Over the last twenty years, we’ve had the privilege of working with hundreds of the largest and fastest-growing churches in the country, including 50 of the top 100 listed in Outreach Magazine’s annual list.
This year as we reviewed that list, we also reviewed some of the things we’ve worked with these churches to create and some of the insights we’ve gained along the way. These 12 discoveries have introduced an exponential approach for not only connecting entire congregations into community but also equipping them to reach their communities and beyond. These emerging small group models are aligned with weekend services, with the vision of the church’s pastor, and with the mission of the congregation.
Click here to hear more about some of our recent learnings in the Largest and Fastest-growing Churches in America
Here are the 10 characteristics we’ve discovered from having worked with some of the largest and fastest-growing churches around the country:
1. Create More and Better Weekend Alignment
The number one event in any local church in America is the weekend service, and it requires most of the staff’s best efforts- all the more reason to leverage that experience far beyond the weekend. What if there were more and better ways to leverage the impact of the weekend sermons? What if we turned one weekend into more of a “catalyst” to next steps vs. merely a weekend event?The question is, “What next step do I recommend and how do I make it happen?” We are saying why not take the inspiration of the weekend service to greater application through conversation all throughout the week? This strategy honors the time-tested insight that people forget 80% of what they hear but what they discuss they integrate better into their lives. So how do I get them to talk about a sermon instead of just listen on Sunday?
Many growing churches are using sermon-based discussion questions for their small groups. This serves as a good next step for taking the sermon and putting it into context in a living room. However, with further research, we’ve discovered the lion share of existing groups don’t use this very comprehensively and we found that a new model is far more effective. Producing a shortened video edition of the weekend sermon or a new production leveraging the senior pastor allows groups to watch a video from the pastor and review the material at the next level.
Lifetogether is showing churches how to produce this and when to introduce this on a weekend so you can not only have your existing groups go through the study more effectively, but introduce a new strategy to launch groups exponentially 24/7, 52 weeks a year.
See how we used this strategy for: capital campaign at Rock Church with Miles McPherson!
2. Shift From Recruiting Leaders To Growing Disciples
The greater opportunity is to challenge any new or existing attender to continue the conversation with a friend or two with the short video segment based on the weekend sermon. If we can motivate unconnected attenders to take this step, many will grow into being a small group over time.This worked like nothing we had ever seen before. Today we are targeting people to not “host” a group but empowering Christ followers / disciples who simply want to “grow” spiritually. Every pastor wants his people to grow and people attending church on a regular basis by definition want to grow in their walk with God or they wouldn’t be there. If the “next step” spiritually is to not just be a disciple but make a disciple, why don’t we call it out of them?
We’ve discovered that using a video curriculum that aligns with a weekend sermon series, it provides the perfect tool to make that happen in any congregation of any size, anywhere in the country. When the pastor uses his influence to say we want you to “GROW” spiritually and your “next step” is to GRAB the curriculum outside (or online), GATHER a few friends and start “GROWING,” we see a huge response!
With 95% or more of any church service filled with Christians who have already become a disciple of Christ, this is your chance to redefine that spiritual growth is not defined by simply attending church but gathering with a friend to grow together. Trust me, this is a killer strategy to get not just 5%, 10% or even 15% of your congregation to step up and functionally lead a group – 20% – 25% of your congregation will gather a friend almost overnight. The beauty of this model is that with a video-driven curriculum and companion print study guide, you are able to then catalyze a few
friends to grow into a circle of friends or an active small group community.
3. Launch Groups Anytime, Anywhere With Anyone 52 Weeks a Year
When I got to Willow Creek we began hosting on-campus events to connect unconnected people – it worked but compared to what? We would have hundreds of people come and get in a group and we would hope and pray it stuck. Upon further analysis, “the sign up to show up” was embarrassing and the “stay up” was disaster.When we started “connection events” (that others later called “Group Link”) it increased the “stick rate” substantially, but primarily just among the already-motivated church members. For the first 50% of the motivated church members in any congregation we found that “connection” was a really good hook but to get the other 50% of the congregation and beyond it would take a completely different model. Producing a video curriculum series helped a new attender gather with a few friends, family members, neighbors or coworkers to start a “circle at friends” on their own. Empowering people to “create their own community” is a far more effective way to start and sustain a new group and can be done anytime, anywhere and with anyone 52 weeks a year.
4. Streamline the Connection Strategy for Groups
Letting people sign up for groups on the weekend or go online to get in a local group is not as effective for connecting people into community.But what is the alternative? Launch more and better groups that are more “self-organized” vs “church-organized.” To get affinity-based groups based on authentic relationships is exponentially more effective in assimilating people into groups. Simply give them a “4 spiritual laws” like tool that aligns with the most influential person (like the senior pastor) and even with the most leveraged and resourced event of the week (like the weekend service) you will NEVER come close to connecting your Easter adult attendance. Instead, have them download a how to get connected in a community video and brochure that helps them grow spiritually…crazy, yes, but 10 times more effective then we have been using so far.
5. Discover the New Mid-Week Worship Experience
When I served on the Saddleback staff, mid-week worship was the number one thing recommended as a next step off the weekend service. Many churches still host a mid-week service on either Wednesday night, Sunday night, or some other night of the week. But this was taken over by Saddleback by a small group experience and we eventually shut down the mid-week worship experience. Most of the growing churches we are working with now are doing the same thing.For the last 15 years, Lifetogether has been delivering a video-driven teaching experience that has helped to launch and lead more groups and churches than ever before, helping to attract over 100% in many of those churches. But in the last two years the decentralizing of a worship experience led by the worship team of a local church has become an emerging new model to integrate the best of small groups and a mid-week service. We work with churches to create a second worship service experience by producing 5, 10, or 20 worship songs for a small group, a small venue or even a personal worship experience led by the worship team at their very own local church. This is, and will be, a trend that many churches will be doing in the future. You have got to see this to believe it: Best of Worship Medley.
