Fresh Life Groups

Jan 8th, 2010

Fresh Life Groups

One of the things that I have been most excited about recently has been the growth of our small groups at fresh life church. They are an extremely important part of a healthy church and have always been, going back all the way to the early church in the book of Acts. They are especially important when a church has multiple services/campuses to ensure people are plugged in on an intimate level and have meaningful discipleship relationships. Otherwise it is easy to anonymously exist in a congregation without experiencing the depth of spiritual fellowship that God uses to transform a person.

We had tried various solutions but up until the spring of 2009 the fact that we were struggling to get people to attend the two home groups we offered showed that we hadn’t hit our stride in this area. Our plan was for them to divide like cells when they grew and eventually we would have home groups all over the place. But It…Never…Happened. The church continued to grow, but the groups never did. Now flash forward just under a year and as we approach our second trimester of Fresh Life Groups we are adding 7 new groups to the 18 we had in the fall that this month will begin meeting in homes all over the place. What is equally awesome is that in addition to all the new people who signed up this time 72% of those who attended reenrolled in this new season.

What changed?

In a way not much, the premise is the same as before, people need and want to get to know others on a deeper than surface level, homes are conducive for coffee and relaxing, and leaders facilitate discussions based on the weekend message geared at taking it deeper and spawning times of prayer and accountability.

But in another way everything changed. We approached them with intentionality as opposed to just turning them on and expecting them to succeed. We set aside a season of pastoral prayer, brainstorming, research and came up with a plan and here are the key differences between our previous (lack of) strategy that floundered and what we are doing now that is flourishing:

Before, the groups were never-ending but Fresh Life Groups break the year up into trimesters. So to lead or attend you aren’t signing your life away but rather you are making roughly a 10 week commitment.
The Fresh Life Groups break during busy seasons of life–namely the holidays, a generous Spring break and Summer. At the end of each trimester you have the option of signing back on to the same group, switching to a new group or taking a break.

Earlier, the groups required no commitment, you could come and go with ease and without announcement–the Fresh Life Groups require signing up and not showing up repeatedly (without notice and a good reason) causes a forfeiture of your space. You might think having options open would be more appealing but we have found just the opposite. It is a lot easier to find an excuse not go if there is no commitment involved.

Previously the groups had no demographic goal, but the Fresh Life Groups are loosely broken up by young-single’s, empty-nesters, young families etc; Even though (within reason) you can request whatever group you want. People have an easier time relating to those at the same station in life. (those who understand the struggles of finding babysitters can pool their resources)

In the past when it was time to announce the groups we just put them into the bulletin and casually let people know about them, but with Fresh Life Groups I cast the vision for them from the pulpit and became a small group evangelist. We also throw our art and video dept’s energy and abilities into the mix as well.

Another difference is that early on we allowed the leaders to just come up with questions during the message for their groups to discuss but now the pastors craft the questions that every group will discuss and I record a special video message that is played in every group before the discussion begins with anything I want to add to them.

In short, we take them seriously, very seriously. They are one of the top three most important things on our schedule, the other two being our weekend services (the Word and worship) and skull church (evangelism), and we now give our approach to community the resources, platform time and attention that it deserves.

Just thought I would share some of what has worked for us because I have had several pastor friends express similar frustration and I hope seeing a little sneak peek in to our journey helps a little bit. I can say this for sure, Fresh LIfe Groups have changed our church for the better.

Here is a little video we played a few weeks back when we kicked off the winter 2010 signups.