Case Study with Ray Johnston at Bayside – “Born For This”

The church went from 400 groups to more than 1,700 groups and 2,000 hosts!

Gil Steiglitz, small groups Pastor at Bayside, says working with Lifetogether helped Bayside see the critical steps needed to implement a strong small groups program and create a new culture. Instead of asking “How can we get more people into groups?” Gil and his team are how asking, “How can we recruit more people to gather their friends and grow together?” The focus has shifted to hosts, with the church even creating a quick text option for people to respond that they’ll lead a group.

Bayside Church in northern California has a strong weekend worship experience, with 15,000 to 18,000 people gathering each weekend across five campuses. However, the pace of small group development had lagged behind with “only” around 450 home groups that connected fewer than half of Bayside’s attenders. The senior leadership wanted to have as many as 1000 groups – a “stretch goal,” they said – and to create a sustainable model for moving forward. The Bayside team worked with Lifetogether in August 2016 to produce “Born for This,” a seven-week video and print curriculum campaign focusing on the book of Philippians and designed to correlate with the pastors’ weekend teaching.

Through the partnership with Lifetogether and the coaching and insights from the Lifetogether team, Bayside has made other changes that are transforming their small groups program. In addition to recruiting new hosts, the church has also created a strong orientation and training program, with video training filmed by the Pastors as well as personal training from Brett Eastman and Dave Stewart. The Senior Pastors also prioritized small groups in a new way, with a sustained push over weekends in July, August, and September.

Bayside expanded that commitment to the small groups vision by hiring great leaders at each campus and bringing them into the planning and campaign implementation and, of course, by filming the video curriculum as a team. As Brett often says, “The sheep like to hear from the shepherd;” with this project, the Bayside “sheep” were able to hear from all of their leaders with high-quality teaching that extended the culture and values of the church.

The entire experience created FOMO – fear of missing out – among the church members, Gil says. People understood this was one of the significant things Bayside was doing, and they wanted to be part of it.

IMPACT BEYOND SMALL GROUPS

Because of the church–wide emphasis on “Born for This,” other programs and Pastors are pulling together around the vision. Bayside positioned the groups as a “both/and” solution, releasing the pressure for everyone to conform. Small groups in the student ministry, men’s ministry, and women’s ministry are all growing.

Bayside has not only surpassed its stretch goal, but has hopes to grow toward more than 2,000 groups in the months to come!

A WORD FROM THE PASTOR

The conversations and plans that you have introduced us to have allowed us to move from 400 groups to 1400 groups and climbing.  We are excited about how this new direction and these new ideas will allow us to build a church that has more in groups than come on the weekends.

I would suggest that any church look at your system and its powerful ability to put more disiciplemakers in the game. There is a freshness to the groups campaign that comes from Lifetogether: the high quality videos, the expert guidance about what to say in the videos, the plan for emails, commercials, and training. Thanks very much for what you have given us and what you have taught us. We have been stretched and challenged but also renewed and deepened through this groups campaign.

– Gil Stieglitz