The beginning of 2021 feels like more of 2020, doesn’t it? How are you going to navigate groups for the next six months? It’s too much time to just wait it out. You can’t afford to lose any more opportunities to make disciples. How can you serve your people when you can’t meet with them? What sounds like it might work for you?
P.S. I got quite a reaction to my video last week. Some of you have experienced “deep shift!” Thanks for letting me know.
What are your church’s priorities? For many churches big priorities point to big events – weekend worship services, conferences, and outreach events. While all of these things have their place, do they deserve all of the attention they get? Imagine if small groups and disciple-making were front and center for once instead of lingering on the backburner somewhere.
Jesus commanded us to “go and make disciples.” Disciples aren’t made overnight. Discipleship is not a process or a program. Making disciples requires a person. After all, disciples make disciples. If disciples could be mass produced then services and seminars would be adequate to do the job. Clearly, they don’t.
What if everything in your church revolved around small groups instead? When our church in California reached a place where 125% of our weekly worship attendance was connected into groups, priorities shifted for our staff. As far as discipleship went, the tail was no longer wagging the dog.
How can small groups rise to the top? First, you don’t have to tear everything else down to raise the value to groups and disciple-making. This is not a matter of demolishing a church’s ministry to rebuild it. No one can afford to do that. This is more the scenario of re-engineering the airplane while it’s flying. It requires more nuance. By recognizing the opportunities and creating the right alliances, small groups could dominate your church in 2020.
Partner with Your Senior Pastor.
Why are the senior pastors so invested in the weekend service? First, pastors put their hearts and souls into creating a sermon. If you’ve preached, you know that time and energy it takes. One pastor said that it was like having a term paper due every week.
Another reason pastors are invested in worship services is because a large portion of the church attend. It’s a good feeling to speak to a packed house. Over the years, I’ve spoken to as few as 11 people and as many as 5,000 in a single day. The bigger, the better, right?
Lastly, preaching a sermon produces immediate results. Pastors tell jokes, and they get a laugh. They hit a point hard, and they get a response. Some will shout, “Amen!” Others might become very quiet. Then, in many churches at the end of the service there is a response at the altar. While approval is not the goal, a response is certainly reassuring.
While there are other reasons for pastors to devote themselves to worship services, think about these three things: (1) pouring their hearts and souls into teaching, (2) reaching many people, and (3) receiving a response. Small groups can do this too and even at a larger scale. By putting the pastors teaching on video, an audience larger than the weekend service will be reached. All of the hard work of sermon prep doesn’t end up in a file folder, it lives on in living rooms and breakrooms and board rooms around town.
Getting the response is up to the small group pastor. Collect stories of what God is doing in groups. Let the pastor know the impact the video teaching in groups is making. If senior pastors could reach larger audiences every week wouldn’t they be interested. Your small groups will connect your congregation, but will also include many people from the community who have never darkened the door of your church. In fact, according to Rick Warren, there is a trend of people coming to a small group first, then attending a weekend service with their groups. By partnering with senior pastors, their goals will be reach and so will yours.
Create a Next Step for Every Church Event.
Do marriage conferences improve marriages? They could. They also might accelerate conflict. Do sermons make disciples. I’ve already answered that here. Do men’s retreat make better men? They could, but as Randy Phillips, the former president of Promise Keepers says, “The failure of Promise Keepers was not offering a next step after the conferences.” Essentially Promise Keepers became promise breakers. While services and events are not the be-all end-all of life change, they can be a start. They can inspire commitment, but it’s not over and done. As Marcus Buckingham said, “The problem with people is they are just never done.”
Change is difficult. People fall into patterns of behavior that they’ve learned over the years. Marriages fall into patterns. Work relationships fall into patterns. We commonly refer to this as getting into a rut. It’s hard to get out. Change is difficult.
We know how to lose weight, but we don’t. We know how to get out of debt, but we’re still in debt. The list could go on, but we will stick with my problems for now. When I lose weight, it requires focused effort. I need accountability. I have to set a goal and make steps toward that goal. I could listen to someone talk about weight loss and be inspired. I could even watch exercise videos and still not lose a pound. Now before this gets silly, this is also true for every other change a person is trying to make.
Every change starts with a commitment. A conference, a retreat, or a worship service is a great place to make a commitment. But, commitments are forgotten without a next step and others to support you. If your church hosts a marriage conference, what’s the next step? Does the speaker have a book or curriculum? If not, what resources are available? Start groups during the conference. If your church has a men’s retreat, use the opportunity to form groups at the retreat before the guys come home. Have the study and the day and time of the first meeting in place before they resume their regular schedule. And, for the sermon, help your members take their weekend into their week by producing a sermon discussion guide or an alignment series.
