So you’re think­ing about launch­ing or relaunch­ing groups in your church? There are sev­eral things that you can do in the pre-launch phase to make your launch go much more smoothly.

Decide what your groups are and are not going to look like. There are a lot of great ways to do groups out there but you can’t do them all and you surely can’t do them all well.  Choos­ing 4–5 Core val­ues for your groups to focus on will help to define your groups, frame your struc­ture and keep you on track.  It’s also impor­tant to remem­ber that almost every­one in your church has some sort of group expe­ri­ence (some good, some bad) so it’s impor­tant that you com­mu­ni­cate and clar­ify what “your groups” will and will not be about.

Pilot your group con­cept with key lead­ers. Launch a group with the peo­ple that you think will be your first group of lead­ers and model group life with them.  I would rec­om­mend 8–12 weeks min­i­mum so that you have time to train, shape your group DNA and com­mu­ni­cate the vision for how you want them to lead.  I think you will dis­cover that in this pilot group your lead­ers will really catch the vision as they are able to live it out with you.  This is also a great time to tweak your struc­ture before you roll it out en masse to your church.

If you serve with a staff team, do your best to include them in this pilot group.  Let them expe­ri­ence it first hand so that you are all liv­ing out of the same vision and pas­sion for group life.  For more details on form­ing a pilot group click here.

In a relaunch, change minds and hearts before you change struc­ture. If you are relaunch­ing or chang­ing group struc­tures in an exist­ing church, it is best to com­mu­ni­cate val­ues and vision before you com­mu­ni­cate struc­ture change.  As a rule, most peo­ple dis­like change but will embrace it if they under­stand the need.  It’s our job to show them why change is nec­es­sary and how the new struc­ture will bet­ter accom­plish the vision that we feel like God has given us as a church fam­ily.  If you change struc­ture pre­ma­turely you are much more likely to fight unnec­es­sary bat­tles and lose peo­ple along the way.

Train your lead­ers well. Your small group lead­ers don’t nec­es­sar­ily need sem­i­nary train­ing but it is impor­tant to clearly let them know what is expected and equip them for how to best accom­plish those expec­ta­tions.  At Life­Point, we require every leader to go through a 90 minute ori­en­ta­tion class where we share our vision for groups and expec­ta­tions for them as lead­ers as well as equip­ping them with the basics for how to lead.  If you would like to see what we use for our New Leader Ori­en­ta­tion you can see it here.  Feel free to change it and use it in your church but please don’t pub­lish it externally.

What about the kids? This is a ques­tion that you have to answer if groups are going to be suc­cess­ful in your church.  There are a lot of dif­fer­ent ways to han­dle this but at Life­Point it is a huge value for us that fam­i­lies do group life together so we do every­thing that we can to incor­po­rate kids into our small groups.  In our groups, fam­i­lies attend together but when it’s time for the adult’s Bible study por­tion of the meet­ing, the kids go into another room of the house for some­thing that we call WildLife.  Wildlife is a time of age appro­pri­ate Bible sto­ries, mem­ory verses, crafts, etc.  It is a lot like VBS.  We pro­vide a les­son on our web­site that con­nects to what the kids are learn­ing on Sun­day and our lead­ers can down­load the les­son before each meet­ing.  We also pro­vide a WildLife Kit for each group that has a gen­eral sup­ply of resources and sup­plies that they will need to lead.  Each adult mem­ber of the group takes 1–2 turns each term lead­ing WildLife on a rotat­ing basis.  At the end of the night, the kids come back into the room and share what they learned for that evening.  It’s not a per­fect sys­tem but we feel like it allows us to invest in our kids while at the same time pro­vid­ing an option for our fam­i­lies that is free and convenient.