These are some of the ques­tions that I am most often asked by our small group lead­ers.  There are a lot of dif­fer­ent ways to answer these ques­tions but this is the way that I answer them to frame the expec­ta­tions here at Life­Point.  While we def­i­nitely have a plan and process in place, there are always spe­cial cir­cum­stances that arise in any orga­ni­za­tion so I like to use the idea of Rigid Flex­i­bil­ity in our group struc­ture.  In other words, there is a plan in place and we are all mov­ing for­ward accord­ing to that plan but every plan needs some room to flex a lit­tle to keep it from col­laps­ing (like a tall build­ing in the wind or the expan­sion joints on a bridge).  My point is that this is how 95% of our groups func­tion but there are some­times excep­tions to the rules.

Again I real­ize that this is not the only way or maybe the best way for your church to func­tion but this is how we func­tion in our group struc­ture and some of the rea­sons why.

Where should groups meet? At Life­Point, we meet in homes and we use a home rota­tion model where each group mem­ber takes 1–2 times a term and hosts the group for the evening.  We use this model for a num­ber of rea­sons both spir­i­tual and prac­ti­cal.  From a spir­i­tual per­spec­tive: We feel like it’s an accu­rate reflec­tion of what we see in Acts 2, we feel like it’s the best way to have a spir­i­tual influ­ence in the com­mu­nity and we feel like our non-Christian friends are most likely to attend when the group is in our home.  From a prac­ti­cal per­spec­tive: we don’t have money or space to meet at the church and we already own 200–300 homes where the mort­gage, util­ity bills and insur­ance are paid (hey just being real here, it’s cheaper), we feel like home rota­tion is less of a bur­den on one fam­ily than host home strat­egy (although we do have a few host homes so I’m not totally opposed — rigid flex­i­bil­ity) and it’s some­what about con­ve­nience since our church draws from all over the city, it’s eas­ier for peo­ple to meet in their homes in their area of the town.

When should groups meet? What­ever time works best for the group other than church times.  It could be 6am for shift work­ers, mid-morning or evenings.  Most of our groups meet in the evenings and my expe­ri­ence is that Tues­day and Wednes­day are ideal while Mon­day and Thurs­day are close seconds.

What about 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.

In sum­mary here are some options as I see them:

WildLife — group own­er­ship – we invest in kids spir­i­tu­ally, we men­tor the next gen­er­a­tion, we model group life for the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers.  It doesn’t have to be spir­i­tual the entire time, it can be 20 min­utes of a les­son, play the rest of time, report time to par­ents at the end of the night.

Paid Child­care or Wildlife with a paid sit­ter — I know a lot of churches where this works but I have had peo­ple tell me that they did not attend a group at their pre­vi­ous church because they could not afford to pay for child­care so some­thing to consider.

Child­care at church — Again I know churches who use this model and it works for them but I have had peo­ple tell me that it was too incon­ve­nient for them to drive to the church, back their neigh­bor­hood for group and back to the church on a school night. They said it took too much time.  Again just some­thing to con­sider if you are think­ing about this model.

Teenage or col­lege age vol­un­teer to help.  Some of our larger groups have used teenagers to help facil­i­tate WildLife in their groups.  I usu­ally ask them to still do the adult rota­tion but include the teen as an extra set of hands.  These groups usu­ally pay for the student’s camp or mis­sion trip as a thank you for an extended period of ser­vice.  It’s a pretty good alter­na­tive to paid child­care if you can find a teenager or col­lege stu­dent who is will­ing to barter their services.

One other option is no child­care but this will limit people’s involvement.

We expect all of our groups to do WildLife – but again Rigid Flex­i­bil­ity – groups with more seniors or with older kids don’t usu­ally offer it but some own it and say we will if kids show up.

What will we study? Most terms I let our lead­ers choose their own study because I feel like it gives the group own­er­ship which increases buy in and I trust that our lead­ers know what their group needs more than I do.  I do reserve the right to approve the study in order to main­tain doc­tri­nal integrity.  I usu­ally give them a list of 4–5 sug­ges­tions in case they don’t have a feel for what direc­tion that they should go in.  Here are the 3 ways we han­dle stud­ies from term to term.

Group chooses their own study (I try to give them 4–5 Quick Pick ideas each term)

Group chooses from 3–4 stud­ies on the same theme – some­times our staff will choose a theme (for exam­ple: Spir­i­tual Dis­ci­plines) and I will give them 3–4 options in that theme to choose from.

Every 18–24 months we like for our groups to all do the same study, usu­ally coin­cid­ing with a ser­mon series.

Who decides what group peo­ple will go to? We allow peo­ple to choose their own group based on rela­tion­ship, night of the week or topic of inter­est.  We do try to keep our groups loosely geo­graph­i­cal so that peo­ple aren’t dri­ving all over the city and to help with group mul­ti­pli­ca­tion when that time comes.  I always tell new peo­ple to try as many groups as they want before mak­ing a final deci­sion since all of our groups are all a lit­tle dif­fer­ent but once they find one that is a fit, I ask them to stick there so that they can con­nect in com­mu­nity.  As a side note, we do not shuf­fle our groups each term, the group mem­bers stay together, they just take a few weeks break and usu­ally pick up 1–2 new peo­ple dur­ing the break for the next term.  We do allow peo­ple to make shifts if their work sched­ule changes, etc.