4. Move with the movers! I love this quote from Mother Teresa, “Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.” The reason I love this quote is that it says two great leadership points. First, don’t get paralyzed by the number of groups. Sometimes the task can seem so big ahead that instead of starting in, we just sit not knowing where to begin. It’s like the question of how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! Second, what I love in this quote is the part of just starting with the hungriest group. We call this “move with the movers.” They are the early adopters, those eager to learn and wanting to grow with your paradigm.
5. It takes a village to raise a small group leader! This part has to do with infrastructure. Our latest learnings at Saddleback is to embrace all the voices that speak into our group leaders and make sure they are in alignment. In other words, make sure they are driving the same goal you have (see point one). Then begin to list all the voices and use those voices for the maximum impact into your leaders (new and existing). Too often we leave all the heavy lifting to the Community Leaders or Coaches. Here are some of the voices that speak into our leaders for retention—the small group point person, the Community Leader or coach, the Senior Pastor, emails, texts, eNewsletters, church bulletin, group training, and their groups members (their peers) to name a few. Each of these voices play a part in groups sustaining. Make sure they are all pulling groups in the same direction!
RELATED: 6 Goals of Effective Small Group Ministry
6. Get your senior or lead pastor to help! ”If” statements from your Senior Pastor can make all the difference in the world to all those new groups that start. The Senior Pastor is probably the voice the new groups know the best. Get you senior guy to give statements to those new groups in his message to challenge them to continue. A simple thing Rick does is have all the HOSTs (our language for group leaders) stand during the service, honors them for the role they play, has the congregation applaud them and then says I could not do this without you! Simple but very effective! You can do something similar to this in many different ways.
7. Location, location, location. What makes the price of a home is largely based on it’s location. The same house in a nice part of town is higher than that same home in a bad part of town. So what is the major contributor that drives the value for groups to take the next step? Relationship, relationship, relationship! This is driven by the voices talked about in point 5. The bottom line, the higher the relationship with your group leader, the more effective your small group retention strategies!
8. Party, party, party! Celebrate your leaders. At Saddleback Church, towards the end of a Campaign or at strategic times during the year, we honor our HOSTs. This year we are having a lunch and giving them the soundtrack to the new History channel series on the Bible. We will gather our HOSTs together for appreciation, vision of what’s ahead and a time for them to bring people who also help them (for us this is recruitment!). Gratitude is the fuel for motivation for your people to continue! Churches tend to be good at recruiting, but lousy at appreciating! Don’t miss this ingredient for retention!
My challenge is just like your challenge, developing effective small group retention strategies. The size and scope may be different, but the issues are the same.
