Small Group Prayer Strategies

The small group is a great setting for God's people to learn how to pray for, and with others. But experiencing dynamic group prayer times is not always easy.

Here are some ways to encourage your people to pray.
1. Provide an opportunity for people to have their personal needs prayed for by letting them write them down on paper and exchange them with someone else.

2. When leading a group prayer time provide guidance on the front end in order to minimize the need to have to address problems. Here are some examples:
A. Inform the group that you don't want the prayer time to be dominated by anyone but want each member to have an opportunity to pray out loud. It is easier to warn of this ahead of time than it is to have to reign someone in after the fact.
B. Inform the group that the focus of your prayer time is to ask the Holy Spirit to help you apply the lessons learned from the evenings discussion.
C. Discuss the need to avoid prayers that are addressing group members rather than God. This is a common problem in group prayer meetings. People often, without realizing it, shift from communicating to God during group prayer times and use their prayers to "preach". Talking about this ahead of time eliminates the awkwardness of having to correct someone.

3. Help those who are uncomfortable praying out loud by encouraging them to offer a one sentence prayer. Let them know that they don't need to worry about the words they use. They can pray as if they were talking to a God who is right in the room with them - after all HE IS!

4. As in many other areas, prayer is more caught than taught. The leader sets the tone. If you are comfortable praying out loud you will help others learn by watching and listening to you. It is hard to start a fire in the heart of another unless one is burning in your own heart.

Pastor Randy

Tips on Facilitating Great Discussions

In order to facilitate a good discussion the leader needs to:

1. Keep the discussion on track.

It is easy for group discussions to get derailed. The leader must detect when a discussion begins to go off on a tangent and gently direct the discussion back to where it should be headed. This can be done by simply reiterating the question to refocus everyone’s attention.

2. Encourage and allow for everyone to participate.

Good leaders encourage their quiet members to participate without putting them on the spot and making them uncomfortable. If a group member really doesn’t want to say anything, accept their right to be quiet. One strategy to help quiet people become more comfortable talking in a group is to plan an ice breaker or game that requires group-wide communication. Another strategy is to find out the interests of your members and to ask questions related to those interests. Almost everyone will open up when the discussion touches an area of interest.

3. Manage those who have a tendency to dominate the discussion.

Many small groups have one, or maybe two, people who are very talkative and tend to dominate the discussion. This problem can be avoided if you begin by stating that the goal is to give everyone a chance to add their input. That is a nice way of communicating right from the outset that you don’t want anyone to dominate. If you feel that someone is starting to dominate you can tactfully bring others in by either:

A. Asking a specific person to respond, so long as you know the person is comfortable being called on.

B. You can ask the rest of the group, “What do you think about what (dominating person) has been saying?

4. Ask good questions

Good questions are:

1. Open ended. Open ended questions require more than a one word answer. Ask questions that require people to share their thoughts and feelings.

2. Easy to understand. Don’t assume that the questions in the curriculum are clear. If they are confusing to you they are likely to be confusing to others. Re-word them if necessary and keep them simple.

3. Exploratory. Ask questions that help people to explore why they think or feel the way they do.

5. Bring it home.

A great discussion ends with the group members having gained an understanding of what they need to do with the information they have gained. They need to be able to answer the “so what?” question. You can do this by closing with asking everyone to share what God wants them to “take away” from the meeting.

Some other tips:

1. Don’t fear a few moments of silence. After asking a question it is ok for there to be a 10-20 seconds of silence. Be patient. If the silence extends beyond 30 seconds you might want to restate your question or ask another one.

2. Don’t fear disagreement. One of the worst mistakes a leader can make it to disallow anyone to disagree with him/her. A mature leader is able to respect opinions which differ from their own. Of course, if the disagreement concerns a basic belief of our church the leader needs to gently, yet firmly affirm the truth.

Leading Implies Movement

At the risk of being stating the obvious, small group leaders are leaders, and as such, need to understand the essence and importance of spiritual leadership. In "Spiritual Leadership" Henry & Richard Blackaby briefly define leadership as, "moving people on to God's agenda". Their definition draws attention to a couple of important truths about spiritual leadership. First, our job as leaders is to help people move. None of us have arrived. All of us have room to grow and mature. Jesus calls disciples to "follow" him. Hebrews 6:1 calls Christians to "move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity." Some other words used to describe this movement are "progress", "growth", and "increase".

Philippians 3:16
But we must hold on to the progress we have already made.

1 Timothy 4:15
Give your complete attention to these matters. Throw yourself into your tasks so that everyone will see your progress.

Colossians 1:10
...so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God

2 Peter 1:8
For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The second part of the definition explains the direction we are trying to move people in. I don't know of a better way to speak of the transformation that needs to take place in our lives than to describe it as "moving on to God's agenda". At conversion we don't become perfect, but a heart change occurs which produces a willingness to no longer live for ourselves, but for the one who died and rose again on our behalf (2 Corinthians 5:15). The church is supposed to be a Christ-centered community. We are the body of Christ with Jesus acting as the head of this body; and as the head, Jesus sets the agenda for the rest of the body.

Join me as fellow leaders in praying the the Spirit will equip us to influence others to give greater priority to God's agenda than our own! Pray that God will help us to hold up Christ before those we lead so that they will be so captivated by who He is, what He has done, and what he is going to do, that they will be compelled to live for Him!!!

Sticky Church

In his book, Sticky Church, Larry Osborne describes a healthy church as a "sticky" church. A sticky church is concerned with reaching people for Christ, but it is equally concerned with keeping people in Christ. A healthy church is a "sticky" church in the sense that it is characterized by a strong commitment on the part of its people to Christ and one another. A sticky church is not concerned with drawing a crowd but developing a community. A sticky church is not as concerned with momentary confessions of faith in Christ as much as it is concerned that people live faithfully committed to Christ.

The premise of Osborne's book is that small group ministry is the key to creating a sticky church. Small groups afford people the opportunity to become part of a community, rather than part of a crowd. Spiritual maturity cannot take place in isolation. Of the list of Spirit-produced character qualities in Galatians 5:22,23, most are directly related to how we treat others. In 23 years of full-time ministry I have observed one common denominator in the lives of those who have turned away from Christ. Turning away from Christ is almost always preceded by a withdrawing from the community of faith. Isolation from the community is an almost certain predictor of spiritual apostasy. Small groups provide protection against the forces that might otherwise erode, or even destroy a persons faith.