August 13, 2025 • 25 mins
People don’t join small groups because of catchy announcements—they join because they’re hungry for connection. In this episode, we explore how to communicate the real value of groups: not as a program, but as a path to deeper spiritual and relational health. If your small groups ministry feels stuck, this conversation will help you reframe the message and reengage your people.
Hosted by church consultants Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu of The Malphurs Group, this episode offers practical strategies grounded in theology and real-world experience from helping hundreds of churches.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
→ [00:03:56] Why small groups meet a deep emotional and spiritual need
→ [00:10:24] How to teach the theology of fellowship without guilt-tripping
→ [00:15:54] Why showing (not telling) is key to group engagement
→ [00:19:04] How to keep momentum without falling into false starts
→ [00:22:47] A powerful tool that auto-generates small group guides and more
LINKS
→ Article: https://malphursgroup.com/303
→ Toolkit: https://healthychurchestoolkit.com
→ Facebook: https://facebook.com/malphursgroup
→ Instagram: https://instagram.com/malphursgroup
→ YouTube: https://youtube.com/themalphursgroup
→ X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/malphursgroup
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Wanting to grow your small groups ministry, stick around now for the Church
Revitalization Podcast. Hello and welcome to the Church
Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the Malfers group
team where each week we tackle important actionable
topics to help churches thrive. And now here's your
hosts, Scott Ball and A.J. matthew.
(00:23):
Welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm
joined by my friend and co host, A.J. Matthew.
I literally almost said I'm A.J. Matthew,
joined by my friend and ghost. You're trying to steal my identity.
(00:48):
Oh, it's good. Okay, today we're talking about small
groups. Small or
just groups in general? We want to be. I don't
have to be small. Don't have to be small. I guess I don't want someone
to assume that this would mean it has to be home based
small group ministry. The idea is how do we get people
(01:12):
to know the importance of moving out of the
Sunday morning only thing into deeper community.
Yeah. Fellowship groups, community groups. We don't care.
Zombie school doesn't matter. All the above. Yep. Okay,
so that's, that's the plan for today's episode. All right, three,
three points for you. So let's hit it first
(01:35):
with space. You're going straight in. You got nothing. You got something else to say?
I mean, I mean, we're a minute and a half into the episode. We can
get straight to the goods. No, no banter required. No,
no. Shout out to the healthy. No, no. Shout out to the healthy. Churchestoolkit.com.
Okay, let's do that. Let's do an get the Healthy churches
toolkit@healthychurchestoolkit.com Chock full
(01:57):
of resources, tips and
tricks and some awesome AI features, including one.
I'm going to give you a little hint. It is small groups related. Scott.
Oh, yep. I'm going to tell you more about that at the end.
Oh, okay. Well then stay tuned for that ad
at the end of this episode. All right. Yeah, so we, let's. Okay, let's go
(02:19):
ahead, Go ahead, hop right in. All right, all right. You got to
really. We're focused on communicating. How do we communicate that people should be
engaged in a small group. Yes. This is actually, by the way, again,
one of our listener questions. So from a few weeks ago, we asked you to
submit questions. Here we go. Well, and by the way, we promised you. We.
You gave us content for weeks and weeks and weeks. And we're,
(02:42):
we're executing on that promise. So many of our episodes
the last couple of weeks and ones in the future are kind of be rooted
in the questions you guys sent. So, so this, so this first
communication piece is, is getting to the heart of the matter
and it's, you know, I think so. I mean we just need to
communicate that this is a. For most people it feels,
(03:04):
have the sense that it is a basic human need to be in fellowship with
others and especially in the church that, that we should be in
relationship and fellowship with others. I think
sometimes though, you know what, life is complicated and it's busy
and we've got a lot of distractions and it's really easy to get
caught into this cycle of just kind of doing what you
(03:26):
do. You do work, you do church, you do family, you do these things
and you can wake up and all of a sudden you're like, you know, what
do I actually engage with anybody? And so I think sometimes
we have to bring this to a level of consciousness for people that maybe that
maybe that is where you are. And what's the answer to that? Well, here we're
going to tell you about what our church has established for that.
(03:48):
But yeah, we need to remind people of the benefits
of human interaction. No, instead of looking
at your phone. Or working, I want to give you. I'm going to throw a
number at you. Oh, all right. This is from the U.N.
okay. Known for quality statistics. Don't start. At least
not when the stat backs up my point of view. But according to the
(04:11):
UN hundred people die of
loneliness related causes every hour.
Or Covid. You couldn't, you couldn't, you couldn't. You couldn't
help yourself, could you?
Yeah, I didn't think you'd have a UN stat that would really be related to
(04:32):
small groups in the Christian church. But okay. Loneliness
deaths. I don't wonder what that means. Do you have any.
People ending their own lives? Obviously would be one,
but there are, there are also other. Think about
things that would. If you're lonely, you're more likely to be
(04:53):
depressed, which can cause other kinds of problems.
You are maybe less likely to be active, which can
contribute to heart disease or health issues or other
health issues. You
have any other kind of health issue. And if you're not around
other people, there wouldn't necessarily be people to notice.
