Disciplemaking Groups
“None of us will ever forget this man who was totally committed to putting God first, a man whose humble life combined muscular Christianity with radiant godliness.” That’s how David J. Michell described Eric Liddell, the missionary to China whose life was dramatized in the award-winning movie “Chariots of Fire.” Liddell died in a Japanese prison camp in 1945, but his legacy of muscular Christianity and godliness far outlasts the vapor that was his earthly life.
Producing Muscular Christians
Disciplemaking groups should aim at producing Eric Liddells—men and women of spiritual muscle, who learn personally from the Master as they walk daily with him. Such disciples live by the Word, contribute to the work of the church, and influence the world for the cause of the gospel. To develop successful disciplemaking groups, take these four steps:
- Create a vision for disciplemaking. The vision you hold out to your group members must be worth significant sacrifice in time and energy. “Changing the world, one life at a time” or “Turning ordinary people into extraordinary disciples” would make good goals, for example. We light fires in people’s souls when we find a slogan, theme, or logo that captures the passion of disciplemaking and then use it to impart a world-changing vision.
- Set up a structure that serves. A disciplemaking vision must be accompanied by a ministry structure that serves people; otherwise we have fuel without a rocket. Leaders must be given appropriate spans of care (from four to ten people) to avoid burnout. In addition to discipling members, leaders can multiply their ministry by mentoring an assistant or apprentice who will one day lead a group. To prevent abuses of power, we must model servanthood and avoid hierarchies (for example, do not make the apprentice role a “promotion”).
- Develop a process that produces your product. Drawing on insights from the Scriptures, each church must define what it means by a disciple and then develop a process that helps produce such a person. For example, we can ask about our disciple-products: Are they using their spiritual gifts by serving in a meaningful ministry? Do they regularly support the work of the church? Are they growing in grace and learning the Scriptures? Have they begun to walk with Christ without being externally motivated? Are they growing more obedient to Christ as they learn more about him? In light of such questions about our discipleship goals, homework assignments should emphasize quality devotional times and personal spiritual disciplines. Praying, journaling, meeting with unchurched friends, and serving others make excellent homework and directly fulfill the Great Commission.
- Equip leaders and release them for ministry. Disciplemaking groups face two main challenges: the support and care of leaders, and the potential for groups to become ingrown. To support leaders, we can hold regular meetings for encouragement, problem solving, and training in areas of group process, listening skills, care giving, leading dynamic discussions, developing apprentice leaders, and mastering spiritual disciplines. Fully equipped leaders can keep groups from becoming ingrown by making sure their groups add new members at strategic times throughout the group cycle, until a group reaches the maximum size of ten members. At the completion of the cycle, the apprentice can begin a new group.
As Eric Liddell reminded us, it is not willingness to know but to do God’s will that brings glory to God and lasting spiritual growth. Liddell demonstrated a life of muscular Christianity and godliness. This is a powerful combination and a worthy target for every disciple making group member.
Bill Donahue
Task-oriented Groups
Setting up task groups is a great way to develop a growing number of faithful volunteers in almost any area of ministry. A task group is distinct in that it is not just a traditional fellowship-building group or a team of people simply fulfilling a task. By definition, task groups attempt to accomplish both fellowship and ministry at the same time.
Fellowship and Ministry
The principle mission of a task group is to set aside a 30-45-minute group time to develop the spiritual and relational life of each team member. People tend to join a group because of the task they want to work on, but ultimately they will stay because of the mutual caring among the group members. Being intentional about developing the sense of community through a designated group time strengthens and improves the overall health of the ministry.
Most of the principles used to develop effective traditional small groups can be transferred to working with task-oriented groups. However, several features will especially enhance the development of task groups:
- Encourage groups to meet before or after their serving time. No matter how frequent the serving opportunity (whether once per week or once per quarter), add a community dimension to each meeting.
- Monitor task-group curriculum selection and usage. To begin with, use simple, open-ended questions, such as those found in Nav-Press’s 201 Questions. Evolve to using an uncomplicated small-group curriculum. For instance, group members could respond to discussion questions after reading a short passage from a Serendipity Bible or Life Application Bible.