6. Produce In-House Alignment Campaigns and Companion Video Teaching Series
Hosting a “40 Day-like campaign” has long been an outstanding strategy to build momentum into the fall, new year or spring seasons in any church. There are hundreds of best-selling authors and Christian publishers with a handful of off-the-shelf campaigns to choose from.But the growing trend today in local churches is producing their own in-house campaign and video curriculum based off the teaching ministry of their senior pastor and aligned with their sermon series. See a few examples from pastors and churches you know well that are producing annual (or even more often) alignment campaigns with video curriculum: Best of Print Curriculum.
7. Build More Conversation, Not Another Sermon
After trying to create small groups in a church and still producing a weekend service, a new integrated model is emerging. We are calling it the “Conversation Service,” which is the best of small groups and a weekend service. This new service is not traditional, nor contemporary, but in a new conversational format that we believe will emerge as the new contemporary service in the future. The teaching is taught in the round with an audience surrounding the senior pastor. It starts like a small group with an icebreaker and some brief interaction from the audience, then proceeds with the teaching by the senior pastor, and then ends with audience interaction that is open, authentic and unplugged. We can produce this live and make it available for the small group to discuss or just produce it as a brand new curriculum format.We are finding that this is a far better format for an emerging culture and a better way to reach millennials who are more interested in authentic, engaging conversations than sitting and listening to a full-length sermon. Most churches don’t realize they can host a service like this, just as churches hosted contemporary services to complement their traditional services years ago. It’s a far more effective way to reach un-connected and un-churched people looking for a church of a different kind. So how might you take your first step into this? Lifetogether is coaching churches on how to produce a Conversation Series in a new pilot program we are doing.
You can co-opt a poorly-attended existing service on the weekend, either on Saturday night or Sunday morning, or you could add an additional service on either of those times. Or, like some are doing, you can add a Thursday or Sunday night service, or replace your Wednesday night service with this format. The beauty of doing this any time of the week is that this is a more effective service to stream live as opposed to your long-play weekend messages that may not be as engaging or that don’t have this kind of participatory engagement.
In this day and age, people are looking for more story, testimony and application through the lives of everyday people. It’s important to understand how to engage this audience and how to then coach the audience to engage with you, which is a part of what we are doing with local churches around the country.
This format is also the next step toward streaming a live service that we are calling a microsite service that targets a setting larger than a small group but smaller than a multisite campus. We are still calling it a campus because it ultimately operates similarly but you don’t need to pay for the lights, land or leadership–you just catalyze, coach and care for them remotely. This is a killer app for the future. Many churches are starting to do this and are going down this road… it’s just a matter of time. For example, check out what we did with Jerry Dirmann at the Rock Church whose series is now playing on Christian television and not only launching groups but launching satellite and microsite campuses: God Swears Sample Session.
8. Leverage Small Groups to Become the Best of Attractional and Missional Methodologies
Small groups driven by a video teaching experience can be the best of the resources provided by the attractional service and the integration of the best of the missional model. At Seacoast Church, Greg and Josh Surratt had a “Missional Ministry” developing but it wasn’t very comprehensive or effective in its approach. We aligned their weekend content by providing video curriculum resources and saw an exponential number of groups launch that were not just effective for assimilation but evangelism and outreach as well. We are working with a number of churches around the country that are integrating the best of both of these models.This is being refined and rolled out more comprehensively for training purposes, services, and sermon alignment series. Check out the series we did for Bayside Church for evangelism training called “It’s a Party.” It features a fun, new format that we developed with a small group of 8 people in a live small group format where they interacted, taught, and talked about the topic at the same time.
And here is another missional series we did with Tim Harlow at Parkview Christian Church called Life on Mission.
9. Provide Online Small Group Leader Training
Over the last 25 years, we have hosted more live small group leader training sessions than anybody in the country. The initial training may include 75% of those registered but the follow-up training only has a fraction of the response. That’s why we are seeing a growing trend of producing small group leader training and volunteer training online in a variety of new formats. The clear winner is to produce a video training versus a print-only handbook. Some may simply be a video of frequently asked questions, some are taught by small group pastors and some are topical or developmental. But the most effective is a whole new approach to training.When we produce a video curriculum for a church, we customize scripts based off proven small group training techniques that we have learned over the last 25 years. We actually put this kind of training on DVD and online as well. This gives you hours of small group training that will be watched by 90 of the new leaders that you’ll recruit during a campaign.
The more popular format has become a leader training strategy based on a live small group interaction facilitated by the pastor and sometimes the rest of the pastoral staff. This models group life, trains new leaders AND is a killer curriculum for small groups about what it takes to be a healthy small group.
This is put on a master DVD series that is a standard size for all small groups. We typically have an audience of 25-40 people that helps to ensure full buy-in from all of the ministries and the local churches. For multi-site churches it provides standardized training across all of the campuses.
10. Know the Secret of Sustaining More Groups
Over the last 25 years we have cracked a new code on how to start more groups but the constant struggle is how to sustain those groups, and we are learning a ton in this area as we work with the bleeding-edge congregations.The first thing we are doing is a new philosophy of small group ministry which is more “the parable of the sower” versus “Jesus and the 12 disciples.” The focus is more on planting, sowing and watering but recognizing it’s God who causes the growth. At the same time, aligning with the weekend services and providing a 10-15 minute version of the weekend sermon is vital in this process. The more you are aligned in message and mission from weekend to mid-week, the greater success you will have in sustaining as well as starting new groups.