(05:15):
Hey, looks like you're not looking very healthy. You know,
all of those kinds of things. So it's not maybe on its own,
it's not. People don't die of loneliness. They
die of other things of which loneliness contributed
to. To that disease or that. That illness.
(05:35):
And I think there is something real
about this, that we're. We are designed by God
to know and be known, you know, and to love and be loved.
And we. It's why God says
to Adam, you know, hey, it's not good for man to be
(05:55):
alone. And we have this need for relationship, and
we substitute relationship for
engagement online.
It's like this patina of
social relationship that's not real.
It's so shallow. And
(06:18):
when it comes to communicating the need to be engaged in a group,
we almost have to start conditioning people again
to, you know, you re. You really need real
relationships, like real, real friendships. If you watch an
80s movie. Now, A.J., you're older than me,
but, you know, if you. If you watch an 80s movie,
(06:41):
like one of those, like, Breakfast. Breakfast Club.
Was that one. Yes, it's called the Breakfast Club.
Okay. Or. Or any. I mean, I don't name it. Name it. Name the
teenage 80s John Hughes
movie genre from the 80s. It's all about these,
like, deep friendships and relationships. Angst and fun.
(07:02):
Yeah, yeah. And. And today you're
like, it. It feels totally
fabricated and fake. I mean, it is Hollywood, so it is fabricated and fake to
some degree. But they were so popular as movies, I guess, back in the day,
because people could relate to having these kinds of friendships and relationships.
Yeah, People today don't have those kinds of relationships with people. I agree.
(07:24):
Yeah. I mean, I honestly, dude, I lived it, you know, I mean,
I feel like that was my experience was the kinds of things that
you see in some of those teen movies from the 80s, so. And
it's stark difference between today, you know, I mean, I have teens
myself now, and that kind of environment just doesn't
appear to exist. No, it doesn't. So it
(07:46):
doesn't exist. And so, yeah, this is real. Like, this is a real problem
and maybe almost like trying to
reignite that passion. Like, hey, you have a need for something, and this.
This other emotion you might be feeling is actually just loneliness
manifesting or being sensed as something else. Yeah. So
I don't know. That was just my. My first. Our first point is getting to
(08:08):
the heart of it and remember and reminding people you need people.
People need people. Yeah. From a communication
standpoint, we've got kind of a practical tip for you on each of these three
points today. And this one is to relate some testimonies about
this. One of the things that. And we say this for a
variety of communication points in the church, but have like real
(08:30):
people get up and talk about these kinds of things. You
pastor, you. You get the spotlight all the time. Not
that other people need spotlight, and I'm just joking, but people
that aren't normally appearing at the front of your church
to have something to say is a really powerful testimony much of the
time for others. So somebody that maybe
(08:52):
hadn't. Hadn't been engaged in fellowship and, and took the
step of joining a group and it was really became a great change for
them. Hearing it from them would be more impactful than you telling
the story or speaking in, you know, in
generalities about the benefits of it. So keep that in mind as a practical
tip for helping to get people interested or willing to try something
(09:14):
new. Totally. All right, let's move on to number
two. So this is maybe a step further in directness. So I think
the first layer is, is maybe speaking in
generality about the human need for
relationship and kind of speaking that at that meta.
Macro level, then drilling down a little bit more
(09:36):
and talking about how important it is from a
theological perspective that we be engaged
in the fellowship. So this is an opportunity
to speak, I think, do
some theological education and talk about what is
koinonia? What does this word mean in the Greek and how is it
(09:57):
used? And the. And. And then
moving again even further and pressing people,
not in a shaming way, but in a direct way
and letting people know the thing that we aren't
supposed to neglect is, is the fellowship
and kind of
(10:20):
reminding people and saying what happens on Sunday morning is good,
but it's not the end. It isn't koinonia. Like, if we can define what
koinonia is and then describe what Sunday morning is,
you can see clearly that they're not the same thing. So
if koinonia, if fellowship is a clear
marker of spiritual maturity and I'm not engaging
(10:43):
in that kind of spiritual friendship and
fellowship, then I'm falling short of spiritual
maturity and being that direct with people until. And
saying you're. Until you're engaged in deep spiritual
friendship, you're not spiritually mature. That might be harsh,
that or might seem too, too hard,
(11:06):
but it's true. And,
you know, it's okay. It's okay to say hard things to people sometimes. Yeah,
this is a verse always comes to mind for me. It was an old memory
verse of mine that talking about this, it applies
in kind of several things, but it's Hebrews 10:25,
let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing,
(11:28):
but encouraging one another. And all the more, as you see the day
approaching, capital D day, the return of Christ.
Giving up meeting together is the root of a lot of issues. Actually
we speak about this a lot in the strategic visioning process of
maintaining the meeting frequency and work
in implementing strategic plans in the church. But in this case,
(11:51):
meeting together in fellowship is an important biblical aspect.
