Where Will You Take Your Small Group Ministry in 2015?

By Mark Howell

Where will you take your small group ministry in 2015?  Have you thought about it?  Made any New Year’s resolutions?  Set any goals?
You may be one who makes New Year’s resolutions every year.  Lose weight.  Pay off credit cards.  Read through your Bible.
You may be one who always likes the idea of resolutions but never actually stops long enough to write them out and figure out how to act on them.
Or you might be one that just doesn’t see the merit in the idea.
I want to suggest that making New Year’s resolutions (or setting goals) for your small group ministry is actually very important.  In fact, I think the evidence is very strong that if you don’t think and dream and plan where you’d like to go you shouldn’t expect to get there.  See also, 10 Simple Things You Can Start Doing to Build a Thriving Small Group Ministry and 5 Things to Think about As 2014 Comes to a Close.
I believe the only way to get to where you really want to go is by conceiving of a preferred future and then intentionally acting to take steps in the right direction.  I believe we never arrive where we want to go by drifting and that we can only arrive at the preferred future by acting with intentionality.  See also, The Perils of the Well Worn Path and Creating Your “Refined” Preferred Future.
So…have you make any New Year’s resolutions for your small group ministry?  Where will you take your small group ministry in 2015?

Can I suggest a few goals?

Can I suggest a few goals to think about?  Here are a five possibilities:

• Determine a “percentage connected” you’d like to reach in the fall of 2015.  You’ll need to do a little thinking.  You’ll have to figure out your current percentage connected and then how much change is possible, but this is thinking that will pay off!    See also, What Percentage of Your Adults are Actually Connected?
• Determine what strategies you will use to add new groups.  Plan when you’ll use the strategies and how many new groups you’ll launch as a result.  Write these numbers as goals.  See also, Top 10 Ways to Launch New Groups.
• Think about the coaching structure you’ll need in order to sustain the new groups you will launch.  See also, 7 Core Ideas about Small Group Coaching and Recruiting Additional Coaches for Church-Wide Campaigns.
• Think about how you will resource and develop your small group leaders (both your existing leaders and the leaders of the new groups you launch).  Will you hold a centralized leader training event?  Will you decentralize training and equip your coaches to do the training?  See also, FAQ: How Can I Get My Leaders to Attend Training?
• What habits do you need to add or reinforce that will help you to thrive in your role?  See also, 7 Practices of an Enduring Small Group Pastor.

Now What?

Once you’ve made these resolutions or set these goals you’ll want to write them down on a single piece of paper and put the paper somewhere you will see every day.  Create a shorthand way of saying the goals.  Make the goals visible and talk about them with your team.  Use the comment section below and tell me what your goals are.  The more visible the goals and the more you refer to them in your planning and implementing (and celebrating!), the more likely it is that you will reach them.
photo credit: Cecilia Fletcher