Events can start something, but they cannot create lasting change. Small groups can complement events and give people what they need to achieve the growth they desire. Every event in your church should be a launching pad for small groups.
Make “Small Groups” the Answer to Every Problem.
What is your senior pastor’s biggest concern for your church?
More Leaders? Small Groups are a leadership development engine.
Better Attendance? People in groups are more committed than people who are not in groups.
More Serving? People in groups serve more than people who aren’t in groups.
Better Giving? People in groups, on average, give 4% more of their income than people not in groups.
More Growth? People in groups are more focused on growth than people not in groups.
Better Outreach? People in groups reach others for Christ more often than people not in groups.
Your pastor’s major concerns are all addressed in small groups. These thoughts are not merely anecdotal. Look at the research by Ed Stetzer and Eric Geiger in Transformational Groups and Princeton professor Robert Wuthnow in Sharing the Journey. Research shows that people in groups are the most motivated and most active members of the church. (For a synopsis of this research: The Senior Pastors Guide to Groups). If you want more of “all of the above,” you need to connect more people into groups.
So, Why Aren’t Senior Pastors the Most Excited About Groups?
They may not know the value of groups. The senior pastor role today is more like a CEO. There’s a lot on your pastor’s plate. That’s why you were hired to take care of groups and discipleship. Yet unless you engage your senior pastor, discipleship will continue to linger in obscurity in your church. Help your pastor see the benefits of groups. Zig Ziglar once said, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.” Find every possible way to align groups with where your pastor is headed or what concerns your pastor the most.
2. Most seminarians don’t learn about groups. I earned a Master of Divinity in Christian Education and did not hear one lecture on small groups. If pastors’ degrees are in pastoral ministry, biblical studies, counseling, or theology, they didn’t learn about small groups either. You have to educate your pastor about small groups and the key role they should play in the church. Point to outstanding models of churches with groups like North Point Ministries, Saddleback Church, North Coast Church, and many others. Start a staff small group. Tell the stories of what God is doing in your groups.
3. Senior pastors may be resistant to groups because their small group pastors have become adversarial. One small group pastor complained to me, “I just can’t get my pastor on board with small groups.” I told him that he didn’t need to get his pastor on board. It was the pastor’s boat! The small group pastor needed to get on board with where the senior pastor was headed and include groups with it. The senior pastor has the responsibility to hear from God and give direction to the church. Follow that direction and add groups to the strategy.
No one should feel more strongly about small groups in your church than you. You should be the most passionate person when it comes to groups. Don’t allow your passion to spill over into anger. But, have small groups on the brain! The answer to every question your senior pastor or your team asks should be, “Small Groups.” As you partner with your senior pastor and others, you can dominate with groups in 2020.
Church-wide campaigns are great sprints toward connecting a lot of people in a hurry. But, disciple-making is a marathon, not a sprint. The ultimate goal of groups is to make disciples. Disciples are not the end result of a process. Disciples are crafted. Eventually, the church will want video-based-curriculum-dependent newbies to be able to rightly divide the Word of Truth and facilitate a discussion leading toward on-going life change. You can’t grow disciples in fits and starts. As Eugene Peterson once titled a book, it’s A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.
Campaigns can help you or hurt you. Just like hot sauce,
you’ve got to know how much to use and when. Otherwise, you’ll numb your taste
buds for campaigns. Is it time to start a church-wide campaign? Or, is it time
to stop?
In Jesus’ work with His disciples, there are three distinct phases: “Come and Follow” (Matthew 4:19), “Come and Die” (Luke 9:23), and “Go and Make” (Matthew 28:18-20). While some churches attempt to start “serious” discipleship groups with “come and die,” it’s much easier to start groups with “come and follow,” and then lead them into maturity to reach “come and die.”
The purpose of the “Come and follow” stage is connection. Whether the church is trying to connect their worship attendance, the neighborhood, or both, this connection purpose can largely be achieved by offering a felt needs topic with an alignment series, as described in Exponential Groups. This low commitment, short-term approach allows potential leaders and their groups to test drive a group and begin the habit of meeting together. While the primary purpose is connection, other purposes including leadership development and spiritual growth can certainly take place at the “Come and follow” stage.
The danger in connection groups is in seeing them as an end in themselves. They should be viewed as the starting point for discipleship which will increase the maturity of the group members and group leaders. Some pastors embrace the notion that things must be kept easy and low commitment in order to produce maximum results. After working with churches in their alignments series for nearly 20 years now, the reality is the low commitment and low requirement approach eventually produces low maturity. What’s worse is that as the church continues into a minority Christian culture, the lack of challenge is off-putting to those who seek depth and genuine relationship with God and others. In the 21st century, people are looking for answers. They desire a cause to live for. Once they are engaged in groups, they need more. They need the challenge to “Come and Die.”
