Seven Ways to Help Improve Your Small Groups

As a new believer in Jesus, it was in a small group where I first began to significantly grow in my faith. Through the relationships that I made, I learned what life in a Christian community could be. Honestly, it was a little taste of heaven. I learned how to pray, study the Bible, share my faith and fail. I don’t know where I would be today without my small group.

With that said, not every group is the same. Some groups go deeper, while some are more social, and some are more outwardly focused. Hopefully your group is not proud to be a shallow small group like the one in the video below.

Whichever kind of groups your church may have, here are seven ways to help improve your small groups.

1. Create a Culture of Community

I think this boils down to a paradigm view of your church. As you think about your church ask this question: Are we a church that has small groups or are we a church of small groups? How this question is answered will determine how far you can go to create a culture of community.

A church of small groups will have five functions of the church operating in the group. There will not be competing ministries outside of the groups for these five which are: Fellowship, discipleship, ministry, mission, and worship. A church with small groups will use these groups as primarily a Bible teaching and/or fellowship groups. The rest of the five purposes will be supported by other ministries.

2. Eliminate competition with small groups

The problem that most of our churches struggle with is the problem of competition. If your church has a men’s ministry, women’s ministry, a sports ministry, etc. it will compete against your small group ministry. People only have so much time they will give to an activity or ministry, no matter what it is. They must work, go to their children’s activities, and like most everyone else, take care of the practical matters of keeping up a home and relationships.

You can build a culture that values biblical community and encourages your church members to make it a priority to be an active part of a small group. This elevates the small group beyond the competition between other ministries. The small group will be the foundation of your church’s ministry. To make this happen you will need to make an honest evaluation of your church’s calendar and budget. See if you can eliminate any activity to give more margin to your small groups.

3. Lead by example

Are you an active member of a small group? Do your church staff and leaders participate in a small group? I know it can be very difficult to be a pastor in a church and be part of a small group, but it can be done. Leading by example is essential to having your church value small groups. Don’t expect your church members to do something you are not doing yourself.

4. Hold small group events

Many churches have moved away from hosting revival services. Perhaps your church has not had a revival service in years. But there are still things that can be done to accomplish the same ends, one of these could be with small group events.

Once or twice a year, perhaps in the fall and again after the first of the year hold a small group event. Recently I attended a church mission fair. The church had more than a dozen different ministries that they support present and visible at booths in their common area. Why not have a small group fair? It could be over a weekend and begin it with some great training and role play for the different roles in small groups. Make Sunday a day to celebrate small groups and encourage everyone to seek a group at the small group fair that would be right for them.

Another way to do a small group event is to have a small group campaign. The first campaign I did as a pastor was the Purpose Driven Life Campaign. Our church did one or two other campaigns a year after that. These were very successful. The campaign is good for people that may be cautious about a long-term commitment to a group. They can just come for the campaign. It is also easier for new people to connect when starting a new campaign. Pre-packaged campaigns have a focused theme, and the resources are of good quality. It is also easy for a pastor to preach on the campaign theme, which reinforces participation in a group and unity in the church.

The last small group campaign I did as a pastor was “The Story”, which was the grand biblical narrative of creation, rebellion, promise, fulfillment, and restoration. All our small groups or Sunday School groups studied the lessons and I preached sermons themed from creation to restoration for nine months. There was also an emphasis for personal daily Bible readings with group accountability. Our church was traditional, and many were skeptical of doing this together for this long. We did it and they loved it. I’ve had people years later tell me that this time for them was when the story of Scripture made sense to them. They saw for the first time how Abraham, Noah, Ruth, David, and Jesus fit together under God’s great plan of salvation.

5. Have regular and innovative equipping

One or even the perennial problem in churches is the identification and development of great leaders. Small groups need leaders that are enthusiastic and equipped. So, leader training and leader events are a must in any church that is growing leaders. This is part of an overall leadership development process. With the availability of online meetings, you can have regular leader huddles that don’t take a lot of time. I suggest that you meet with your small group leaders every month in an online huddle and every quarter in person around a meal. Have a set of questions that you work through with your leaders that minister to them personally and then to their groups and the needs and issues they see. Make the meeting a benefit to them. Perhaps overview a lesson or give help with a mission project. Play a game and have a valuable prize to give away.

6. Each small group have their own mission

Earlier I asked you to answer this question: Are we a church that has small groups or are we a church of small groups? Whichever way you answer this question, your small groups need to have a mission. By having a mission I’m talking about a people to whom they are seeking to meet needs and share Christ. One group adopted the local Jr. High Band. They became champions for the school band and their director. Another group adopted a football team. One group adopted an older next-door neighbor. The couples’ small group met at their home every two weeks. The group began to minister to the older neighbor by cleaning her back yard, giving her rides to stores and eventually donating a car to her. She started coming over for meals with the group and eventually make a commitment to Christ and was baptized in their church gathering service.

