From experience I have learned that taking on new leaders because someone else recommends them does not work. More than once I have been charged with apprentices/co-leaders/whatever you wan to call them and turns out usually that they were being given to me because someone else didn’t want them.

It has always worked best for someone to surface within a group I’m leading - someone that loves God and others, serves others, and doesn’t think too highly of themselves. Usually by the time they surface I have gotten to know them, observe them, serve with them and I am learning their heart. From there we can be more intentional about them leading with me and then later multiplying with their own group.

My first sign of trouble is when someone proclaims their own leadership abilities. From there we need to work on humility……..

Some things are better ‘caught’ than ‘taught’… and some things can only be caught!

When serving in program-based churches we used a leadership preparation strategy that was called ‘pre-service training’ (catchy, huh!). We looked into the tasks required to fulfill the demands of a certain job description and put those tasks together in what seemed like a logical, short-term module of study. The idea was simple: give everyone a chance to explore a job in the Church and use the pre-service training to weed through (both from their perspective, and from ours). We presumed that exposure to information would result in effective leaders (after all, “information was power”… or so we were told).

When Father began to move our family into more organic, smaller (home or market) group life expressions of Church, my first thought was transfer the plan to the new setting. That was a really bad idea!

In hindsight, I think it failed (miserably) for at least two reasons:

First - information does not equal transformation (if it did the highways and byways of the Mid-Atlantic would be much safer to drive on).

Second - Church (especially as it is experienced in small group life) is not a museum in need of a well-informed curator. It is more of an adventure that needs well-practiced guides. (Not that the journey of any one group is the same as the last or the next, but dealing with a charging rhino or collapsed bridge at the moment is very different than knowing where you are going to start with and sensing the readiness of those who are your traveling companions!)

So, I dropped back and punted. The model that has been most helpful to me is actually two models…

If the small group ministry is new to the system (or to the person) then what many call a turbo group is my preferred way. Simply build a new group solely of people who will one day lead groups. This takes time, of course, but you want the people who will lead groups to have experienced group life. However, experience without reflection can lead to tons of misguided conclusions. So, a good turbo group will gather a bit longer than whatever is ‘usual’ for groups in your Church. For example, if the groups of your Church meet for 75-90 minutes you might want turbo groups to meet for 120 minutes. The basic gathering liturgy would be whatever your norm is, but reserve the last 30 minutes to talk about things like what we did, why we did it, how we did it, etc. Generally, Adele/I would lead the first couple of months. But, not later than 3 months in we would be enlisting others to guide different parts of the gathering… meeting with them early to help plan their involvement. Within 4 or 5 months, everyone would be leading different parts of the group time - all experiencing all of those parts.

Simultaneous to the gathered experiences, would be the scattered experiences. Since disciples are never made during a meeting, that time between meetings is more than critical to the health of a spiritual family. Following the same example as above, we would never serve alone, intentionally giving every member of the group opportunity to experience and debrief all that is involved in leading a small group.

Finally, nearer to the end of the life of the turbo group, every member would be guided in identifying people in their lives in whose lives God is already at work… led to engage those people in meaningful spiritual conversations… basically walked through the birthing of a group!

The life-cycle of such a group varies, but we have found that not less than 6 months is absolutely essential and exceeding 12 months is usually an indication that what was once considered a turbo group has replaced that mission with something else altogether.

If the small group ministry is ongoing in the Church (and in the life of new leaders), then we prefer an apprentice model. Simply stated, no group is led alone. In addition to Holy Spirit and a more experienced facilitator, each group would have an apprentice in whose lives the facilitator is pouring their own life… mentoring… involving with every aspect of group life… and guiding in the building of significant relationships with some people in the existing group as well as people in their life-networks. This cycle includes identifying the next generation of apprentices so, when a new group is birthed, a lead facilitator and a new apprentice are both already in place.

I wish I had an answer but we’ve not had the multiplying small groups thing really in any formal sense. Discipleship pairs / tiny groups have grown and multiplied, mostly through making things as simple and transferable as possible and by taking a personal interest in communicating to those demonstrating influence the desire to remove “centralized” people from the multiplication.

We’ve seen a lot more growth in people taking active discipleship roles in each other’s lives, but the emergence of simpler churches and the like has been slow and embryonic… I think there is a lot of cultural baggage / non-new disciples / community(not communitas) stuff going on currently. So I’m trying to be patient and allow the spirit to work in ways only it can, keeping an eye out for newer “blood” I can be involved with more directly.

Historically, during our Kairos small groups, facilitators were born and raised out of a sort of mini-mentorship / friendship type deal. It was pretty organic compared to the programmatic “coaching” type strategies, but it was still somewhat programmatic (since the environment was somewhat programmatic too).

The only way we have found new facilitators that have continued long term is by apprenticing someone in a group and multiplying. Almost everyone we have brought in from the outside struggles with their group and have never and I mean never reproduced.

The worst thing we have done to find leaders is making a public announcement…almost all the leaders who would love to have a group tend to have a poor self-awareness of themselves and are not the best group leaders.

The best thing we have done is personal relationships where we have challenged individuals to consider apprenticing and or leading. Our best groups have come from those who were fearful to lead.

The thing we have most learned…you can not fast forward or bypass the multiplication process. It must be slow and intentional. You just have to work through the process.