What is your small group ministry designed to do? Ever thought about it? It matters, you know.
The design of your small group ministry determines the results you can expect. Remember:
“Your ministry is perfectly designed to produce the results you are currently experiencing.” Andy Stanley
So…what is your small group ministry designed to do?
When you talk with small group pastors there are clearly several common answers:
1. We want to connect the members of our congregation and provide an environment where they can develop close relationships (very common, but doesn’t often lead to something beyond connection).
2. We want to provide an environment where our members can experience life-change (seen in sporadic groups but rarely in all groups).
3. We want to make disciples who make disciples and we do that in a group environment (if words were all that mattered…lots of small group ministries would see this result).
4. We want to create natural ways for group members to include neighbors and friends (again, only a few small group ministries can point to system-wide success in this design element).
Does one of these sound the closest? I know, it’s tempting to say that:
“Our small group ministry is designed to do all four. We want to connect people and provide an environment where life-change happens, disciples are made and every group is a natural first step for neighbors and friends.”
It’s tempting to say that. But is your small group ministry really designed to do that? It’s far more likely that your design will actually yield only one of the outcomes listed above.
Your results reveal the actual design you know.
