Joy... Multiplied!

This coming Monday evening, my Life Group will celebrate its final evening as one larger group, and the beginning of something new! The following week, Forrest and Courtney Ramser, who have been a part of our group for the past 8 months or so, will begin a new Life Group, taking about half of the existing group with them.

This is the result of a model we have used here at Desert Springs for the past couple of years, referred to as 'Multiplication' of groups, and one that we will be phasing out as we move forward with the Life Groups ministry. It's an approach that I cut my group-leadership teeth on, and while it can be utilized effectively, I have seen more resistance to it than acceptance of it!

Just a few months ago, you would have heard me fight tooth and nail to hold onto this way of thinking; so what has changed? Well, it all began when someone shared an article with me by Larry Osborne, author of 'Sticky Church'. It challenged my thinking about the value of 'multiplying' groups for the first time in years, and at the time I didn't fully understand what Larry was trying to say.

Since then, I've had several conversations with people about a different way to do things, and attended the Custom Small Groups Workshop at North Coast Church in Oceanside. Through all of this, God has slowly drawn back the curtain on the approach I am now adopting in the Life Groups ministry.

The bottom line is this: any groups ministry (or church for that matter) must have a strategy for future growth and development of new leaders. Without such a plan, any ministry is destined to find itself in an 'evolutionary cul-de-sac', peaking out when the number of people in a small group is too great for authentic relationships to be sustained, or when the number of available leaders cannot support additional growth.

Perhaps even worse, growing a ministry by what I call 'cold-calling', or recruiting new leaders without developing proper vision and training in them, will create false growth that soon collapses in on itself. I've experienced this first-hand!

So, how do we multiply leadership and grow the Life Groups ministry without 'mulitplication' of groups? The answer is simple: recruit leaders to start new groups from within the existing ones, and run groups during limited-term sessions. This provides natural entry and exit points for group members, and a more relaxed approach to launching new groups. True, this may seem different from our old model by only a matter of degrees and semantics, but it makes all the difference in the world!

I'll post more about this in the weeks to come, but for now, know this: the era of pressure to multiply is over! There is much to look forward to in the months to come, and I believe God is preparing to grow this ministry in a new way, like we've never seen before!