What did your group(s) do over the holiday season?

The holiday season is a hard time for many groups to get together. People travel, family members are visiting, and so on. Did your group(s) cancel sessions over the holidays, meet as usual, have a holiday celebration with or without partners and friends, or something else entirely?

Sometimes it is good to take a break. This is especially true when you know people are going to be busy. A holiday celebration is a great way to take care of each other and respect holiday needs. Open gatherings with friends, etc... are great ways to keep groups open and identify people interested in joining a group after the new year.

Coaches: At your next meeting check in with facilitators to see how they handeld the holidays. Check to see if groups met, if there were additional social gatherings, and especially if they have better ideas for next year. If they do, take some notes and offer these suggestions early next December.

UU Cell Groups

Email: Peter, We have two leaders in many of our groups. With co-facilitators the group is still resistant to growth and division. I don't understand how two leaders drive the next step of the group life cycle. (permission to use excerpt)

Many small group ministries do not expect the group leaders to do much outside of the group time. All the "ministry" takes place during the group sessions. This is a recipe for generating long term, closed, stable groups.

Much of the SGM literature uses the term cell groups. This is because the successful christian mega churches follow a model that is based on the life cycle of living biological cells. This is something which pleased me as it meant I could go directly to the source for a guide to growing small groups. No, not the Bible --- biology text books. I suggest you check out some biology illustrations of cell division.

For the sake of this post, let's call UU small groups that follow a model based on the life cycle of living cells UU Cell Groups.

Here are some characteristics of UU Cell Groups:

Span of care
Span of care is limited to 10, but it is always restricted to half of the small group. The group leader and apprentice split up the group, taking responsibility for the shared ministry and leadership development of that subgroup. Well, the subgroup and the other leader.

What about the other half of the 10? That is left for people who will become part of the new groups which each of the two leaders will lead.

The community of the cell
There is always an intentional community of each UU Cell Group which extends beyond the 8-10 attending the session. This includes friends of people in the group and others peripherally connected to the leaders and group members through church life. This larger community of the cell is analogous to the inside of a living cell. The nucleus of the cell -- the genetic core -- represents the group session and official members.

The shared ministry of each group focuses on the members of the cell community, not just the nucleus. Tending to the needs of the community keep the nucleus or group wall porous.

Growing the cell community
The cell community must grow in order for a group to naturally grow and divide. It is the people in the community which become the new members of the group. Each of the two cell leaders focus on their half of the group outside of the session time, such as on sundays and at church functions, and ideally for a periodic social event. By being in relationship outside of the group, each leader develops relationships with her half of the group and their friends.

Since the subgroups have stronger relationships than the group at large, the session group, members are more open to change in that group. Over time, the people in the cell community clustered around each subgroup start to take on the size and appearance of a new small group of 8-10.

As the subgroups and their informal relationships with other cell community members strengthen, they may discuss forming a new group. Upon identifying an apprectice leader and host in each subgroup, now of 8-10 members each, these two subgroups may start meeting as two new daughter groups.

If the process of sharing the ministry continues with the new leaders, the group will again start to form two new subgroups, maintaining the intimacy and quality of ministry. And on it goes...

Cell Cycle
UU Cell Groups on spend a small portion of their time with the core members meeting for a session. In fact it is only for about 4 hours per month. The rest of the time is spent being in relationship with the community of the cell, the group members and the people they are close with both in and out of church. But for this to work, you must have two leaders with an expectation of participating in the community. This does take more time, but it is closer to what people really want!

A higher bar
Fewer people will sign on to be leaders of groups following the model of UU Cell Groups. But the cool thing is that UU Cell Groups grow. Plain old UU small Groups do not! You can identify a great facilitator and explain the model to them. Let the majority of your groups carry on. But try raising the bar...

I am in the process of writing up a more thorough resource on my UU Cell Group approach. If you have comments and or ideas, please email me. --Peter.

On Replication...

In Bob Hill's December 2004 issue of Covenant Group News, Bob mentions on program consultant's use of the term "replication" as an alternative for group division.