The other thing I want to say about this, Scott, is this is just one
piece of what should be a healthy biblical discipleship pathway in
the church. I mean, you mentioned acts in Acts
2, 41, 47. We see 6ish
things. You know, these behaviors that the early church was doing in fellowship was
(12:13):
one of them. And so we should have a discipleship pathway in the church that
is enabling an environment for people to engage in all of these
behaviors that the first century church did. Fellowship just being one.
But your small groups ministry shouldn't just happen in isolation or as
some siloed thing. That's just a ministry that's
apart from anything else should be in conjunction with, you know, really
(12:35):
a three to five step discipleship pathway that is
providing a, you know, a holistic biblical
approach to discipleship. So it's, it's an important,
it's an important piece. It's shouldn't be an elective. If you're thinking about, if
you think about spiritual nutrition, sort of like
the food pyramid or something, which I know we've gotten away, they've gotten away
(12:58):
from the food pyramid. But if, if you think, all right, pretty much I just
come to church on Sunday morning, that'd be like only eating bread.
It's like, okay, well can you, if, if you only ever ate bread,
would you die? Well, not immediately. I mean,
you're gonna, you're, you're, you're getting fed, right? Like there's
some nutritional benefit, you're getting some nutrients and things from
(13:21):
the bread. But it's definitely going to cause problems for you.
Like you're, you're going to have some nutrient deficiencies that
eventually will manifest themselves over time. So, you
know, can't, could you for some period of years only go to church on Sunday
morning and engage in, you know, singing and
just, just hearing a sermon and you know, the minor
(13:44):
interaction that you get on a Sunday morning, like can you survive on just
that? For sure, for a while, but
you're going to be spiritually malnourished because you're missing
another vital component of this, of spiritual,
of a spiritual diet. And that's the fellowship and so
communicating it that clearly it's not that we want you at our program
(14:06):
for us to be able to boost our numbers and go, look how great we
are at engagement. It's helping people understand I
have spiritual nutritional needs. And if I only
engage at this level, I am going to be spiritually malnourished.
And so it is for my good, for my
spiritual benefit, not just my human emotional benefit, but
(14:29):
for my spiritual benefit, that I engage in a different
kind of spiritual diet. I'm going to add in some
meat. I'm going to add in some vegetables.
Actually, I would maybe contend that the evangelism is the
spiritual vegetable, since everybody wants to avoid vegetables.
(14:50):
This is the Brussels sprouts of spiritual maturity.
Okay, so here's the practical tip for us to put here on point
two for you. You have to consistently or
continuously communicate not only the need for fellowship, but
your discipleship pathway. Again, we're huge on this. It's the
core of a biblically healthy church. But
(15:14):
continuously speak about your discipleship pathway and then
for the context of this episode, the importance of being in fellowship and
what that ministry will look like for you. Maybe it is small groups ministry. Maybe
it is an adult Sunday school class or some other repetitive
thing that people can engage in for a long period of time
that would provide, you know, this, this discipleship output
(15:37):
that you're looking for. People being in fellowship with others, growing in their
faith, having this community around them to weather the tough
things of, of life and to sharpen one another. So
practical tip. Communicate clearly and consistently
your discipleship pathway. That's good. All right, last point
here. Show, don't just tell.
(15:59):
Show, don't just tell. So we need to.
Here's the truth. Getting people engaged in groups
is scary to them because it's unknown. I don't know what that's going to be
like. What am I going to be asked to do?
What. What is it going to be like? Is, is it going to be scary?
Am I going to be in a room with a full. Full of strangers? Or.
(16:23):
Or am I going to be asked to teach
something that I maybe don't know? People maybe just don't know? So
show. Share testimonies. Do little videos of people
talking about their experience in groups. Maybe people saying, hey, I was kind of
nervous to join a group, but here are the benefits. Here's what I've
experienced. Here are the friendships that I've built and showing people that,
(16:46):
but also modeling it. So you're. I wouldn't actually
discourage a pastor from leading a small group because,
you know, you got enough on your plate already. But be in one, be in
a group and so that communicates to people.
Okay. Pastor takes this seriously. Actually, I would
highly discourage you from, from leading one. It
(17:07):
speaks much more. I think if you join a group
versus if you lead a group, people expect you to lead a group. But for
you to, to simply join a group that
says, oh, okay, well he's not even leading it, but he's going.
It kind of shows a level of humility, don't you think? Totally. Yeah. Interest
in a relationship. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
(17:29):
So. And I know that depending on your situation you might be thinking, oh, I
don't have anybody stepping up to lead, so it has to be me. I would
encourage you to then.
I don't know, I'm not telling you what to do. If, if you have to
for a season, lead it. I guess you can what we do church
revitalization podcast. We're constantly telling people what to do. I guess I'm saying
(17:51):
there are, I guess I can imagine a situation where for a season you would
need to be the one to get it started. But I would be very quickly
identifying a co leader who could take over and then you can just become a
member. Yeah, maybe that would have to be your situation. But your long
term plan should not be to be leading the A small. You might even want
to put a time frame on that, you know, I mean within. I'm going to
(18:11):
do this for six months. And put a little pressure on yourself to be
building into somebody that would be able to take that over as
leading it. So otherwise you, you know what's going to happen, you're going to, three
years later you're like, oh, I'm still leading. This group, leading the group. So yeah,
you know, I'm going to. Throw other thing too is it's like if
there's four groups or I'm thinking a smaller church here, you know,
(18:33):
a church of a hundred people and there's three small groups and
one of them is led by the pastor. Everyone's going to feel like, I think
I should probably go to the one that's led by the pastor. That's what I
was going to say. So maybe don't do that.
