When it comes to elementary ministry, smaller is better. Before I say anything else, I will preface that there’s nothing like a huge rooms totally packed with elementary kids. The energy is unbelievable and I seek building these kinds of environments. However, it’s necessity for me to sandwich this large group environment with a small group experience. When parents drop their kids off, it’s usually best if they can get dropped off in a small group. New kids feel more welcome when getting the attention of a small group of peers and an adult leader as opposed to feeling lost in a huge crowd in a big room. In addition, ministry is so much more personal in that small group.

When it comes to early childhood, smaller is better, but that’s a no brainer, right? When I got to my current church, 50 five-year olds and kindergartners were all in one room. Bad idea. Try it and you’ll see.

When we organize leaders and volunteers, with go with a small span of care. For instance, a staff member may oversee a ministry and really only lead 3-4 people, service coordinators. Those service coordinators might oversee 6-8 volunteers. The entire ministry is led by people who only lead a few people. It’s great for leaders caring for leaders in their lives. In this model, the children’s pastor may not get all the lime light, but that’s distributed to other staff and volunteers who have a more direct relationship with the kids.

These are just a few examples of how small is better in church.

One of the things I love most about Gateway is that central to the mission of our church is the fulfillment of the Great Commission in EVERY aspect of ministry. For year, my focus as a Children’s Pastor was to help kids know and follow Christ. It wasn’t until coming to Gateway that I really began considering the spiritual health and growth of those serving kids. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been concerned about my volunteers spiritual condition, it just wasn’t my job. It was their responsibility to be in a small group or accountable relationship to be growing. I just needed them to help me reach kids. Sure, we could debate the pros and cons of this setup, but Gateway challenged my thinking about caring for and leading volunteers spiritually.

The problem is that many of the volunteers and leaders serving in our children’s ministries aren’t in small groups. Many times it’s for good reason. So what about their spiritual care? Who’s responsible? If I’m leading my area at the pastoral level and Ephesians 4 tells me it’s my job to equip the saints, then perhaps the spiritual condition of my volunteers is my responsibility. Think beyond that for a minute. What if my elementary small group leaders at the 9:30 service were growing together spiritually in the same way a small group would? Wouldn’t that make my team more united, consistant and effective in working together? You bet.

So the diagram above was developed by Gateway several years ago to show how people at Gateway can be cared for spiritually. The stars represent people who are not connected spiritually at Gateway. The idea is to get those who are not connected to link up either with a small group or join a serving team. We all know there are many who gravitate toward serving before they would a small group. However, either path is good. As you can see by the diagram, many people on serving teams are also in small groups. Nothing wrong with that. However, directors and coordinators also try to create groups within the serving team. Maybe 5 of the 9 small group leaders at a service will decide to do a study together. So within that serving team, 5 people who serve in the children’s ministry begin receiving spiritual care and support by a serving group. They serve together and grow together.

It’s a great model and were seeing some great things happening spiritually in the lives of our volunteers. All this helps us make a greater impact on the lives of kids. It’s modeling what we expect to see happen in the lives of kids as well. What do you think?

I was talking to my good friend (and permanent intern) Josh Kornberg about this last night. He’s an elementary major in college and he said that this is a newer strategy in education. It’s called looping. I have a lot of friends who are teachers and they often complain about the start of a new year as they have to begin again with a new class and start from page one.

The real beauty is when early childhood leaders promote to elementary to follow their group of kids or even when elementary leaders promote to middle school. We’re trying to create this culture here at Gateway. We may see a few leaders make the jump this year, but I anticipate this becoming normal for next year.

I was having a conversation with a friend in ministry and talking about this very thing. He explained that he really didn’t like middle school, so he’d probably move back down to first grade or something when his group moved to middles chool. I challenged his thinking? “What is it you don’t like about middle school? What if the same kids you’ve been leading for three years moved up into middle school. You’d still like them, wouldn’t you?” He replied, “I didn’t see it that way.”

Some people really aren’t geared for some age groups. There are some middle school and high school leaders that wouldn’t belong in early childhood. Likewise, there are plenty of early childhood leaders that don’t belong in highschool. However, when the established relationship is prioritized, everything changes.

