From my family to yours, Merry Christmas. May you experience the presence of God this Christmas season.
Love, The Gaston Family (Todd, Pam, Hannah, Sydney, and Lexie)
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Hi Todd,
I have been attending your services for about two years now and have joined a small group led by Dean Cassel. I became a Christian in 1974 while in the navy and I’ve been in a few churches. Some were willing to take a chance with creativity and connect with the world around them to spread the gospel, but most were not and would lead you to believe it was a sin to connect to the world and be creative. They didn’t understand I Cor. 9:22 “To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.” The creativity and reaching out is amazing at Mt Ararat.
Being around a few churches in my past has allowed me to see some things work pretty well, if I may, may I share some thoughts? Now that you have started the small groups, I have to say I believe in them whole heartedly. I would like to share with you my observations from another church I attended that seemed to have the small group thing down pat.
Think in terms of an army, we are an army of Christian soldiers and we have a lot of marines in our church, so this should be easy for all of us to understand. You have a general, his staff, and then the army or foot soldiers to go and conquer. The general is you of course, like it or not, and I hope you do, but you are the general of small groups. So, you have to decide on the vision and how to implement it. You have decided on the vision, and that is to incorporate small groups. I don’t know how you are going about incorporating this vision, but here is some food for thought. As the general, you may want to consider having your own home group, and that would be the pastoral staff of Mt Ararat and their families that meet weekly just like everyone else. You should lead it, and each pastor under you should have over site of a region of small groups, and they should be getting together with the leaders of small groups to get to know them, their strengths and weaknesses, where they need help and support. Eventually, as your pastors are meeting new comers and listen to their needs, they will be able to say “I know just the people you should hook up with, let me put you in touch with so-in-so because that is the small group you need to be in.” Also, you should have once a month meetings, say on Sunday evenings for you, your staff and the small group leaders, this meeting would accomplish several goals. As you are going thorough teachings on Sunday mornings, you are being lead by the Lord on particular topics that the church needs to hear, so Sunday evening leadership meetings would be to share the vision, explain your goals, get feedback, find solutions and most of all to pray for each other’s needs. Also, small group leadership training could or should take place at these meetings. Of course this training could be done by someone on your staff. If you already have a really good person that trains people to be leaders, then maybe you would want him to be your specialist in this area, the go-to guy that small group leaders could go to when they need someone with expertise, this would take some of the load off your shoulders too. Every good army has a leader, and the leadership understands the goals and is trained up in leadership.
Lastly, you may want to think about the naming here. For a while I didn’t know if it was a small group, home group, or a care group (all names used at other churches). Personally I like calling it a Care Group. Small sounds insignificant, home sounds welcoming but ‘care’ sounds like a place where someone cares, where you can receive care. I know one thing for sure when I go to Dean’s small group is I will be prayed for and for me that’s the care I need.
One thing I would say about our small group is we are all very willing and wanting to serve and get involved. I hope you take my comments as they were intended, as from one brother to another who loves the church and who praises you and your work to others all the time. Thanks for everything you do and your dedication to the Lord, Rich
P.S. Is it okay to use the blog this way?
Rich,
Thanks for joining the conversation. I am so glad that you jumped into WiiFit. We really want to change the culture of Mount Ararat through groups. All of our pastors are in a group, just not the same one. We also are working behind the scenes with our coaching network to help encourage and equip our small group leaders. We are learning alot as we move forward. We definitely benefit from other church’s already further down the road. The part I am loving is what God is doing through this journey. Thanks for growing with us. Keep sharing.
Pastor Todd