- Develop a sense of teammates versus soulmates. People who join task groups generally have a primary commitment to the task and a secondary commitment to the people. Creating a teammate atmosphere helps everyone recognize that this group is different from the two-hour women’s or couples’ Bible study. Task-group members should accept and enjoy the fact that they have gathered in order to do something.
- Make the task a means to a greater end. Ultimately, changed lives is our goal. Over 50 percent of those serving in a task group will never join a traditional fellowship group. Yet a task group is an excellent place to connect unconnected people. For this reason, encourage groups to form around any appropriate impassioned cause for which a qualified leader will emerge.
- Provide ongoing leadership development. Leaders of task groups need regular support, training, troubleshooting help, and encouragement in order to lead over the long haul. Also, leaving an “open chair” (for the potential invited newcomer) in task group meetings will serve as the principle means of gathering the next generation of volunteers and leaders.
The beauty of leading and managing volunteer teams through task groups is that people not only accomplish the important task but also ultimately grow in their walk with God, with each other, and with the church. These are goals worthy of our labor.
Brett Eastman
Care and Self-help Groups
Open any newspaper today and you will see a large number of notices for self-help groups, ranging from the traditional 12-step groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, to the more unusual, such as Incest Survivors. Groups now exist to address a full range of human problems and predicaments. What do they actually do?
Meeting Spiritual Needs
Early on, self-help groups emerged primarily to assist people with their addictions. Participation in these groups tended to be long-term. More recently, self-help groups have emerged to help people cope with myriad other life problems. A divorce-recovery group would be a good example of such a coping group. Participation in these groups tends to be short-term.
The 12-step formula, though not explicitly Christian, proclaims unmistakably Christian themes like grace, redemption, and sanctification. People who enter a 12-step group are asked to acknowledge powerlessness over their addiction and affirm their dependence on a Higher Power for recovery. During recovery, which is a life-long process, people attempt to make amends with others they may have harmed along the way.
Treating addictions in this unabashedly spiritual fashion has turned out to be successful where conventional psychology has often failed. Individual therapy, while typically an adjunct to a person’s recovery program, usually does not provide what the spiritually oriented l2-step program provides. The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous made their most significant contribution by identifying the underlying spiritual need, which could be met best in a small-group setting.
Offering Mutual Support
Such explicitly Christian themes are not necessarily a part of every self-help group, however. Without the 12-step formula, groups rely primarily on mutual caring and support to help one another through difficult circumstances. Parents who have had young children die, for example, frequently discover that only other parents who have experienced the same tragedy can understand the depth of their pain and loss.
The internal dynamics and leadership of small groups are as varied as the life issues they address. Most groups do have a leader or at least people who are assigned to be facilitators. In some cases, these leaders have training in social work or psychology, but most often leadership simply emerges from people who have experienced the particular issue of concern. The act of leadership itself can be part of the recovery process for these people.
Connecting with the Church
Churches are uniquely qualified to offer and sponsor self-help groups, not only because the church has space to make available but also because the church is equipped theologically and spiritually for the task of healing. Most churches enter self-help group ministry when they recognize a particular need within their membership or community. For example, recognizing a high number of widows and widowers, church leaders may encourage a group like THEOS (They Help Each Other Spiritually), which meets the needs of young and middle-aged widowers.
Sometimes churches can draw on the services of existing national organizations to help them start a self-help group. Other times churches must go it alone. In those cases, leaders should feel free to borrow from and adapt other readily available models.
Leadership is the key ingredient for success. Groups usually begin with a small core of highly committed people who themselves have a need for care and support. While pastors ordinarily do not lead the self-help group itself, they can and should equip and provide resources for the leaders. Churches need not discount what they have to offer spiritually, either; people who seek out self-help groups are usually quite open to the Good News of the gospel.
Douglas J. Brouwer
Study Groups
We study Scripture to meet God, discover God’s priorities for us, and learn how best to respond. This is why group study is so powerful. Together we can discover more and explore more options for creative response. Therefore, pastors want to be familiar with basic principles for starting and facilitating group studies.