Find people. Make, make the make. If you're, if it's new to your church
and you don't really have a good group system, just try to make it stupid
(18:54):
easy. Like make it really easy. Do things that are on
campus. Do a sermon based discussion. So
there's no instruction that's required. That's Just discussion questions based on
the sermon. And by the way, you can use. Am I jumping
ahead to say you can use the things that are in the healthy church's toolkit,
the tools in the toolkit to help you build those discussion guides?
(19:16):
So it's really inexcusable. We should be able to build a
system and. And don't think it has to be massively
successful on day one in order for it to be meaningful. If
it's new to your church and this isn't really a part of your church's culture
right now, just start with something and
model it and tell stories and share
(19:37):
successes and make adjustments
as you need to to make it be more successful and just keep moving
forward. The mistake that churches make, I've seen this
firsthand multiple times, is these false
starts. Hey, we're launching groups, and then they do it for a
semester and then they quit talking about it. You know, maybe don't make a big
(19:59):
deal about it. Maybe just launch one or two small groups and
be consistent. And then the next semester add one more, and then the next
semester add one more. We think
it's got to be big or it's bad, and that's just not true.
Just be faithful. Yeah, yeah. Or just make a plan
and follow through with it. I mean, have a good plan before you start. That'll
(20:21):
help. But sometimes you think something's a good plan and
then. And then it hits reality and then you just gotta make adjustments.
Yeah, yeah. The practical tip I'm gonna give you on this
one here is kind of related to a bit of what you were saying, Scott.
I do think, I mean, everybody wants to be in the pastor's small group
or the small group that the pastor is in. Put some upper limits. They don't
(20:42):
have to be a hard number. Put some limits on the size that groups should
be. This also requires a plan for launching new
leaders. So, I mean, keep that in mind. As you're developing small groups ministry, you
should be ready to launch another group and have somebody
pretty ready to lead that. So I would put some limits on that. It's not
a small group if there's 50 people in it. That's some other thing.
(21:04):
But you, pastor, you don't need to be locked
into your group 52 weeks a year. Visit some of the
other groups. You know, maybe every couple months, just go visit one of the other
groups. I think you can accomplish some good things with that. Again, you can spend
a little bit of time with people. Don't go there as like, we have a
Guest speaker tonight, it's Pastor. Just go there, sit in,
(21:25):
hear the people's prayers, the needs. Just get to know them a little bit better.
I think it's, it's a good relationship builder for you. Absolutely. All right,
Scott, you started to hone in on my secret.
Your plot to talk about something we've talked about before, but.
The Healthy Church is Toolkit. Let me announce something we've announced multiple
(21:47):
times on the podcast. They've forgotten. They.
They forgot. But we have an amazing small
group discussion guide tool. In the Healthy Churches
Toolkit. Pastor, you can. Or pastor's assistant. You
can paste in your, Your outline, your. Your sermon text, whatever
you want. And this now anymore, I feel like I should
(22:10):
clarify that you upload. You upload a PDF of it. Okay.
Specifically PDF. Yeah, it has to be PDF. And,
and in a matter of seconds you've got a
really. It might take a minute or two. Smokers. Thank you. I just, I just
feel like, because it does more now,
because now it doesn't just generate this small group discussion guide. It
(22:33):
also generates some social media posts. It also
generates some like a
devotional that you could send out by email. So it
takes it a minute to do its thinking. In 60 to
90 seconds you will probably have an
amazing output and you'll be amazed because it would
(22:55):
have taken you probably hours to do it. Yeah. And the beauty of it
is you can. This is also sort of different from what it was before the.
Our first tool. It spit it out, you know, like
instantaneously and then you could edit it and then save it
as a note if you wanted to. But now it saves it like
as the thing that you can easily come back to. So it'll
(23:17):
generate it and then you can edit it, you can export it out as
a, as a document. You can more easily copy and paste into.
Into other formats and things. So it's. There's an improvement in
functionality or increase in functionality now, um, that I think
will make it more valuable to you. It's only
available for plus members, so I guess I should clarify that because there's some extra
(23:40):
costs for running that on our end. Yeah. So when you
wrap up your sermon this week, go get yourself a free seven day trial.
The Healthy Churches Toolkit. Try that out and
do not launch a small groups ministry using it on
a seven day free trial. Your people will be disappointed on week two when you
decided not to subscribe. I guess I would also like to mention in
(24:02):
connection to this too is our partnership with Build Groups. Yeah.
