Through my assessment of small groups as well as my experience leading groups and coaching other leaders, I’ve observed a direct correlation between leaders who hog leadership and groups that do not grow or multiply. Leaders who lead healthy, growing groups share leadership with two to three others … but not just any two or three others. I’ve seen leaders …

What should a church or small group pastor do when they discover that a small group leader is not spending time daily with God–assuming this is an ongoing issue? Yes, there are times that most of us have gone through the desert, and perhaps we’ve allowed our time with God to slip down our priority lists. But we know these times are …

A quick update today. I’ve launched a new blog, called “Life’s Highs & Lows: Living Life to the Fullest Despite the Circumstances.” Those circumstances include living with type-1 diabetes, which I’ve been doing since 1971, but the blog will include more than that. While the blog you are reading right now will continue to tackle issues dealing with small groups, discipleship, …

Geoff Surratt, director of Exponential, wrote a book titled Ten Stupid Things That Keep Churches from Growing. Great title, so I, ummm, borrowed it. Here are what I believe are the top 10 stupid things that prevent groups from growing or doing anything truly worthwhile. Consuming. Groups who focus all their attention on themselves grow … fat. But they don’t grow …

I just counted them … 90. In my office I have 90 books written about leading small groups. Make that 91. I just read Ben Reed’s new book on how to put together a small group system in your church. It’s titled, Starting Small: The Ultimate Small Group Blueprint. Now why would Ben, or anyone else for that matter, write …

Do you want to be a leader after God’s heart? Do you have a passion for leading a healthy group, ministry, church, business, or family–or life? If your answer is yes, you are in for an exciting, dangerous, life-changing journey as you partner with God and allow him to pour himself into you so you may overflow his goodness into …

The topic for our August 1 Small Group Ministry Practitioners Hangout was “Training leaders to be shepherds to their little flock.” How do you train them? What do you teach? Great discussion; we all learned a lot from one another. +Jay Daniell, +Josh Hunt, +Emil Kerekes, +Jonathan Jordan, +Adam Workman, +Brandon Boyd, and I participated this month. Here are a few highlights. We started by discussing …

I’ve written in other posts about the Vital Sign of Sharing Leadership with a Core Team of two or three others. Today let’s talk about HOW you can move from leading solo to team-leading the group. Here are seven steps you can take. 1. Share the load. Ask God to show you whom you should ask to be part of the core team …

Last week while leading a small group conference session on “Building Real Community” I mentioned the 80/20 rule. That is, in a healthy small group, the group should do about 80 percent of the talking while the leader should talk only about 20 percent of the time (and much of that 20 percent should be in the form of questions). …

God specializes in reconciliation and restoration! It’s what he does best and it’s one of the things in which he takes great joy. Just read Luke 15 to see what I mean. God also loves to do more–surpassingly or abundantly more–than we can even ask or imagine. He loves it when we partner with him to carry out his mission …