Start with Inductive Studies
There are myriad ways to organize a study group, but each group should intentionally choose a definite plan. Here’s a sample format: Meet once a week for two hours, with 15-30 minutes devoted to getting settled, perhaps catching up on everyone’s week; use 45 minutes for inductive Bible study; and then spend 45-60 minutes in either sharing, prayer, singing, worship, or planning service projects.
New groups should start with inductive Bible study, aiming to discover truth from a Scripture passage with little or no reliance on other references. They can begin by observing the text, then interpreting their observations, and, finally, applying the truth they discover. In inductive study we base our interpretations on observations made solely from the text in front of us. So in a new study, a typical follow-up question by the leader might be “How do you come up with that idea from this text?”
As we launch into inductive study, narrative texts are more accessible for study by newer believers than didactic or poetic texts. Also, Bible dictionaries help students look up background infomration as appropriate. Commentaries and study notes, on the other hand, can undermine the rewards of personal discovery.
Master Group Facilitation
A primary task of the facilitating leader is to help groups develop specific, short-range study goals. For example: “Let’s study one chapter of Philippians during the next four weeks.”
At the end of such commitments, groups can take a week or two to celebrate and to review, raising questions such as: What went well? What not so well? What group goals do we want to change? Do we want to take a break for a while? What shall we do next?
Once we get group members into an inductive study, we want to help them observe well, interpret soundly, and avoid jumping around to other passages. Participants will remember more with this approach, and everyone can participate, because practically everyone can contribute at least an observation when guided by good questions. As group members practice this approach they get better at feeding themselves from Scripture.
As facilitators, we can humbly acknowledge when a passage raises more questions than answers, but we can press members to identify what clear truths they do discover. We are not responsible to answer every question that arises in the discussion; God is infinite, our understanding finite.
Many good inductive study guides can help us practice group facilitation. Leaders who want to develop their skills further can study and prepare questions on their own and then compare theirs with those in the published guides. Regardless of how they use a study guide, leaders need to come to the group knowing what succinct main point they want members to grasp and how their prepared questions will support the group’s discovery of that point.
God builds individual differences into every community and uses these differences to help us grow. Authentic relationships include conflict, and we miss the grace God desires for us when we avoid conflict or distort our personality differences into moral issues. We will more effectively address conflict when we strive to understand divergent views within the group and remember that our primary purpose is to meet and respond to God.
Roger Razzari Elrod
Fellowship Groups
Church growth specialists tell us the establishment of strong friendships is one of the most important reasons people commit themselves to a church. Studies also show that a major reason people drop out of church is the feeling of not belonging. Though a church may have an overflowing sanctuary and dynamic preaching, members may still lack the meaningful fellowship they seek.
The Cell Group
Several factors in our society have contributed to the need for greater stress on fellowship in our churches, the greatest being the breakdown of the traditional family structure through divorce. No longer having the advantage of a nurturing home life, individuals search for support and strength from caring people elsewhere. The workplace, too, creates much loneliness and anxiety if there are no fellow believers there. In addition, we have become such a mobile nation that we hardly have time to establish meaningful relationships before moving to a new part of the country. Many people among us end up living far from relatives.
Church growth experts stress that each new member should have an average of six or seven new friends within the first six months of joining a church. Most agree that many new members are likely to return to their old friends outside the church unless they gain new friends quickly in the local congregation. Therefore, more and more churches, regardless of size, have recognized the need for building solid relationships among the members.
One method that promotes such relationships is cell group ministry. A cell group is a small, intimate gathering that intentionally brings people face-to-face on a regular basis. Members share common goals and seek to grow together in the grace and knowledge of Christ.
Cell Group Characteristics
Cell group ministries come in all shapes and sizes, differing according to each church’s needs and limitations. However, three characteristics tend to be true of all such groups. The groups are:
- Modeled after the New Testament church. On the day of Pentecost 3,000 people received Peter’s sermon and were added to the assembly of believers. The Bible says, “they devoted themselves … to the fellowship” and they “broke bread in their homes and ate together” (Acts 2:42, 46).
