2 Ways to Help your Small Group Leaders Succeed this Year
BIG IDEA: Recasting Vision & Redefining Expectations to your Small Group leaders
will help them be more effective with their few in the midst of this ever-changing landscape of pandemic ministry.
I’m gonna give you a length disclaimer on this one. Fair warning! hah.
Well...we’re only a few weeks into 2021 & I think it’s safe to say that the optimistic notion that the mess of 2020 would stay there has pretty safely been blown out of the water. Like…’Marvel movie action scene’ kind of blown out of the water.
In many places, cases are worse & lockdowns more strict now than they have been since the spring. The summer & early fall months saw a lot of ministries finally getting a grasp on a sense of normality with outdoor or socially distant programming. However, as the weather has gotten colder & cases continue to rise, more and more ministries have been moving back to the dreaded zuh...zoo...I, I just can’t bring myself to say the word...so let’s just say digital ministry or some altered form of what we’d hope we could be doing right now.
While I’m no expert about the mess of ministry in 2020, as an Orange Specialist, I have the privilege of having conversations with a lot of leaders like you on a regular basis. Since we find ourselves in the midst of another challenging season of digital ministry, I wanted to share some thoughts from those conversations in hopes to make this wave of digital or altered ministry more successful than the last one.
NOTE: Even if your group is meeting in person in some way, I still think there’s truth to a lot of the following.
In the midst of digital ministry, I think there are 2 main buckets that we should be thinking about when it comes to our students: content & connection
The content side of this might be our social media presence, our youtube strategy, our teaching videos, etc. Content is the bucket that asks, “What are we still trying to communicate to our students? To teach our students? How are we going to do that?”
The connection side of this is all relational. How are we going to help them feel connected to their small group & their small group leader in the midst of not being able to gather together? To help them remember that they are a part of a broader community who is in their corner, who is there for them & loves them?
While I believe the content side is important (and I do have some ideas on how we might do that better, but that’s another blog for another day), I wanted to spend some time focusing on the connection side. In the midst of digital ministry, I would argue that the connection side of ministry takes precedent over the content side. As we continue to see research & data roll in about the loneliness, anxiety & depression rates from teenagers over the course of this pandemic, it should only make it more clear that this connection & relational side of ministry is so vital right now.
That doesn’t mean your content strategy doesn’t matter, just that relationships & connection matter more...and without them, your content strategy probably doesn’t matter too much after all.
This is why I loved using XP3. It allowed me to continue to be able to really focus on the connection & community side of ministry without having the content side suffer.
So, if one of the most important aspects of digital ministry is connection/relationships, then that means the most important resources in the midst of digital ministry are your small group leaders: your number one asset for building a culture of relationship & community in your ministry.
The challenge is...digital & altered ministry isn’t really what they signed up for.
Whether you find yourself stuck in another round of digital-only ministry or you are able to meet in-person to a degree - I think there are 2 things you can do to better set your small group leaders up for success to survive the challenges we’re facing in ministry right now:
Recast the vision
2. Redefine expectations
| Recast the Vision |
My first senior pastor, Jeff, always said that casting vision was painting a picture of the preferred future in a way that inspired people to help build that future. The idea of casting vision in ministry is far from new, but it’s still pretty vital for a healthy ministry. If anything, vision leak (where people lose focus of the vision) happens far quicker in the midst of a pandemic. Another problem about painting that picture of the preferred future is - for a vast majority of the church - that the painting looks a little different now than it did a year ago. Okay, a lot different.
Our mission (what we want to happen) probably hasn’t changed. For most of us, that boils down to something like wanting teenagers to develop an authentic faith of their own in a safe community. But our vision (what we want that to look like) and our strategies (how we’ll get there) have been drastically shifted in the past year.
For some of us, it’s not that they’ve shifted...it’s that they’ve been completely dismantled or destroyed.
So, as the picture changes again, maybe for the 3rd or 4th time in the past 10 months, we have to help our leaders see the new painting. Then we have to remind them about that new painting again & again because they just don’t live & breathe this the way that those of us do who lead ministries.
So, what does the new painting look like? What IS the vision for this kind of ministry?
Well…
It’s engagement over attendance.
It’s connection over content.
It’s relationships over programs.
My enneagram 9 wants to clarify that this doesn’t mean that attendance, content & programs don’t matter...but in this season, I sure don’t think they matter as much. And if we don’t have the former, the latter matters even less (I’m praying I got the 'former/latter’ language right there).
So, how can we best help our small group leaders understand….
-their role was never to make a program happen in the first place, but to lead their few spiritually via a relationship?
-the best measurement isn’t how often their students show up to whatever digital content takes place, but how often they engage with them?
-the greatest impact our ministries are going to have in the lives of our students doesn’t come from our social media posts or youtube premiers, but in connections built & nurtured between a small group leader & their few? Essentially we’re talking about relational discipleship here.
So...paint that picture. Cast that vision. Help them feel the weight & importance of their role in this season of ministry. That yes, the youtube video the ministry spent 14 hours developing, recording & editing matters...but the text & phone call from a small group leader to a student will probably matter more. It’s not even about whether or not the student even responds! But more on that here.
So, one of the best things you can to help your small group leaders succeed this year
is re-cast the vision to them…and keep reminding them.
Next up is…
| Redefine Expectations |
I was terrible at clarifying expectations for my small group leaders. I feel like I did a pretty good job of laying the expectations out in the onboarding process, but once they signed up, I rarely revisited them. I’m not sure if I was afraid of coming off as a nag or like I didn’t trust them to do what they agreed to, but it was something I was not good at for too long.
Eventually, I realized that walking through the expectations on a regular basis & adjusting expectations when necessary was not only needed to help leaders fulfill their roles, but they were even invited. Especially when I’d tie the expectation into a piece of the vision (ie, we need you to do _____ because it helps _____ happen).
I’d even get some leaders thanking me for clarifying.
“I’d forgotten you wanted us to do that.”
“I never knew why you wanted us to ____, but now it makes way more sense.”
So, the mission (what we want to happen) isn’t really changing, but the vision (what we want the mission lived out to look like) & the strategies (how we’re going to get there) are shifting yet again. So, while some expectations from 2019 might still be relevant, there are a lot that aren’t. There are also a lot of new expectations for this season of ministry that just didn’t exist 12 months ago.
So, how do we help our small group leaders see the new painting...the new vision...
and how can we redefine the expectations of what we’re asking them to do
in order for that new vision to come to fruition?
That, my friends, is up to you & the picture you feel called to paint.
But, if it’s helpful, here are a few ideas of what some of those expectations might be…
SGL’s track how many students they interact with on a weekly basis.
SGL’s reach out to parents via email/text asking how they can pray for their family each month.
SGL’s connect (text, phone, facetime, etc) with each student at least once every 2-3 weeks.
SGL’s follow their students on social media (but also being careful not to shame them in comments).
SGL’s host digital outings with their groups periodically (digital watch party, Facetime cooking competition or more stuff like this).
Making some of these changes isn’t easy. But since when was ministry easy? Since when was ministry in the midst of a pandemic easy?
Though it’s not easy (and though there are a thousand reasons why), what you are doing matters! Don’t let the reality of doing ministry in the midst of unprecedented times (I’m sorry for using ‘the phrase’) and the challenges that have come with it keep you from seeing the bigger picture. At some point, you said yes to ministry because you wanted to make an impact in the lives & faith of the next generation. One of the most important ways to do that is duplicating yourself via small group leaders & equipping them to build relationships with the next generation to continue to remind them they’re not alone & point them back to their faith.
Don’t stop.
You’re doing better than you think you are.
Rooting & praying for you, friends.