Everyone says we can't get UU groups to grow and divide. I believe this is because most people are working on the level of growth and division of groups. In small group ministry, if you want open groups that are connected to your congregation and continually grow, you have to focus on the replication of leaders.

As far as replication goes, the biological model of cell division does this perfectly. As part of the life cycle all healthy cells (think groups) replicate their DNA in the form of chromosomes (group members), in order to divide into two. They also work with two essential structures in the cell which govern the processes of division. These cell community leaders form links or "relationships" between the chromosomes. Then each of the two cell leaders guide their half of the group to one end of the cell. Once they have migrated to the two poles they settle into two core groups. Once this happens and the two groups have stabilized, a wall is formed between the two. When the cell wall forms the result is two copies of the original cell.

The big lesson?

In the life cycle of the group (or cell) it is the successful completion of one stage of the life cycle that drives the next. For details on the life of groups following the cellular model read my January 4, 2003 notes on Small Group Biology.

Is growth good?

Growth is a part of small group ministry. Why? Because so many people are hungry for community, friendship, spiritual growth and an opportunity to use their gifts in service and leadership.

We don't talk about growth in small group ministry because bigger is better. We are forced to look at how we handle growth because when a small group ministry is meeting peoples needs, maintaining a connection with the larger congregation, doing ministry/servince in the larger world, and sharing the ministry within the groups growth is almost guaranteed.

You need to know what you're going to do about it! Growth is a great "problem" to have and a good indicator that your SGM is on a good track.

Creating Session Plans

Where do your sessions come from? I've seen a number of sources...

1. The minister writes them all.

2. A committee works with the minister to prepare sessions. In some cases the minister just rubber stamps them and in others there is a true collaboration.

3. Individuals in a group offer to write AND lead a session. This is optional. Many find it a deeply spiritual process to design a session for their own group.

4. Each group brainstorms topics they are interested in and the ideas are put into a hat. A topic is drawn at random each week.

A few thoughts. Giving facilitators prepared sessions makes it easy to just show up for group. However this doesn't give people capable of producing great sessions the opportunity.

Some groups have had great success with one word sessions such as justice or faith. Random session topics can have great merit, but they can also fall into a rut. Well prepared sessions can challenge people, stimulate serious personal and group reflection, encourage action in our lives, and help us along our spiritual paths.

What do you want to acheive with your small group ministry?

For those of you interested in using prepared sessions, consider purchasing the session books from the Augusta, ME congregation. They have done a great job designing sessions. The cost of the book is probably about the equivalent of one hour of your ministers time.

If you are starting with SGM it is well worth purchasing a set of sessions and THEN adding to the pool. This can take a lot of pressure off of the minister or SGM team.

Starting during an interim ministry?

Recently I have had contact with a few congregations in ministerial transition. Overall, I would say that small group ministry can be a huge benefit. I have seen people stay connected to a congregation that they might have otherwise drifted away from because of their small group connection.

Harder is starting SGM in an interim year. An interim minister may need to work longer with the board and congregation to determine that this is what they want. If you choose this route, make sure you decide if you want the new minister to inherit and established small group ministry or help launch one upon arrival. There is a big difference. No which path you're on, make sure you include this info in your congregations packet!

Language of Small Group Ministry

The langauge of Small Group Ministry is hard. We often talk about launching a small group ministry or starting a small group ministry. This reinforces the common practice of ADDING a small group ministry program to a congregations offerings. The potential of small group ministry is in ministering THROUGH small group ministry, in sharing your ministry with lay leaders, in focusing on helping each person find her or his own ministry.

Carl George talks about this in his books on the Meta Church model. His model is about how we can look at everything we do in church as being connected to the ministry of the church, with intentional leadership development, support and care. Meta church is a way of examining and mapping the community. It is not another term for small group ministry, though this is a common claim.

Question: are you a church with a set of small groups or are you a church that ministers through small groups?

There is a huge difference. Can you see it?

When you talk about "a small group ministry" make sure you are not shoving it into the category of another program.

Perhaps we should talk about becoming a small group ministry...