- Organized by specific areas of need. Cell groups may meet for a number of reasons, such as Bible study or special projects, but fellowship and social interaction in a Christian context are legitimate ends in themselves. People come to see that the life of the church is not in the building but in the cells. Although there is a weekly celebration in the church building, significant ministry takes place in the home groups.
- Used as evangelism tools. Unchurched family and friends may be more likely to attend an informal home gathering, viewing it as less threatening than a large worship service. As relationships build, these same people may begin to accompany cell group members to their church meetings. People sometimes make commitments to Christ through cell group involvement, which is sometimes referred to as “side-door evangelism.”
- Multiplied by division. The pastor may start with a pilot group that agrees to meet for six to eight weeks for training. Those people are then asked to go out and start their own groups, each having an assistant leader. The groups then grow as members invite others to attend. As the groups enlarge, the assistant leaders can take three or four members and split off to form other groups. It is wise for the elders to evaluate the ministry periodically to make sure it continues to meet people’s needs and the church’s objectives.
James E. Martin
Shepherding Groups
With today’s emphasis on church growth and with the blossoming of larger churches, congregations must be ready to respond to the inevitable decrease in one-on-one contact with pastors. Personal pastoral care can come in other ways, such as through trained lay leadership in shepherding groups. This not only brings relief to overworked pastors, it also produces a caring, loving atmosphere that pervades the entire congregation.
Prior Questions
In setting up a shepherding program, planning committees should ask these key questions:
- Who will be the lay shepherds? It’s best not to ask for volunteers. Some volunteers may subconsciously seek the position as a means of meeting their own needs. Since ministering to the spiritual and psychological needs of others requires people with particular gifts, it is best to screen potential lay ministers for any evidence of personal, familial, or emotional “baggage” they might unwittingly foist on a group. Lay shepherds must have plenty of emotional energy to give to others. They can’t be takers. In the church I serve, the deacons and their wives are elected to share in the care ministry of the church. Additional couples are carefully invited into what has become the Shepherding Board of the church.
- What type of training will we provide? A congregation can set up a weekly training program for nine months a year. Such a program typically combines formal teaching, on-the-job training, and a mentoring time with the head shepherd of the congregation. A sense of strong accountability, not only to the head shepherd but also to the team of shepherding leaders, results from such frequent sessions together.
- How should we form the shepherding groups? Some churches draw up geographical areas and assign each to a zone lay minister who lives in the area and exercises pastoral responsibility for each family in the assigned zone. Other churches design their shepherding plans on a relational basis, assigning people to homogeneous units or carefully selected heterogeneous groups. Our experience indicates that natural relationships form more readily and people network better if the groups are homogeneous units drawn from adult Sunday school classes. About twelve households are represented in each group.
- When should the shepherding groups meet? This varies from church to church. For example, some groups might meet in homes on the third Sunday evening of each month in lieu of the regular Sunday evening service. Some groups may want to meet bi-weekly. Others may wish to have dinner together after Sunday morning worship and then spend time in fellowship for an hour or two.
How to Succeed
In spite of the variety of approaches, three critical requirements determine the potential success of a shepherding program:
- Effective training. A large number of churches recruit lay shepherds, assign groups, and then abandon them. Leaders need to offer at least twelve initial training sessions to train lay shepherding leaders adequately, and then follow up with regularly scheduled refresher courses.
- Broad scope. The tendency is to add just a few shepherding groups to the other small-group ministries in the church. In order to work, however, the program must encompass the entire congregation. Every church member should acknowledge the need for personal pastoral care and support its provision through lay shepherds.
- Ongoing accountability. A laissez faire approach to lay shepherding dooms the ministry to failure. Lay shepherds must report regularly to the authorized staff person about how things are going in their groups. When the leadership expects competency and accountability, it is more likely to happen.
Charles Ver Straten
Berkley, James D. Leadership Handbook of Outreach and Care. Used by permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Book House Company, copyright © 1994. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Book House Company.www.bakerbooks.com