The purpose of the “Come and Die” phase is growth and spiritual maturity. Please don’t read those words as “deeper” teaching and more Bible facts. While the intellect is important (after all God gave humans a book and a brain), there is so much more to discipling the whole person. This is more than an academic exercise. A well-rounded approach to discipleship must take into consideration every aspect of a person’s life and being – physical, emotional, relational, financial, intellectual, and other areas. This topic is too large to explore here. There is a future book in the works.
The mission of the church in making disciples is to baptize them and teach them to obey what Jesus commanded (Matthew 28:18-20). Obedience and surrender are best evidenced in a person’s attitude and actions. Rather than using all of the clichés about “walking your talk” and so forth, the point is the end product of discipleship is someone who resembles Jesus Christ. They have died to themselves and their ways of dealing with things and replaced their ways with those of Jesus. The self is sacrificed to produce genuine transformation.
The church can turn up the temperature on discipleship in
their groups through the curriculum and leadership training offered. Again,
this is not an invitation to teach groups to parse Greek verbs. Curriculum
should be a balance of personal time with God, a group discussion of the Bible,
assignments to turn words into action, and accountability to check progress.
Curriculum is not just a course of study, but an action plan for integrating the teaching of the Bible into daily life. This is not merely an ascent to a belief statement, but how believers live and breathe in their daily lives. Study formats like Rooted, The Neighboring Life by Rick Rusaw and Brian Mavis, Emotionally-Healthy Discipleship by Pete Scazzero, D-Lifeby Dr. Bill Wilks and Dr. John Herring, or D-Groups by Robby Gallaty help to turn up the temperature of discipleship. Even a format like the Discovery Bible Study Method which uses the same nine questions for every passage of Scripture helps group members to apply God’s Word and live it out. The expectation here is the power of God resident in every believer (Ephesians 1:18-20) accompanied by studying the Bible and interacting with other believers will produce transformed lives.
A few years ago, I was working with a small group director
who had moved from another country to the United States. In his country of
origin, there was a high expectation of believers learning, doing, and sharing
what they’ve learned from the very beginning of their relationship with God. He
was a little beside himself when he came to the U.S. and discovered many
believers learned biblical truth without much intention of practicing what they
learned or sharing it with others. When he challenged people in his church to
high commitment approaches to discipleship, he found resistance. I asked him if
he had ever heard the analogy of the frog and the kettle. He had not.
I explained this common story about placing frogs in hot water caused them to jump out. Yet, by placing frogs in cold water, then gradually turning up the temperature, the frogs remained in the hot water because the change was gradual. I told him he was putting his disciples in hot water. That’s why they were resisting. (If you’re shaking your head at this point about the reverse implications of this analogy, I apologize. I’ll switch gears before this turns into martyrdom, which is no joking matter).
For average American church members, the move from the worship service to a group is a pretty big step. If the benefit of a group is unproven, they need an opportunity to try out this environment in a short-term, low commitment way. An alignment series or church-wide campaign fits the bill. If they’ve had a positive experience, then the group may agree to continue into a follow up series. Once these two studies have been completed, then it’s more likely that the group will continue on.
Group leaders are given a leadership pathway to develop as disciples and as group leaders. Group members should also be given a pathway. This could be based on the results of the group’s health assessment. The right curriculum can also lead the group into new experiences and even into taking risks as a group. These risks could include things like the three-hour prayer experience in Rooted, the neighborhood map in The Neighboring Life, or the genogram in Emotionally-Healthy Spirituality. The goal of these exercises is to learn to trust God in deeper ways, to hear God, and to learn about oneself.
Curriculum for the sake of curriculum is worthless. Checking off a list of studies doesn’t guarantee growth. But, using curriculum as a vehicle to produce growth and lasting change is worthwhile. What is your curriculum producing? What are your groups producing? Using an assessment to evaluate the progress your people, your groups, and your church is making.
The third phase from Scripture is “Go and Make.” While these phases don’t need to occur in sequential order, the goal is to make disciples who make disciples. After all, that’s how a church knows it’s making disciples. If the people in the church are not making disciples, then they are not disciples. The appropriate term for them would be “the crowd.” In the Gospels, Jesus spent 73 percent of His time with His disciples. He didn’t devote vast amounts of time to serving the crowd. Boy, has the modern American church turned that on its head.
