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.