A group having a mission that is bigger than themselves will bond them together. It will give greater meaning and purpose to the group and perhaps even to their individual lives. Having a mission makes the group outward facing. They are more likely to be joined by others, simply because everyone wants to be part of something that is doing good in the world. The small group is doing good, and the motivation behind this love infused by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I've been a fan of "missional communities" or "MCs" for years. Even though currently I do not lead a missional community, I participate in a regular meeting of MC church pastors and leaders every 3 weeks. Here's a one minute and fifty-two second video that explains the concept by Jeff Vanderstelt and his organization, Saturatetheworld.com.

7. Creative Curriculum

Consider creating curriculum for adults and youth that corresponds with your preaching series. Save it as a PDF and make it available to download off the church’s website. Take a cue from the fifth way of improving your small group and present a quick segment on how to teach this in group meetings. Do it over Zoom. Record it and make it available to your group leaders later.

You can also, let them choose their own curriculum from pre-approved recommendations for small group topics. Don’t be offended if not every group follows along with your series. Work with all the groups. But I do recommend that you or someone in leadership approve of whatever small group material they are using. If there is a cost involved, let them know that the group will be responsible for the cost if they don’t use what the leadership is recommending.

Leading a lesson in a group should be a team sport. Encourage shared leadership for each group. Everyone must start somewhere, but they don’t have to remain there.

This topic may have brought up as many questions as I have tried to provide answers. For successful small groups church-wide, there needs to be a small group champion to organize and to stay on top of it. We won’t reach perfection in this life, but we can progress. After all, being part of a small group means that all of us are broken and need help, we are moving through life together and most of the learning, laughing, and living is in the journey.

Six Ways to Improve Your Church’s Worship Service

I may not know your church or the challenges that you face each week in putting together a worship experience. However, I do know, from decades of leading churches, being a guest in churches, sometimes more than once a week, and going to church conferences, what is done well and what needs improvement in a church’s worship service.

If you are like me, you are always looking for ways to improve your church’s worship experience. You want them to have a true encounter with the Lord God. After all, isn’t that the goal of worship, elevating and experiencing God? No matter what you do, it just won’t matter that much if they leave the service not having an encounter with God. If they do have that encounter, then anything else that happened pales by comparison.

So, the big question is: How could I plan the worship service so that there is a greater likelihood of those attending having an encounter with God? It’s an important question. Certainly, we want to be seeker sensitive. We want to be relevant in our language and culture to those who attend. But that is secondary to the primary focus of exalting and experiencing God.

I also realize that we cannot manufacture an experience with God. You can create an emotional experience. You can foster an educational setting, but only by God’s initiative will he manifest himself in a tangible way. With that said, there are things we can do which will prove helpful to open the receptivity of people to the Eternal and welcome the presence of the Holy Spirit in our gatherings.

Before I move into the six ways, I want to call your attention to two glaring omissions to the six: The sermon and music. I have not included the sermon in this list because it deserves its own list. The same could be said for the music. In future posts I hope to treat both sermon and music with their own five or six things to improve their effectiveness. For now, here are six general ways to improve your church’s worship service.

1. Plan the flow of the service with one overall theme

Every church has a liturgy, some are more pronounced than others. Generally, we sing, perhaps have some special music or testimony, take an offering, practice communion and baptism, and of course have a sermon and invitation. One of the things to consider in your worship gathering is to look not only at the elements of the service but of the flow of the service.

Having one overal theme will tell you where you want to take them, but the flow determines how and when they get there. If you don’t have a specific theme, it is likely that the service will not take them anywhere specific either. For example, perhaps your congregation has been going through a very hard time. Maybe some have wavered in their faithfulness or are growing tired and uncertain about the future. You want them to have hope. So, you may design a worship experience around the theme of “Hope.” Maybe you even decide to focus on a period in the life of David where he needed hope. You find plenty of material from David’s life and in the Psalms of David for this emphasis. With this theme, you would work with your song leader to provide a flow of songs that may start out with doubt or trouble but then the last song before your message would be one of anticipation. Your message would bring the “Hope” theme to fruition and climax, ending with the invitation to “hope” in God and his goodness. The same God who helped David is the God who helps us in our helplessness. We only need to reach out to him.

The elements in this service are the very elements that God has used to move in people’s hearts and minds, bringing hope and salvation. They are prayer, Scripture, testimony (David’s and perhaps other testimonies), and the offer of a response. You believe that God wanted you to give hope to his people, so you did. Not a person will walk away from this experience wondering what God’s message was to them. They will all know it was “Hope.” This is flow with one overall theme.