“Go and Make” implies that church members are thinking about others more than about themselves and their own needs. They are become self-feeders. The focus is on servant leadership at various levels. While most people in the church will not have the title of leader, they do have influence over people around them. The goal is to multiply their lives and their abilities. Jesus spent three and a half years investing in 12 disciples, who after His departure, developed others and took the message of the Gospel throughout their known world, establishing churches, and making disciples. If you’re a Christian reading this, it’s because of these 12 who Jesus poured His Life into. Who are your 12?
This is the place where pastors equip the church to do the
work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:11-12). In the last 30 years, the church has
catered to people in order to serve a Christian consumer culture. A growing gap
has emerged between staff and volunteers, or clergy and laity, as it was once
known. People are asked to volunteer to serve the church and the efforts of the
church staff. But, the volunteers are the church!
Members should be challenged to pursue and develop their gifts. Resources like Networkby Bruce Bugbee and Leadershift by Don Cousins and Bruce Bugbee create the philosophical foundation for gifts-based ministry that is truly satisfying to church members and effective in reaching the neighborhood. After all, ministry is not something pastors do to people. Ministry is the purpose of the church body, not the leaders of the institution. People need to serve in meaningful ways in order to grow spiritually. Meaningless volunteer roles cannot meet this purpose.
Since a church of any size cannot assess and recognize the gifts of every church member, groups play an essential role in helping people discover, develop, and use their gifts. This is more than another assessment. There is an expectation for people to take responsibility for understanding and implementing their gifts to fulfill the mission of the church. There is also a responsibility for the church to release, not just ministry responsibilities, but also the authority to carry them out.
One more step lies beyond identifying and using gifts – members developing other members. Every person in every role in the church, including members, pastors, and church staff, must multiply what they are doing in the lives of others. This is one of the primary purposes of groups – leadership development. The church must embrace Hero-making as articulated by Dave Ferguson and Dr. Warren Bird. The pastor is not the hero in the church. The staff are not the heroes. The members are not the heroes. But, they are all called to make heroes. They are all called to invest in others and help them flourish in ministry. They are called to work themselves out of a job, so a new ministry, a new group, or a new church can be launched to serve others and repeat the process.
These three phases may not be the only phases. They don’t
necessarily need to be taken in exact order (or else some churches will camp on
phase two until Jesus returns and never get to phase three). The point is
everyone must be challenged to take a next step at every phase. Those only
attending worship must be challenged to join a group. Everyone in a group must
be challenged to take what they learn to heart and mature in their faith as
evidenced by their actions and attitudes. Those who are maturing must reach out
to their neighborhoods and share their hope. Those who are serving must develop
others to serve.
Attractional services and advertising built some great churches over the last 30 years. The next 30 years will be much different than the last 30 years. This statement is not meant to discount what happened over the last 30 years, but it’s time to gear up for what is next. In working with churches across North America, I’ve visited many formerly great churches. At one point in time, the church was the shining beacon in the community. Maybe they were the first church to offer contemporary worship music and relevant messages. People came in droves, until every other church in town followed the model. Now those churches are dwindling. They are formerly great.
There is a shift that must take place in order to engage people in the 21st century. These concluding thoughts reveal part of the thinking needed for the church to flourish in an increasingly minority Christian culture.
Last year I published a book that I literally started writing 25 years ago, Leading Healthy Groups: A Guide for Small Group Leaders. While I had led various groups prior to then, in 1994 our church launched groups for the very first time. Having gleaned from Dale Galloway, Rick Warren, Pat Sakora, Jeffrey Arnold and his Big Book of Small Groups and a few others, when it came to leading leaders, there were a lot of things to figure out. We could only prepare our leaders so far before we began to discourage them or scare them. The rest of their training came as they needed it.
Starting back then, I began collecting my leaders’ questions
as well as the answers I gave them. This was the start of the book. As our
groups multiplied, so did the questions. I added all of those to the file.
Then, when I served a larger church, we would survey our 400 or so group
leaders to see what problems they were facing or what issues were coming up in
their groups. I wrote a weekly blog with answers to the relevant questions for
all of our leaders. This was the start of allenwhite.org.
Then, last year after compiling all of these questions and answers, I wrote a lot of new content from your questions and others I have met along the way. The end result was Leading Healthy Groups: A Guide for Small Group Leaders.
Churches are using this book to:
Train their coaches by giving them answers to
their leaders’ potential questions.
Create streaming video training to send out to
their group leaders.
Put the book directly in the hands of their
leaders so they have answers as their questions arise.
I’m not the first person to write a book for small group
leaders. In fact, originally, I didn’t even intend to write a book. But, as my
leaders asked questions, I saved the answers. Now, the answers are available to
you and your leaders.
