a Shared Life

Since I am currently working on how to build community (and the leadership structure that supports it), most of my reading lately has been on small groups ministry. This morning, I finished Simple Small Groups, by Bill Search.

The author contends that healthy small groups must maintain a harmony of three patterns–connecting, changing and cultivating. (Connecting=forming deep relationships. Changing=becoming more Christ-like. And cultivating=living missionally.) Maintaining harmony between these three patterns will help groups remain healthy and be more likely to continue. Each section contains some good questions for group leaders to ask about their groups. This would be a good book to recommend to a small group leader or coach of small group leaders.

Personally, I am looking at how to structure training for group leaders in my church. Since our church uses the words connect, grow, serve and share to describe a balanced life of following Christ, I have been thinking of structuring the training around these concepts. In many ways, serve and share can be combined to form what the author intends for the word cultivate–living missionally. Although I love the word cultivate, it might be easier for our purposes here to retain the previously mentioned four words.