So, what does a Small Groups Pastor do? When I decided to take up the role at my local church I sat down with a blank sheet of paper and asked myself exactly that, what am I supposed to do?
I was given a job description that goes along the lines of “grow the network for small groups” and that’s about all. It wasn’t laid out as a matter of numerical supremacy, the directive is to in the first instance get as many people in our church as possible into a small group for their own spiritual development, then see where it goes from there.
My sheet of paper blank, my brief in front of me, I prayed and asked God to lead me on with a vision for the small group ministry in this church that would be valuable and effective in developing the spiritual lives of those inside and outside the church. No mean feat!
At college we are encouraged to discover our philosophy of ministry (we all have one even if we don’t articulate it). I believe my philosophy of ministry centers around the concepts of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. You have probably heard of the former and not the latter.
Orthodoxy is all about having right beliefs where orthopraxy is all about putting those beliefs into practice.
To effectively lead this ministry and grow and develop it I need to have both the right concept of it’s goals and model the right steps to see it happen.
As I sat down with my pen and paper I jotted down everything that God was telling me about the priorities of the ministry. I reflected on those for a while and saw that they grouped themselves into three categories:
- Community
- Scripture
- Outreach
I’m going to expand on those each in separate posts but I want to focus now on rebranding a ministry.
I have the brief and my focus areas but how do I do it? How do I get a church excited in small groups again?
Taking a leaf from all those marketing people I used to work with, I’ve gone with rebranding the ministry. The vision of the church is to move people from complacency to being compelled in their faith so my part in that is to get people to explore their faith in a new way.
So “Explore: groups” are born. Each small group is now focused on:
- Explore: Community
- Explore: Scripture
- Explore: Outreach
This is not just marketing but a re-imaging of how a small group ministry can run in the context of our church.
But where do you go from here? You start investing this in the leaders and modeling it to them.