There's a great, great course in the toolkit
now specifically on group ministry and how
to, how to grow your groups. It's like, increase your groups by 50%
in, in six to 12 months. And that's, that's,
that isn't a crazy promise. Like, if you follow the steps. We've said
(24:24):
this before. It's been. But it's been a couple of months since we talked about
it. I've been through that content. I promise you, if you follow
the steps that Adam and his team outline in
that course, that will happen. So
you should, you should for sure be signing up for the
toolkit. And maybe you have some other tool already that
(24:46):
generates discussion guides for you. Whatever. Fine.
But you need, you need to check out that course. It will help you.
Yep. There'll be a link to that in this week's show notes
or in your YouTube description or podcast
description below this episode. Thanks for being with us, everybody.
Come back and see us again next week. See you next week.
Wanting to grow your small groups ministry, stick around now for the Church
Revitalization Podcast. Hello and welcome to the Church
Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the Malfers group
team where each week we tackle important actionable
topics to help churches thrive. And now here's your
hosts, Scott Ball and A.J. matthew.
(00:23):
Welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm
joined by my friend and co host, A.J. Matthew.
I literally almost said I'm A.J. Matthew,
joined by my friend and ghost. You're trying to steal my identity.
(00:48):
Oh, it's good. Okay, today we're talking about small
groups. Small or
just groups in general? We want to be. I don't
have to be small. Don't have to be small. I guess I don't want someone
to assume that this would mean it has to be home based
small group ministry. The idea is how do we get people
(01:12):
to know the importance of moving out of the
Sunday morning only thing into deeper community.
Yeah. Fellowship groups, community groups. We don't care.
Zombie school doesn't matter. All the above. Yep. Okay,
so that's, that's the plan for today's episode. All right, three,
three points for you. So let's hit it first
(01:35):
with space. You're going straight in. You got nothing. You got something else to say?
I mean, I mean, we're a minute and a half into the episode. We can
get straight to the goods. No, no banter required. No,
no. Shout out to the healthy. No, no. Shout out to the healthy. Churchestoolkit.com.
Okay, let's do that. Let's do an get the Healthy churches
toolkit@healthychurchestoolkit.com Chock full
(01:57):
of resources, tips and
tricks and some awesome AI features, including one.
I'm going to give you a little hint. It is small groups related. Scott.
Oh, yep. I'm going to tell you more about that at the end.
Oh, okay. Well then stay tuned for that ad
at the end of this episode. All right. Yeah, so we, let's. Okay, let's go
(02:19):
ahead, Go ahead, hop right in. All right, all right. You got to
really. We're focused on communicating. How do we communicate that people should be
engaged in a small group. Yes. This is actually, by the way, again,
one of our listener questions. So from a few weeks ago, we asked you to
submit questions. Here we go. Well, and by the way, we promised you. We.
You gave us content for weeks and weeks and weeks. And we're,
(02:42):
we're executing on that promise. So many of our episodes
the last couple of weeks and ones in the future are kind of be rooted
in the questions you guys sent. So, so this, so this first
communication piece is, is getting to the heart of the matter
and it's, you know, I think so. I mean we just need to
communicate that this is a. For most people it feels,
(03:04):
have the sense that it is a basic human need to be in fellowship with
others and especially in the church that, that we should be in
relationship and fellowship with others. I think
sometimes though, you know what, life is complicated and it's busy
and we've got a lot of distractions and it's really easy to get
caught into this cycle of just kind of doing what you
(03:26):
do. You do work, you do church, you do family, you do these things
and you can wake up and all of a sudden you're like, you know, what
do I actually engage with anybody? And so I think sometimes
we have to bring this to a level of consciousness for people that maybe that
maybe that is where you are. And what's the answer to that? Well, here we're
going to tell you about what our church has established for that.
(03:48):
But yeah, we need to remind people of the benefits
of human interaction. No, instead of looking
at your phone. Or working, I want to give you. I'm going to throw a
number at you. Oh, all right. This is from the U.N.
okay. Known for quality statistics. Don't start. At least
not when the stat backs up my point of view. But according to the
(04:11):
UN hundred people die of
loneliness related causes every hour.
Or Covid. You couldn't, you couldn't, you couldn't. You couldn't
help yourself, could you?
Yeah, I didn't think you'd have a UN stat that would really be related to
(04:32):
small groups in the Christian church. But okay. Loneliness
deaths. I don't wonder what that means. Do you have any.
People ending their own lives? Obviously would be one,
but there are, there are also other. Think about
things that would. If you're lonely, you're more likely to be
(04:53):
depressed, which can cause other kinds of problems.
You are maybe less likely to be active, which can
contribute to heart disease or health issues or other
health issues. You
have any other kind of health issue. And if you're not around
other people, there wouldn't necessarily be people to notice.
(05:15):
Hey, looks like you're not looking very healthy. You know,
all of those kinds of things. So it's not maybe on its own,
it's not. People don't die of loneliness. They
die of other things of which loneliness contributed
to. To that disease or that. That illness.
(05:35):
And I think there is something real
about this, that we're. We are designed by God
to know and be known, you know, and to love and be loved.
And we. It's why God says
to Adam, you know, hey, it's not good for man to be
(05:55):
alone. And we have this need for relationship, and
we substitute relationship for
engagement online.