My staff came back from Orange with all kinds of ideas. On of the ideas my Early Childhood director had concerned alignment of terminology. Basically this is where churches use the same vernacular for positions and programs throughout every ministry. It makes perfect sense. In the Early Childhood area we have three main positions. Lead teacher, room leader and caregiver. The lead teacher travels from room to room and the room leader is in charge of the room. Caregivers are simply caregivers.

So, the thought was that we call our room leaders small group leaders. This helps align terminology. It helps when recruiting as people have a better idea of what a smll gorup leader is than a room leader. Then we started to brainstorm and think outside the bun. One of Gateway’s core strategies is to connect people in small groups. We believe that life change happens best in the context of personal relationships. Although we do have kids in early childhood who have great relationships with their caregivers and room leaders, but it isn’t expressly intentional. It just happens. However, if this is a value of our church, what if we made relational development intentional in early childhood? What if rather than just have the name “small group leader” in early childhood, we actually changed the job description so that it really was a small group leader?

So, it isn’t going to necessarily look like small groups in elementary or adults, but it will be a small group. We’d follow the same strategy we are with elementary. Althouh we may have 15-20 kids in a room, we’ll run reports to see who the regularaly attending kids in that room are. Those kids would be in the small group leader’s small group. Now, that leader wouldn’t gather his/her kids in a small huddle each Sunday (unless they are in one of the 4-kindergarten rooms where they actually do that). However, this small group leader would intentionally plan to have specific one on one time with the 8-10 kids who are in their small group. The other caregivers are there to help take care of the rest of the kids, but the small group leader has a laser focus. Outside of Sunday, this leader would call the families or kids and send postcards. A relationship would be developed. Even though all the kids in this small group wouldn’t necessarily experience a “group-like” experience, they would each have a shared/personal experience with their leader.

The beauty of this plan is that we can essentially start small groups with our babies. That’s right, a four moth old can be in a small group. All they have to do is come on a semi-regular basis and they’ll be assigned to that room’s small group leader.

So, what do you think? Do you think it will work? In about six months, we should be able to let you know. I’d appreciate any ideas you might have.

I’ve had great success with small groups on Sunday nights or Wednesday nights. They were discipleship/growth focused. The kids were pretty consistent and all my groups had 8-12 kids. However, once I decided to launch small groups during Sunday services at Gateway, I knew I would have a problem. Kid’s attendance on Sunday is not consistent. I would be creating a small group model around irregular attendance. In addition, every week we have visitors who may or may not come back. I knew that it would only be a matter of time before my small group leaders had 50 kids on their rosters even though they only averaged 10-12 kids in attendance each week.

I’ve seen some churches tackle this in various ways.

The Holding Tank
Some create specific groups with kids assigned to the group each week. New kids get grouped in a special “holding tank.” After kids have attended the “holding tank” three times, they promote to a regular small group. What I’ve noticed many times in this situation is that the holding tank got HUGE and the small groups stayed small. It seemed awkward as many of the groups would have 4-8 kids and the holding tank would have 20-30 with only 1 or two leaders. The experience the new or irregular kids got was different from what the other kids got.

Laissez-faire
I’ve also seen some churches try to solve this problem by taking a more laissez-faire approach by changing the groups each week to ensure that no group got to big. This certainly keeps the size thing under control, but even some of the irregular kids might have a different leader each week. It’s not a bad strategy… better than the holding tank in my opinion.

Our Solution
I’m not going to take credit for it. A consultant at Fellowship One connected me with a church in Oregon that is doing this and it seemed to make the most sense to me. We divide our groups into gender/grade groups. First Grade boys are in their own group as are Third Grade girls. In some services, we might have two Second Grade boys groups because there are so many. Even a first time visitor will attend the same group they would attend if they came every week. We’ll do the best we can to make sure the leader doesn’t have more than 12 kids in his/her group, but there will likely be a mix of new, regularaly attending and irregularaly attending kids in each group. The difference is that the small group leader knows who his/her “actual” small group is. Of all the kids who attend this group, we run a report to show us which kids attend on average three out of 8 weeks. Our small group leaders know who these kids are. During the week (outside of class) these small group leaders will call or send notes to their kids. They’ll build the relationship outside of Sunday. Naturally, they’ll have a greater connection wtih these kids on Sunday, but every part of the small group on Sunday will have a similar experience. The commitment we make to parents is that if they will commit to regular attendance, they’re kids will be part of this small group (meaning the small group leader will reach out to them during the week). So, the Second Grade boys roster may have 50 kids on it, but the small group leader is only focused on 10 of them.

