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They go by many different names, and I've participated in or led all the variations. Whether it's a home group, growth group, connection group, or another title, they all have one thing in common: leadership. Good leadership results in healthy and high-impact groups. An absence of well-prepared group leadership creates the opposite.
For groups that become fruitful in connecting and helping people grow, effective small group leadership training covers the essentials and then takes some important steps beyond the basics.
Does your small group leadership training cover the essentials?
When you're putting together or looking to improve your small group leadership preparation, you've got to ensure that the core skills are being developed in the leaders and that those skills are passed on as they apprentice.
1. Leader Identity: Facilitator instead of Teacher
No matter where you look, churches are looking for ways to foster community discussions led by facilitators rather than traditional teaching roles. Whether that fits your church focus or not, this is about training leaders who know how to ask good questions and help people engage with the Truth and each other. The core skill is the ability to be naturally curious and ask questions that foster discussion. The underlying belief is that fellowship has real transformative value, and the interaction that comes from wrestling together with issues, the truth, and its application can offer more than what one volunteer could in a traditional one-way monologue.
2. Discussion Facilitation Skills
The core set of small group leadership skills revolves around discussion management. These skills include the ability to ask open-ended questions, foster discussion when things go silent, redirecting the inevitable rabbit train, and helping more introverted participants get a word into the conversation..
3. Discipleship as the Core Purpose
Following the impact of COVID i which church attendance failed to bounce back, many leaders realized that people who failed to return had not been discipled. The shift to a stronger discipleship focus (instead of primarily a social club), begins with the way the group starts and the focus they agree to pursue. This focus also leads to a greater level of commitment and accountability, i.e. "if you don't show up I'll check in on you."
4. Building Authentic Community
A core human need is belonging. Knowing and being known is one of the primary benefits of small group participation and a key role for leaders. Training in this area focuses on practicing uncommon hospitality (the experience people have in the group), leading by being open and transparent, and learning to naturally ask questions to get to know people and help them know each other.
5. Multiplying the group
Creating self-replicating groups is what we hope to see with every healthy group. The expectations for this often revolve around the small group cycle and creating an effective apprentice approach. If this is working well, then every time you start a new cycle of groups, you have new leaders ready.
Groups multiply the health they experience.
6. Handling Difficult Group Dynamics
The common experience and often dreaded moment for small group leaders is dealing with conflict and EGR (extra grace required) personalities. Since conflict is a normal part of group formation, creating a healthy expectation and skills for addressing these issues can move the moment of conflict from apprehension to expectation. Conflict can become an opportunity for growth. If you follow some of the thinking around this presented by Allan Hirsch, then risk environments become a critical part of the path to strongly bonded communities. Advanced skill development and training help these challenges become growth moments, rather than discouragement for small group leaders.
7. The Leader's Spiritual Health
Spiritually healthy leaders, those who have personal disciplines of fellowship, prayer and accountability, foster the same kind of health in the groups they lead. One of the resources used by Founder's Table in groups provides a snapshot of spiritual health, which can provide guidance to pastoral leadership in addressing and building spiritual health holistically among leaders and groups..
8. Group Commitments & Structure
Every group is chartered with a set of shared understandings. These social agreements set the stage for the routines that the group shares and commits to. This structure makes for stronger participation and a sense of safety for those who are new.
9. Raising Up the Next Leader
Early identification of potential new leaders and intentional delegation create small group leadership where the development of the next leader becomes the norm. The power of intentional apprenticeship creates a rhythm of growth both for leaders and group members who understand that their group is an organic and dynamic gathering where their participation is welcome, and that being in a group is something everyone can expect to continue.
Beyond the Basics
At the Founder's Table Network, we're invested in helping foster small groups and training leaders that step beyond the basics to accelerate leadership and become a welcoming place for groups of people that are often alienated from church life.
Uniquely graced to lead
Even with the most effective training, small group leaders don't lead in uniform ways. They are all individually gifted or graced with unique perspectives and voices. Helping leaders to understand their own gifts and to learn to listen for the gifts of others leads to the development of leaders who create greater impact and group health.
This diverse gifting can lead to greater unity. That's the essence of Paul's teaching in Ephesians 4. But the benefit of individual gifts doesn't become evident until they gain insight into how they are uniquely wired.
Using the framework found in Ephesians 4, Founder's Table provides for leadership training for small group facilitators that allows them be more effective leaders. That's especially important when they are leading groups of entrepreneurs and business owners for two important reasons:
1) Entrepreneurs are broadly under-discipled and unengaged in the local church. Not only do they describe a sense of alienation, but their unique gifts don't always fit the kind of volunteer options in the average church. This leaves them on the outside of the discipleship loop.
2) The way that many entrepreneurs are gifted can create a sense of tension with the pastoral and teaching-oriented model of most churches. They're wired for action, networking, and expansion, while much of the church operates in a high-safety/community mode. They require leadership that sees them through a gifts-lens.
Reaching beyond the ordinary
It's a big surprise when church leaders start to look around at the growing number of entrepreneurs and the number of them that are GenZ and Millennials. This growing number represents in many ways an unreached people group. But they are a group with tremendous potential for extending the mission of the church.
If your church would like a count of the microenterprises around you, reach out, and we'll provide a specific number to give you a sense of the potential impact.
Strong small group leadership is a key for reaching the growing number of entrepreneurs with groups that have the potential to create real discipleship and growth.