It's like this patina of
social relationship that's not real.
It's so shallow. And
(06:18):
when it comes to communicating the need to be engaged in a group,
we almost have to start conditioning people again
to, you know, you re. You really need real
relationships, like real, real friendships. If you watch an
80s movie. Now, A.J., you're older than me,
but, you know, if you. If you watch an 80s movie,
(06:41):
like one of those, like, Breakfast. Breakfast Club.
Was that one. Yes, it's called the Breakfast Club.
Okay. Or. Or any. I mean, I don't name it. Name it. Name the
teenage 80s John Hughes
movie genre from the 80s. It's all about these,
like, deep friendships and relationships. Angst and fun.
(07:02):
Yeah, yeah. And. And today you're
like, it. It feels totally
fabricated and fake. I mean, it is Hollywood, so it is fabricated and fake to
some degree. But they were so popular as movies, I guess, back in the day,
because people could relate to having these kinds of friendships and relationships.
Yeah, People today don't have those kinds of relationships with people. I agree.
(07:24):
Yeah. I mean, I honestly, dude, I lived it, you know, I mean,
I feel like that was my experience was the kinds of things that
you see in some of those teen movies from the 80s, so. And
it's stark difference between today, you know, I mean, I have teens
myself now, and that kind of environment just doesn't
appear to exist. No, it doesn't. So it
(07:46):
doesn't exist. And so, yeah, this is real. Like, this is a real problem
and maybe almost like trying to
reignite that passion. Like, hey, you have a need for something, and this.
This other emotion you might be feeling is actually just loneliness
manifesting or being sensed as something else. Yeah. So
I don't know. That was just my. My first. Our first point is getting to
(08:08):
the heart of it and remember and reminding people you need people.
People need people. Yeah. From a communication
standpoint, we've got kind of a practical tip for you on each of these three
points today. And this one is to relate some testimonies about
this. One of the things that. And we say this for a
variety of communication points in the church, but have like real
(08:30):
people get up and talk about these kinds of things. You
pastor, you. You get the spotlight all the time. Not
that other people need spotlight, and I'm just joking, but people
that aren't normally appearing at the front of your church
to have something to say is a really powerful testimony much of the
time for others. So somebody that maybe
(08:52):
hadn't. Hadn't been engaged in fellowship and, and took the
step of joining a group and it was really became a great change for
them. Hearing it from them would be more impactful than you telling
the story or speaking in, you know, in
generalities about the benefits of it. So keep that in mind as a practical
tip for helping to get people interested or willing to try something
(09:14):
new. Totally. All right, let's move on to number
two. So this is maybe a step further in directness. So I think
the first layer is, is maybe speaking in
generality about the human need for
relationship and kind of speaking that at that meta.
Macro level, then drilling down a little bit more
(09:36):
and talking about how important it is from a
theological perspective that we be engaged
in the fellowship. So this is an opportunity
to speak, I think, do
some theological education and talk about what is
koinonia? What does this word mean in the Greek and how is it
(09:57):
used? And the. And. And then
moving again even further and pressing people,
not in a shaming way, but in a direct way
and letting people know the thing that we aren't
supposed to neglect is, is the fellowship
and kind of
(10:20):
reminding people and saying what happens on Sunday morning is good,
but it's not the end. It isn't koinonia. Like, if we can define what
koinonia is and then describe what Sunday morning is,
you can see clearly that they're not the same thing. So
if koinonia, if fellowship is a clear
marker of spiritual maturity and I'm not engaging
(10:43):
in that kind of spiritual friendship and
fellowship, then I'm falling short of spiritual
maturity and being that direct with people until. And
saying you're. Until you're engaged in deep spiritual
friendship, you're not spiritually mature. That might be harsh,
that or might seem too, too hard,
(11:06):
but it's true. And,
you know, it's okay. It's okay to say hard things to people sometimes. Yeah,
this is a verse always comes to mind for me. It was an old memory
verse of mine that talking about this, it applies
in kind of several things, but it's Hebrews 10:25,
let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing,
(11:28):
but encouraging one another. And all the more, as you see the day
approaching, capital D day, the return of Christ.
Giving up meeting together is the root of a lot of issues. Actually
we speak about this a lot in the strategic visioning process of
maintaining the meeting frequency and work
in implementing strategic plans in the church. But in this case,
(11:51):
meeting together in fellowship is an important biblical aspect.
The other thing I want to say about this, Scott, is this is just one
piece of what should be a healthy biblical discipleship pathway in
the church. I mean, you mentioned acts in Acts
2, 41, 47. We see 6ish
things. You know, these behaviors that the early church was doing in fellowship was
(12:13):
one of them. And so we should have a discipleship pathway in the church that
is enabling an environment for people to engage in all of these
behaviors that the first century church did. Fellowship just being one.
But your small groups ministry shouldn't just happen in isolation or as
some siloed thing. That's just a ministry that's
apart from anything else should be in conjunction with, you know, really
(12:35):
a three to five step discipleship pathway that is
providing a, you know, a holistic biblical
approach to discipleship. So it's, it's an important,
it's an important piece. It's shouldn't be an elective. If you're thinking about, if
you think about spiritual nutrition, sort of like
the food pyramid or something, which I know we've gotten away, they've gotten away
(12:58):
from the food pyramid. But if, if you think, all right, pretty much I just
come to church on Sunday morning, that'd be like only eating bread.
