Practical ideas to deepen the fellowship of your group

An excerpt from Leading Small Groups with Purpose, by Steve Gladen

Meet in a home or some other comfortable setting (such as a restaurant or coffee shop). Meeting outside of the church is much more conducive to creating a relaxed atmosphere. Letting people into your home and going to theirs gives you a glimpse of each other’s lives.

Arrange chairs into a circle so everyone faces each other. Such a set-up encourages members to make eye contact with each other, which promotes conversation.

Provide name badges for the first few meetings or when introducing a new person to the group. Remembering each other’s names is much easier if they are on display in a simple stick-on name tag. Also, be sure to provide name tags when you add new members to the group. This is often overlooked since the majority of members know each other, but it can really help new members to feel less awkward.

Remove distractions from the room. That includes stacked laundry, loose toys, and roaming pets. If the phone rings, let the answering machine get it.

At the beginning of the meeting, ask everyone to set their cell phones to vibrate. Model this behavior by turning your cell phone to vibrate in front of group members at the start of every meeting.

Provide adequate lighting for reading. While soft lighting may be more conducive to relaxing, your members need to have enough lighting to refer to their small group study guides and Bibles.

Maintain a comfortable temperature in the room where you are meeting. Members who are too cold will be uncomfortable, and members who are too hot can become drowsy. If you have members who tend to be chilly (when no one else is), drape a lightweight blanket or two over the arms of your chairs for those members to use.

Provide icebreakers. Using simple icebreakers can be a way for new people to get to know group members. They can also serve as a fun activity for groups that have been meeting together for years. There are several books on icebreakers from which to choose. A great resource is What’s Your Story? Icebreaker Questions for Small Groups by Cheryl Shireman (available at www.amazon.com).

Another idea is to write down simple questions, cut them up into strips of paper, and put them into a large mixing bowl. Pass the bowl around and have each member draw a question from the bowl and answer it. Unless your group is very close, be sure to use questions that are easy to answer such as: What is your favorite movie or television show? What game did you like to play as a child? What is your favorite book? This is also a great way for group members to discover they have more in common than they’d realized.

Print a group directory. Every group should have a directory of group members. Pass out a piece of paper and ask them to write down their name, email address, and phone number. Ask for a volunteer to type them up and print them out for all group members (or send it as an email attachment for those who use computers). Such a roster is a must-have in case of an emergency or if a group member wants to contact someone else in the group to ask a favor or something else. Once a year ask the group members to verify that their phone number and email address is current. You also may want to include birthdays and anniversaries.

Celebrate milestones. Take time to celebrate not only birthdays but also anniversaries, the birth of a child or grandchild, potty training, graduations, retirement, etc. This can be as simple as sending a card, as low-key as bringing out a cake at the end of the meeting, or as elaborate as a full-blown party. The important thing is to make group members feel loved and celebrated.

Teach groups to share values, expectations, and commitments up front. Guidelines help avoid unspoken agendas and unmet expectations, which are the source of most of the problems in a small group. We ask our groups to agree on guidelines during the first meeting in order to lay the foundations for a healthy group experience. And we encourage groups to add whatever they feel is missing to the suggested guidelines. This helps prevent problems later on.

Make group attendance a priority. At Saddleback we ask group members to call the host (small group leader) whenever they are going to be late or absent. This encourages accountability and conveys the importance of the small group meeting. Don’t let members fail to attend meetings with no explanation at all. It is important to give grace for the many complications of life, but you also need to promote the importance of group attendance.

Rotate your meeting place. Don’t have your small group meetings at the same house every week. Very often the leader takes on this responsibility, and it can feel like a burden very quickly. Instead, pull out a calendar and ask, “Who wants to have the meeting at their house next week?” Planning your next month of meetings in advance will prompt other members to volunteer their house as a meeting place. When you meet in various members’ homes, you get to know each other on a different level.

Assure everyone that your group is come-as-you-are and no one needs to do extra housework or provide elaborate snacks. Then it is important to stick to that. Unless hospitality is your gift and you just love doing so, make your small group meetings very simple and don’t go out of your way to impress members with fancy desserts or complicated appetizers. Bottled water and a bag of chips are fine. It is about the relationships, not the snacks.

Use social media sites to stay in touch between meetings. Be sure everyone in the group who uses social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter adds all of the group members. This can be a great way to get messages to each other in between group meetings. You may even want to set up your own group page where you can post messages or photos.

Never cancel meetings due to low attendance. If only two or three people can make it to group this week, go ahead and have the meeting. Don’t mistake low attendance for low importance. Every group meeting is important. If only one other person shows up, perhaps that is God’s plan. Make use of that time together to connect in meaningful ways.

Build family into your group when children are involved. Have the children call other parents “Uncle” and “Auntie” rather than “Mr.” and “Mrs.” We do this in our small group. So instead of “Mr. and Mrs. Gladen,” we’re “Uncle Steve and Auntie Lisa” to the kids in our small group. We know that one day our kids will want to talk to another adult, and we hope that person will be someone in our small group family.^[1]