Best Practices For Small Groups

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Share the Load
Empower others in your group to use their gifts. Roles for which you can solicit help include: Co-leaders, Prayer leaders, Snack Organizers, Service Project Coordinators, Group Activity Coordinators.

Ice Breakers
This is great way to get everyone to loosen up and share: use games to get people interacting! Search Christian Ice Breakers to find a host of ideas online.

Stories and Testimonies
This is great for groups just starting out on their journey together, but can be done any time. Give a couple or small group of people 30 minutes to an hour to just share their stories. The group can cover their family history or couples can talk about how they met. Ultimately, it’s an opportunity to hear how people have met Christ and their journey with Him afterwards. If the storytellers are open to it, questions from the group can also really enhance the time.

Identify Love Languages
Everyone receives and feels love in different ways. Some feel the most loved when they receive encouraging words; for others, it’s a hug. Some feel loved by acts of service, and others just by spending quality time. Whatever the love language is, take the time to get to know the love language of each member in your group. Have a discussion around the topic. The more people are aware of others Love Languages, the more they will be able to intentionally go out of their way to show love to the people around them.

Skip the Agenda
Take a night to skip the study plan and just find out how everyone is doing. What’s new? Does anyone need encouragement? What is God doing in your life this week? Right now? Spend your time asking these kinds of questions instead of the discussion questions that you had originally planned to cover. Allow time to see where the Spirit leads.

Prayer Partners
Many groups have a time of prayer or at least have an opportunity to share prayer needs at the end of their meetings. The groups that go the extra distance incorporate prayer partners who meet during the week to pray. They pray for the group and the requests given the week previous. Most will keep some kind of group prayer journal to keep track of prayer needs and the way that God meets those needs.

Men’s and Women’s Nights
It can be a fantastic change of pace when all of the men or women can get out and meet for dinner without their spouses. Not only will it provide a bonding time for those participating, but in many cases, people may also feel more open to sharing when their spouse is not present. Beyond that, it can be a valuable time for people to discuss whatever happens to be on their minds, and help build relationships to a new level.

Kid's Study
Some groups have mastered modeling group life for their children. In some cases, groups have been able to find a few spiritually mature high school kids who will lead a time of teaching, questions, and crafts in another part of the house while the adults are having their meeting. So not only do the children see their parents modeling authenticity and commitment to relationships, but they get the opportunity to participate as well.

Service
Groups that serve together, stay together. Nothing transforms group closeness and authenticity like serving together. Whether it is a weekend activity or a week-long trip to build in Juarez, the experience is always worth it in the long run. Groups can build cohesiveness almost overnight with the shared experience of service projects.

Dinner
Encourage your group to have dinner together periodically. It can be a potluck, whole group activity, or even just a few getting together at a time. Groups that do this best have some kind of rotation where every member has dinner with every other member at some point through out the year.

Babysitting Co-ops
This is a simple way to preserve the marriages in your group. Form a babysitting co-op with your group for a Friday night. One couple watches all the kids (for free), while everyone else gets a date night out. Each couple ends up watching all the kids one night out of every 5 weeks. And it’s not total chaos when all the kids are at your house either. It can be a great time to get to know a family better when you get to spend time with the kids.

Game Nights
Schedule an extra meeting each month just to gather together for a social time of fun. Rotate houses and have the host house come up with the game for the evening. It could be anything from Bunco to cards to backyard Olympics. Whatever it might be, take the time to have some fun together and build social ties.

Staying in Touch through Technology
You can create a free and relatively simple blog for your group at www.wordpress.com. This way, you can send updates or changes in meeting schedules and prayer requests, and stay in touch.