It's like, okay, well can you, if, if you only ever ate bread,
would you die? Well, not immediately. I mean,
you're gonna, you're, you're, you're getting fed, right? Like there's
some nutritional benefit, you're getting some nutrients and things from
(13:21):
the bread. But it's definitely going to cause problems for you.
Like you're, you're going to have some nutrient deficiencies that
eventually will manifest themselves over time. So, you
know, can't, could you for some period of years only go to church on Sunday
morning and engage in, you know, singing and
just, just hearing a sermon and you know, the minor
(13:44):
interaction that you get on a Sunday morning, like can you survive on just
that? For sure, for a while, but
you're going to be spiritually malnourished because you're missing
another vital component of this, of spiritual,
of a spiritual diet. And that's the fellowship and so
communicating it that clearly it's not that we want you at our program
(14:06):
for us to be able to boost our numbers and go, look how great we
are at engagement. It's helping people understand I
have spiritual nutritional needs. And if I only
engage at this level, I am going to be spiritually malnourished.
And so it is for my good, for my
spiritual benefit, not just my human emotional benefit, but
(14:29):
for my spiritual benefit, that I engage in a different
kind of spiritual diet. I'm going to add in some
meat. I'm going to add in some vegetables.
Actually, I would maybe contend that the evangelism is the
spiritual vegetable, since everybody wants to avoid vegetables.
(14:50):
This is the Brussels sprouts of spiritual maturity.
Okay, so here's the practical tip for us to put here on point
two for you. You have to consistently or
continuously communicate not only the need for fellowship, but
your discipleship pathway. Again, we're huge on this. It's the
core of a biblically healthy church. But
(15:14):
continuously speak about your discipleship pathway and then
for the context of this episode, the importance of being in fellowship and
what that ministry will look like for you. Maybe it is small groups ministry. Maybe
it is an adult Sunday school class or some other repetitive
thing that people can engage in for a long period of time
that would provide, you know, this, this discipleship output
(15:37):
that you're looking for. People being in fellowship with others, growing in their
faith, having this community around them to weather the tough
things of, of life and to sharpen one another. So
practical tip. Communicate clearly and consistently
your discipleship pathway. That's good. All right, last point
here. Show, don't just tell.
(15:59):
Show, don't just tell. So we need to.
Here's the truth. Getting people engaged in groups
is scary to them because it's unknown. I don't know what that's going to be
like. What am I going to be asked to do?
What. What is it going to be like? Is, is it going to be scary?
Am I going to be in a room with a full. Full of strangers? Or.
(16:23):
Or am I going to be asked to teach
something that I maybe don't know? People maybe just don't know? So
show. Share testimonies. Do little videos of people
talking about their experience in groups. Maybe people saying, hey, I was kind of
nervous to join a group, but here are the benefits. Here's what I've
experienced. Here are the friendships that I've built and showing people that,
(16:46):
but also modeling it. So you're. I wouldn't actually
discourage a pastor from leading a small group because,
you know, you got enough on your plate already. But be in one, be in
a group and so that communicates to people.
Okay. Pastor takes this seriously. Actually, I would
highly discourage you from, from leading one. It
(17:07):
speaks much more. I think if you join a group
versus if you lead a group, people expect you to lead a group. But for
you to, to simply join a group that
says, oh, okay, well he's not even leading it, but he's going.
It kind of shows a level of humility, don't you think? Totally. Yeah. Interest
in a relationship. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
(17:29):
So. And I know that depending on your situation you might be thinking, oh, I
don't have anybody stepping up to lead, so it has to be me. I would
encourage you to then.
I don't know, I'm not telling you what to do. If, if you have to
for a season, lead it. I guess you can what we do church
revitalization podcast. We're constantly telling people what to do. I guess I'm saying
(17:51):
there are, I guess I can imagine a situation where for a season you would
need to be the one to get it started. But I would be very quickly
identifying a co leader who could take over and then you can just become a
member. Yeah, maybe that would have to be your situation. But your long
term plan should not be to be leading the A small. You might even want
to put a time frame on that, you know, I mean within. I'm going to
(18:11):
do this for six months. And put a little pressure on yourself to be
building into somebody that would be able to take that over as
leading it. So otherwise you, you know what's going to happen, you're going to, three
years later you're like, oh, I'm still leading. This group, leading the group. So yeah,
you know, I'm going to. Throw other thing too is it's like if
there's four groups or I'm thinking a smaller church here, you know,
(18:33):
a church of a hundred people and there's three small groups and
one of them is led by the pastor. Everyone's going to feel like, I think
I should probably go to the one that's led by the pastor. That's what I
was going to say. So maybe don't do that.