2. Prepare the congregation for worship

Not everyone who shows up in person or online has prepared themselves for worship. This is no surprise. It is hard to shift our minds and hearts and even bodies to a posture of worship in an instant. What can we do? While total preparation for worship is not going to happen, at least you can get those in attendance to move toward a posture of worship.

I recommend that after an opening song and a welcome (I’ll deal with the welcome in the next point) that you take a moment to prepare those present and online for worship. Several things could be mentioned here. You can share that we are here to meet with one another, but more importantly, to meet with God. Share that God desires you to know him, and he wants to speak to you today. Share the theme for the morning. You could even give some examples on how this is relevant to them today. Create a focus and build anticipation that God is moving and working right now in our midst. Then have someone come (someone you have prepared ahead of time on what to pray) and lead in prayer as the service continues.

3. Have a scripted time of welcome

There should be a specific outline that everyone who does the welcome time follows. It should be a brief as possible, hence the script. It should also accomplish certain goals. I suggest:

1. A welcome statement and gratitude for spending your Sunday morning with us.

2. Person’s name, their role and why this church is special to them.

3. What the church’s unique role is in the community, i.e., what the church is focused on doing that will make a difference.

4. To first time guests, you want to connect with them. Either fill out a connection card or text “Welcome” to (whatever number you have with a text service) or scan a QR code or have them go to a form on your website.

5. Tell them why we want them to give their information.

6. Invite them to stop by the welcome center after service to pick up a gift.

Any more than the above is just rambling and will take away from the theme of the service.

4. Explain the ordinances

If there is going to be communion or baptism, this is a good time to explain their origins, significance, and conditions for participation. We should not assume that everyone in attendance and watching online knows why we are baptizing people or are having communion. This is a great time to share the gospel in the visual and tactile expression of the memorial of the Lord’s Supper and the death, burial, and the resurrection of Jesus and of us with him in baptism.

Explanations could also be taken further for other things in the service that guests may not readily know. Some of our older Christian hymns have terms that are not familiar to today’s ears. A little introduction to the song and its setting is helpful not only for understanding but to engage the congregation into a deeper worship experience.

5. Pray

Every worship experience has a place of prayer, but is prayer used to connect us to God or more for a transition between elements of the service? I urge you to have a set time of prayer in your service that is specially used to focus the participants attention on the theme and on God. If the theme of the service is “forgiveness” then pray the Scriptures that deal with forgiveness. Psalm 51 and Psalm 32 are great Scriptures to use demonstrating the plea for forgiveness and the freeing gratitude that comes from experiencing forgiveness. Then apply it to us today. All that can be done in prayer. You can set the prayer up to help the congregation understand the context and direction. This is a great teaching time for understanding how to pray the Scriptures as well. This keeps prayer fresh for the pastor, but also if other staff are used in this prayer time, it will involve others in the worship experience.

6. Move all announcements to the end of the service

Keeping the announcements and other housekeeping things, other than the welcome, at the close of the service is important for several reasons. First, announcements interrupt the flow of the service. That’s just what they do. By flow, I’m talking about the cadence and timing of the service. Announcements disrupt the steady heartbeat of the service, it’s like having worship arrhythmia.

Second, announcements distract. You work hard to have a great worship theme and experience. Having announcements at the beginning or somewhere in the service time is going to compete with your congregation’s attention and focus.

Third, keeping the announcements to the end will increase the chances that whatever action you are wanting the people present to take will happen. There is nothing else you are going to do or say that will then distract them from this last thing.

Fourth, this is also a good time to remind guests to give their information or to visit the welcome center for a gift. You may also want to remind everyone that pastor and staff are available to visit guest at a designated area.

Fifth, some churches use this last time to take up the offering. Others prefer to keep the offering in a more central role during the service.

We’ve always needed good worship but with all the pressures and stresses today, we need the refreshing presence of the Lord even more. May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus himself and the Holy Spirit be with you and lead you as you lead God’s people to worship.

Five Things that Will Improve Your Church’s First Time Guest Experience

This issue is not for church leaders only, but for all members. As a pastor I continually struggled with the feeling that our first-time guests were not getting the best experience at our church. I knew it was true and I tried a lot of things to improve it. You can do your pastor and your church a huge favor by taking some of this on. Your pastor has enough on his plate. Every member should be concerned with this one and overarching value that needs to be reinforced every week: The indispensable value of hospitality.

If you are a church member, you can be a huge influence for good. You don’t need a title or a job description. Just look around and speak to someone who looks like they are new. Brag about your church. Your pastor will be grateful, your church will benefit, and you may just make a new friend for yourself and the kingdom of God.

