THE PILOT

In a pilot group, the Pas­tor & lead­er­ship team meet weekly together in a small group with poten­tial small group lead­ers and/or the entire core, depend­ing on size of your pre-launch core group.

As a rule the group should meet 1.5–2 hours per week.

This is where the pastor/leadership team com­mu­ni­cates vision, pas­sion, and val­ues.  From the very begin­ning small group and small group com­mu­nity are an intri­cate part of the church.

From the first meet­ing, com­mu­ni­cate that “We will all even­tu­ally lead and be respon­si­ble for rais­ing up new lead­ers.  We are the point of the spear, how our lead­er­ship and min­istry goes, deter­mines how the min­istry of the church goes.”

Com­mu­ni­cate, incor­po­rate, and del­e­gate respon­si­bil­ity for core val­ues within the group con­text.  For Life­Point Church the core val­ues are:  Global Respon­si­bil­ity (mis­sions & ser­vant evan­ge­lism), Authen­tic Com­mu­nity (tak­ing care of one another), Spir­i­tual Inti­macy (my per­sonal rela­tion­ship with God), Bib­li­cal Author­ity, Per­sonal Min­istry (every­one serves some­where).  At least one mem­ber of your group should cham­pion one of the core val­ues (what­ever they look like for you) and it is his or her respon­si­bil­ity to make sure that those val­ues are a very real part of that group.  They are the facil­i­ta­tor of mak­ing sure that value hap­pens in group life.

As the need arises, mul­ti­ply lead­ers out to start their own groups that incor­po­rate members/attenders who are not involved in small groups.

As a pas­tor, stay in touch with your lead­ers through lunches, emails, phone calls and/or weekly meetings.

Have them begin to raise up and train interns and appren­tices in their groups from the very first week.

At times, you might want to take all of your lead­ers, interns, and appren­tices away for con­cen­trated times of prayer, train­ing, and com­mu­nity build­ing in a retreat set­ting.  It is amaz­ing what hap­pens when your team spends a cou­ple of days together.