Find people. Make, make the make. If you're, if it's new to your church
and you don't really have a good group system, just try to make it stupid
(18:54):
easy. Like make it really easy. Do things that are on
campus. Do a sermon based discussion. So
there's no instruction that's required. That's Just discussion questions based on
the sermon. And by the way, you can use. Am I jumping
ahead to say you can use the things that are in the healthy church's toolkit,
the tools in the toolkit to help you build those discussion guides?
(19:16):
So it's really inexcusable. We should be able to build a
system and. And don't think it has to be massively
successful on day one in order for it to be meaningful. If
it's new to your church and this isn't really a part of your church's culture
right now, just start with something and
model it and tell stories and share
(19:37):
successes and make adjustments
as you need to to make it be more successful and just keep moving
forward. The mistake that churches make, I've seen this
firsthand multiple times, is these false
starts. Hey, we're launching groups, and then they do it for a
semester and then they quit talking about it. You know, maybe don't make a big
(19:59):
deal about it. Maybe just launch one or two small groups and
be consistent. And then the next semester add one more, and then the next
semester add one more. We think
it's got to be big or it's bad, and that's just not true.
Just be faithful. Yeah, yeah. Or just make a plan
and follow through with it. I mean, have a good plan before you start. That'll
(20:21):
help. But sometimes you think something's a good plan and
then. And then it hits reality and then you just gotta make adjustments.
Yeah, yeah. The practical tip I'm gonna give you on this
one here is kind of related to a bit of what you were saying, Scott.
I do think, I mean, everybody wants to be in the pastor's small group
or the small group that the pastor is in. Put some upper limits. They don't
(20:42):
have to be a hard number. Put some limits on the size that groups should
be. This also requires a plan for launching new
leaders. So, I mean, keep that in mind. As you're developing small groups ministry, you
should be ready to launch another group and have somebody
pretty ready to lead that. So I would put some limits on that. It's not
a small group if there's 50 people in it. That's some other thing.
(21:04):
But you, pastor, you don't need to be locked
into your group 52 weeks a year. Visit some of the
other groups. You know, maybe every couple months, just go visit one of the other
groups. I think you can accomplish some good things with that. Again, you can spend
a little bit of time with people. Don't go there as like, we have a
Guest speaker tonight, it's Pastor. Just go there, sit in,
(21:25):
hear the people's prayers, the needs. Just get to know them a little bit better.
I think it's, it's a good relationship builder for you. Absolutely. All right,
Scott, you started to hone in on my secret.
Your plot to talk about something we've talked about before, but.
The Healthy Church is Toolkit. Let me announce something we've announced multiple
(21:47):
times on the podcast. They've forgotten. They.
They forgot. But we have an amazing small
group discussion guide tool. In the Healthy Churches
Toolkit. Pastor, you can. Or pastor's assistant. You
can paste in your, Your outline, your. Your sermon text, whatever
you want. And this now anymore, I feel like I should
(22:10):
clarify that you upload. You upload a PDF of it. Okay.
Specifically PDF. Yeah, it has to be PDF. And,
and in a matter of seconds you've got a
really. It might take a minute or two. Smokers. Thank you. I just, I just
feel like, because it does more now,
because now it doesn't just generate this small group discussion guide. It
(22:33):
also generates some social media posts. It also
generates some like a
devotional that you could send out by email. So it
takes it a minute to do its thinking. In 60 to
90 seconds you will probably have an
amazing output and you'll be amazed because it would
(22:55):
have taken you probably hours to do it. Yeah. And the beauty of it
is you can. This is also sort of different from what it was before the.
Our first tool. It spit it out, you know, like
instantaneously and then you could edit it and then save it
as a note if you wanted to. But now it saves it like
as the thing that you can easily come back to. So it'll
(23:17):
generate it and then you can edit it, you can export it out as
a, as a document. You can more easily copy and paste into.
Into other formats and things. So it's. There's an improvement in
functionality or increase in functionality now, um, that I think
will make it more valuable to you. It's only
available for plus members, so I guess I should clarify that because there's some extra
(23:40):
costs for running that on our end. Yeah. So when you
wrap up your sermon this week, go get yourself a free seven day trial.
The Healthy Churches Toolkit. Try that out and
do not launch a small groups ministry using it on
a seven day free trial. Your people will be disappointed on week two when you
decided not to subscribe. I guess I would also like to mention in
(24:02):
connection to this too is our partnership with Build Groups. Yeah.
There's a great, great course in the toolkit
now specifically on group ministry and how
to, how to grow your groups. It's like, increase your groups by 50%
in, in six to 12 months. And that's, that's,
that isn't a crazy promise. Like, if you follow the steps. We've said
(24:24):
this before. It's been. But it's been a couple of months since we talked about
it. I've been through that content. I promise you, if you follow
the steps that Adam and his team outline in
that course, that will happen. So
you should, you should for sure be signing up for the
toolkit. And maybe you have some other tool already that
(24:46):
generates discussion guides for you. Whatever. Fine.
But you need, you need to check out that course. It will help you.
Yep. There'll be a link to that in this week's show notes
or in your YouTube description or podcast
description below this episode. Thanks for being with us, everybody.
Come back and see us again next week. See you next week.
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