GOT GROUP!

This past week our small groups have taken it totally to the next level!! We had over 100 people sign-up for our Starting Point groups ... all of them were only coming to worship on Sunday and many just started coming since the beginning of the year!! This tells us that people are coming and wanting to connect with WHAT God is doing at RBCC and with WHO He is doing it with.

Here's our lessons so far on a doing a good push with small groups:

#1 -- DREAM OUT LOUD SESSIONS.
We toyed with doing a North Point type GroupLink (tried it last year); we considered a small groups brochure/menu to give people ... finally we landed on the Starting Point concept. We bring people to the church campus. I teach for about 15 minutes and then people discuss the topic for a few minutes. This guarantees everyone knows where to come (church campus) and they know at least one person there (me). The point is we talked, prayed, discussed, planned, revised, etc. until we found something that might work.

#2 -- HAVE A SYSTEM
Vision does not become reality without a system that executes or can "git r' done". Sign-ups, follow-throughs, group leaders, facilitors, good questions, the right environments ALL require a good system, good support and in a word ... leadership.

#3 -- LEAD PASTOR SUPPORT
Group life/community has to be championed by the pastor in a message on Sundays.

#4 -- SIMPLE, EASY, & OBVIOUS STEPS
Whatever step you are asking people to take needs to be very EASY and extremely OBVIOUS!
We used to tell people to sign-up and show-up. The sign-up was easy & obvious. The show-up was hard and complicated. For example, it is easy to tell people to come on Sundays and when they show-up everything is obvious. However, when it comes to small group involvement we'd say "well go down Highway 41, turn left at the 2nd light, take the 3rd left by the old barn, go through the stop sign, and it's the fifth house on the right." Hard! We still do connect some people that way ... mainly through personal relationships and personal invitations. However, that still leaves a large part of our church unconnected and struggling with the steps needed to connect.
With Starting Point, we sign people up, follow up with them, and have them show-up to a great environment.

Now from Starting Point, we'll either transition folks into one of three environments:
1) An existing home group
2) A new group that will continue meeting on campus for a few more months
3) A new group that meets in a home

Either way we've achieved our goals of giving people relational connections in the church and placing people in a great environment for life-change!