Churches are friendly places to the people who are the initiated. For some members, it has been a long time since they have been a guest. They have forgotten what it is like to not know where to park, where the children’s ministry is located, or even how to find a weak cup of coffee. For many, they don’t know the Christianese we speak: Words like “fellowship” and “backsliding” or phrases such as “I don’t feel led” or “I’m praying about that.”

If you need a laugh, spend an extra three and a half minutes watching this hilarious video on “Christianese” entitled "Translating the Christian Language".

I know what you're thinking: "The best thing about Jimmy's blog is this Youtube video from someone else!" Anyway, if you are still interested, here are my five suggestions on how to improve the first time guest experience at your church.

1. The guest experience starts online.

I’ve written a few blogs on your church’s social media and website presence. You can refer to them here:

5 Ways to Improve Your Church's Website

5 Things on Church Social Media that Need to Change Today

Social Media Do's & Don'ts for Christians

I do want to add one more critical observation on your website: We are long past the days when the first experience with you church was in person. Long before they set foot on your campus, they are looking at your website and social media. That is where they will decide to visit or to go somewhere else, or nowhere else. Your church may be losing guests before you ever know they were there and before you knew they ever wanted attend. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

· Is our website up to date?

· Is it visually attractive?

· Is the information accurate?

· Does the website function well on mobile devices?

· Are your Facebook and Instagram representing your church well as a front door?

Many churches have a “Plan Your Visit” section on the home page. It should include details of where to park and where guests can enter the buildings, including for children and youth.

2. Train a Welcome Team

This is more than ushers. This team needs to recruit certain kinds of people. If you are wanting to welcome young families, then have young families on your welcome team. They need to be happy to see people coming for worship. Prioritize using women and youth on your welcome team. They generally make the best impression. Sorry guys, but you know it’s true.

Train them for parking lot greeting (but not stalking). Have maps and directions to the children’s ministry. When a greeter meets a new guest, instead of just giving directions, consider just walking them to where they need to go.

Create a “Welcome Center” that is operational 30 minutes before services start and 20 minutes after they are over. Set up a coffee and juice bar just off to the side of the welcome center. Included a “New Here?” kiosk where guests can enter their information and find out more about the church.

3. Everything is clean and the signage is clear

You’ve heard it said, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” This statement is doubly true for guests in your church. Everything, and I’ll repeat it, everything needs to be clean. It needs to look clean, smell clean and be clean. This is especially true in the restrooms and children’s/nursery areas. The pandemic has made cleanliness even a bigger deal. It is a make-or-break deal today.

You know where most things are, but a guest doesn’t. They need good clear signage. One sign that points to the Welcome Center is not good enough when there are three turns before a person gets there. At each juncture and at every entrance there should be signage for the Welcome Center. Same is true for restrooms, children’s ministry, nursery, and worship center. It demonstrates to your guest that you really care about them.

4. Allow Guests to self-identify

Don’t ask your guests to raise a hand in the service, or to stand up, or to introduce themselves. I’ve been to some churches recently who did just that. It’s not helping them. They need to stop it right now. Look, I don’t like it myself and I’ve been a pastor for 22 years and served in full time Christian ministry for 36 years. A guest who doesn’t know anyone or the customs in your church will like it even less. If you want to never see them again, just “out them”.

During the worship service there should be a general welcome to guests. It should be concise and clear as to how happy the church is that they are here and how the church would like for them to respond.

You can have them respond in many ways: Guest connection cards in the seats, a QR code stuck on the back of the seat for scanning, have them text a number during the service. Offer them a gift if they turn in their connection card at the welcome center after service. There are any number of ways to help them feel welcome and for them to give you information without putting them on the spot.

5. Give an Invitation to a next step

Consider this question: How do people get connected to your church? If someone wants to move beyond just visiting or attending, what do they need to do? What steps do they need to take? How can you help them to do that? How can you let them know how to do that?

I’ve been to churches that if a person wanted to commit their life to Christ, or to ask for prayer, or to join, there was no opportunity. We’ve lost the spirit of Jesus when we forget that we are to encourage people to move from where they are to where God is calling them to be.

A church should have a simple, obvious, and clear next step for their guests. This would not only assure them that they have the encouragement to connect further, but it also lets them know what steps to take to do so. What is unclear will be left undone.

If you have not done so, spend some time thinking through next steps for your guests. Perhaps your church will need to move beyond just a welcome team to a full-blown assimilation team. This moves guests from the first click on your website to becoming a baptized member.

That’s my five things for improving your church’s first-time guest experience. It is a lot of work and details, but you are not in it alone. The whole church should be working on this. There are many more than five, but I think you will agree that these five are a good place to start. I’m Jimmy Kinnaird and if you’d like further help on your guest experience or an assimilation plan, contact me: jimmy@fairburnba.org