Details

• What about these irregular attending and new kids? The Children’s Ministry will provide follow-up for them, not the small group leaders. We can easily run the reports and send a postcard to a child on their first and second visit or even send them a card when they stop attending. Again, this can be handled administratively and we’ll empower our small group leaders to focus on the kids who are committed to the small group.
• Sound like an administrative nightmare? I don’t think it has to be. If you use a system that can run reports, just figure out what reports to run. We use Fellowship One and we have a unique way to do this that takes all the difficulty out of it. We have it set up so that regularly attending kids always check into one “room” and the new and irregularly attending kids check into another “room,” but the kids don’t see the difference. The system does it for us, so we don’t have to think about it. It’s automatic. I love automated systems. With this tool, my small group leaders can even log into Fellowship One, check their kids attendance on their own and access all their contact data. This way my small group leaders can have total ownership and they don’t have to wait on me for a report or information. I love it!

Your ideas
I know I haven’t seen everything. What are you doing? Tell me how it’s working or isn’t working. Although I’m happy with what we’ve figured out here at Gateway, it still has it flaws. Maybe you’re doing something that will help us do this better. I look forward to your comments!

It depends on your purpose.

Are you small groups relational based or discipleship based? Or are they both? Is the point that kids connect with a leader who can speak into their lives or is the point that the kids dive deeper into God’s word and a more personal atmosphere?

When I first started small groups, I was following Craig Jutila’s model. Although my small groups were relational (kinda unavoidable) I wanted the focus to be discipleship. I wanted the kids to go deeper. So, I created my small group program on Wednesday nights. Because I was trying to take kids to the next level, I really only wanted the kids who wanted to be there. I even charged $25 or $30 to cover their books and materials. After two years of running small groups this way, we saw more an more kids connected relationally with each other and with their leaders each year. In addition, they were growing in their faith and knowledge of the Bible.

When I moved to Gateway a year ago, it was obvious that one of the very first things I needed to do was to launch small groups in the elementary program. The parents as well as my leadership were begging for it. There were too many things to tweak and fix, so I was not about to start a Wednesday night small group program. Instead I developed a small group program for Sunday services. I don’t know if it was becasue of small groups or not, but our elementary areas grew by 20% to 30% in the last 9 months. Because our Sunday services are primarily seeker friendly, these small groups are mostly relational, not spiritually deep.

If you’re trying out figure out out how to implement a small group ministry, ask yourself these questions:

When’s the optimal time/day (during weekend services or mid-week sometime)?
What’s the purpose (relational or discipleship)?
Who’s the target audience (anyone or kids ready to take next steps)?

Oh, one last thing. This doesn’t have to be your strategy, but I’ve always created small group environments where small group leaders primarily focus on only the relationship. That means for Sunday morning small groups, we provide large group teaching or for discipleship groups there was a primary teacher and kids sat in groups with their small group leader. This means I don’t expect my small group leaders to teach a lesson. They typically just ask discussion questions and maybe lead a little activity. I’d rather have them initiating contact with their kids outside of class than preparing for a lesson. I also recognize that not all my small group leaders will be good teachers, but most of them can be a friend/mentor.

It’s not that I think small groups is better than Sunday School, it’s bigger than that. It’s not about what you call it. It’s about what it is. I believe that you have the greatest impact when you have an adult leader who is responsible for no more than 10-12 kids. That’s a small group. From my experience at more than one church, Sunday School looks a lot more like a school setting with 15-25 kids per teacher. That’s not a small group and it’s too hard for a leader to effectively shepherd that many kids. Call it what you want, small groups or Sunday school, if you’re giving your leaders more than 10-12 kids, you’re not going to have the impact you need to have.

Can Sunday School be successful? Absolutely. Again, who cares what you call it. If you can get the kids into groups of 10-12 with a qualified leader over each age group, then you can amazing success! You may just have less kids in each classroom or let a classroom be made up of two or three small groups.

