Getting ready for our Fall Semester of Groups, I read through Nelson Searcy’s book, Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups. It’s a great read…one of the best practical ministry books I’ve read.
We’ve been working Nelson’s system for small groups at Life Pointe for one year now. We started last fall. The highest we’ve gotten our small group registrations to is 92% of our Sunday attendance. The best we had done prior to his small group system was just under 60%. Nelson has the mind and possibly, the heart of an engineer which makes him a great, direct talking coach to a lot of pastors.
Here are my Top 10 takeaways from his book:
1. Think larger, not smaller. Larger groups minimize the weirdo factor, mean less work for the facilitator, and anticipates that not everyone who signs up will show up.
2. The Four Spaces of Spiritual Growth are: a) public space, b) social space, c) personal space, and d) intimate space. Small Groups are not geared to creating intimate space but, rather social space.
3. Be simple in your approach to groups and ministry. If you give people too many options, their involvement will be so spread out that you won’t have their full participation or momentum in any one area.
4. Entry into a group must be utterly simple and fool proof. A one-step sign-up process, which removes barriers will greatly increase the number of people who decide to join a group.
5. Your small groups must function as a SYSTEM. Systems save you time, stress, energy, and money.
6. Every person on the church staff should have a hand in the development of small groups. Think full staff participation, not staff specialist.
7. Think decentralization, not control. As long as you have complete control over your small group system, you will only be able to go to a certain level before you plateau. Groups will multiply faster and be healthier when you trust God with your volunteer leaders and your volunteer leaders with your people.
8. The implementation of your small groups should go through four processes: a) focus, b) form, c) fill, and d) facilitate. Good ideas are common- what’s uncommon are people who’ll work hard enough to bring them about.
9. When planning for each semster, you need to have a goal of how many people will be attending Sunday mornings weekly during that semester. Then, you should have a goal to have 100% or more of that Sunday number in a group. Divide that number by 20 and that’s how many groups you should have giving you a basis for how many leaders, co-leaders, coaches, and managers you need to have in place.
10. When filling your group, you need to be strategic using multiple avenues for recruitment, tactics for getting the message out, and be singular in your message during that month of recruitment. Never underestimate the power of someone telling the story of their changed life through their group.
10 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
[...] Johnson reviews Nelson Searcy's [...]
Travis - Thanks for the shout out to Activate! I’m glad you are finding the book helpful. We just posted a ton of free stuff related to the book at: http://www.ActivateBook.com
God bless you and thanks for the post! See you at Coaching next month.
Nelson Searcy
Co-Author: Activate - An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups
Lead Pastor, The Journey, NYC
P.S. I’m now blogging at http://www.ChurchLeaderInsights.com/blog
You got it…see you soon.
Travis,
I enjoyed the post! I just wish that more COG’s would turn to small groups. I know that, where I live, there is a lot of backlash for things that are different from the “normal” order - i.e. Sunday School - Morning Worship.
I’d love to talk to you about your experiences in church planting too one of these days.
Grace & peace,
Kevin
This sounds like purpose driven mumbo jumbo…where’s the Gospel is this? Who needs a book review…this ISN’T THE GOSPEL! Wake up!
I believe the link I included is the conference that is closely associated or actually the one Travis attended in April. Either way it spells UNIVERSALISM…a place the church of Jesus needs to be far away from!
http://www.crosstalkamerica.com/shows/2008/04/emergent_leaders_join_dalai_la.php
A. Regarding “Activate.” It is about small groups just like the groups that met from house to house and in the temple ala the Book of Acts.
B. Who needs a book review? People that like books. People that love the Church. People that believe it takes systems to organize the Church…kind of like the disciples when they realized they could no longer take care of all the needs of the church themselves. Their response? A system of godly men who can help wait on the tables.
C. About the conference- You believe wrong. I have a high view of the Scriptures…high enough that I’m not going to be involved in a conference with the Dalai Lama and high enough that I won’t talk about you and slander your character, especially when I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Other than that, you were right on the money.
ie. If I proudly declared that I had a signed book from David Duke(Skinhead KKK leader) what would you think of me? That maybe I sided with his ideas? Same principle here! You have a signed book from the Dalai Lama who is not for Jesus and you promoted Unchristian which contributors are mostly New Spirtualist/Emergent Church types.
You have done a Bible study on Soul Cravings by Erwin Mcmanus who is part of that group. Below is a link with info on all of them.
http://www.unchristian.com/contributors.asp
http://www.apprising.org/
http://www.svchapel.org/Resources/BookReviews/book_reviews.asp?ID=343
Exponential Conference Speakers are Man Centered and Purpose Driven. ie Grow your church and compromise with the world to bring in numbers.
Having a high view of the scriptures is great, but it’s not applied to weed out the untruths what good is it?
It’s not slander and it’s not an opinion…it’s called contending for the Faith which we are commanded to do in the Bible.
Listen to The way of the master’s interview with Doug Pagitt on youtube…do we really want to end up in christian no brainer land….
Bro. you’re not contending. You’re a comedian. It isn’t quite stand-up. It’s more like slap stick…pies in the face, eye pokes, and that kind of stuff. Somebody has to do it I guess.
Anyway, I have an autographed Cal Ripken Jr. Rookie Card, a Willie Mays signed photo, a Dr. J signed basketball, a football and a helment signed by the 2004 and 2005 Miami Hurricanes, and a ton of other autographed items. I have a picture with me and Hulk Hogan, Janet Reno, and Patrick Leahy.
Possession of them doesn’t make me a baseball, football, basketball player, or politician anymore than receiving a an autographed copy of the Dalai Lama’s book makes me a Buddhist.
Further, you didn’t even know what conference I was at and you were making some wacked statement about being about Universalism. Quick word of advice. If you’re going to contend for the faith, tell the truth. It lends to your credibility when you follow the basics, especially if your “ministry” is telling everyone else how to do it right.
[...] I don’t know of any two ministry books (Activate or Fusion) that are more straight-forward when it comes to the practical application of ministry [...]
[...] Activate by Nelson Searcy [...]