See, it’s not about small groups (as a program) being better than Sunday School (as a program) but it’s more the way it is implemented. If you can create groups of 10-12 kids, you can call it God’s Glorious Bible Hour and you’ll see success. Well, maybe not with a name like that.

However, I do have a bone to pick with Sunday School but it doesn’t have anything to do with the kids. Churches who have Sunday School almost always include Sunday School for adults. This is the reason most kid’s Sunday Schools have 25 kids with one teacher. All the other people who should be working with the kids are sitting in a Sunday School class of their own. The Children’s Ministry is in direct competition with adult Sunday School. This is a no-win situation for the adults or the kids. In order to get a leader, they have to be willing to give up their service or give up their community. Seriously a church shouldn’t put people in that kind of position, but so many do.

So, that’s my rant. This is why I’m a big believer in small groups. If you’re at a church that does Sunday School, do everything you can to get those classes smaller. It will take creativity and a lot more work, but to have the impact, it’s what you’ll have to do.

I’ve got a few thoughts on small groups that I want to share this week. I’m going to throw out a little philosophy, a little practical application and perhaps some of you will comment with your thoughts and ideas that will benifit everyone (including me and what we’re doing here at Gateway).

The evidence is usually pretty clear. The group grows. You see kids swarm around the leader when not in the kid’s building. Yeah, it’s pretty obvious. However, I saw a level of success this week that made my heart swell with pride.

On Sunday night I held a baptism class. We had about 15 kids participate with their families. At the end of the class parents fill out the required paperwork. One of the parents waved me over to their table. They asked me if it was okay if their daughter’s small group leader baptized her. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Of course it’s alright! I LOVE IT!

This small group leader in particular made a lasting spiritual impact. When giving the opportunity to choose who would baptize her, she chose her small gorup leader. That’s small group leader success.

What I’m excited about is watching this baptism happen. Hopefully the other girls from the group will get to watch/participate with what’s happening. I bet that at our next baptism, 4-5 more girls from this gorup will get baptized as well. Woo Hoo!

I’ll admit it. I feel like one of the things I do very well is create small group experiences. I can get small group leaders, equip them with materials and create the relational experience pretty easily. However, the production side of a service is not my strength. Musically I am not in my element and it would be much better to have someone else. At most of the churches I’ve been, I haven’t had very many people who were comfortable or well suited to lead a large group from the stage. So usually either I was up there on the stage or someone else was and the quality wasn’t the best. Again, I feel like I’m a very strong communicator to kids, but the music part I’m just not equipped to lead well.

Coming to Gateway I found that we actually had quite a few people who were very comfortable on the stage and quite good. Unfortunately the program wasn’t always suited to take advantage of these people’s strengths. But yesterday was probably the best service I’ve seen in years. It started with small groups. Kids came in and connected immediately with their leaders. After 15 minutes or so, they all combined or the large group time. It was a 20 minute program that was fast paced and with solid transitions. Everyone was glued to what was happening on the stage. Before we knew it, it was already over and kids were dismissed back to their small groups. Leaders then led their kids in a few small group activities for the next 30 minutes. The pacing was very good. Kids were highly involved, they were engaged and they had fun. How exciting!

We’re not done though. There were still several things to tweak. We’re still short several small group leaders. There were also a few things to change in the production/large group (not much though). I also need to invest some money into our equipment. Everything went really well, but it was very difficult to pull off on the audio/visual side.

Here was my take away though… the big win in my book. About 2 months after getting here I killed the “Bible Bucks” program. Actually I’ve killed it at almost every church I’ve come to, usually because I didn’t see how it actually enhanced the experience. Usually it was more of a crutch. The program wasn’t great, but what motivated kids to be involved and active was so they could buy crap at the store. On my first visit to Gateway I noticed that leaders were bribing kids with Bible Bucks to be quite and pay attention. My only comment on this situation is this. If the content we are presenting is actually engaging and worth paying attention to, will we need to bribe the kids to stop talking? Kids don’t talk at the movies. Why? Because the content is good and engaging. Well, today I noticed something profound. I noticed… silence. During the production/large group time the kids were not talking to each other. They were laser focused on that stage. Woo Hoo! How awesome is that?

So, we still have a lot of work to do, but what a great start for the Fall!