During the first ten months of my career as a Small Groups guy, I made a mistake. I know now that my choice was leading the Small Groups ministry straight down the path to spiritual bankruptcy but I didn’t think about it at the time. I was an amateur trying to harness some phenomenal growth and momentum and I made a game-time decision that almost cost us BIG.

While the people were becoming more and more interested in groups and the number of people being commissioned into leadership was on the rise…while the administrative systems we had created were beginning to pump out numbers and stories of life change were beginning to roll in…while all of this was going on, I was ignoring the development needs of my current group leaders. They had committed themselves to a vision I had cast and were working hard to minister to the people in their groups, but each and every day that I didn’t reinforce the vision and provide them with needed resources and counsel they were quietly growing tired

Thankfully, we are only 18 months old and I have had some great people helping me along the way who were able to look me in the eyes and say, “we should really spend a lot more time developing our current Small Group leaders.� Of course, as soon as they said it I knew they were right, but some times it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. Basically, I had gotten into the habit of thinking that we only had a handful of groups and that if the leaders needed anything they would call. The problem was the “handful� quickly went from 16 to 25 to 50 while my systems continued along unchanged.

As a result of this new discovery I have made four Leader Development events a standard part of our yearly calendar. I suspect that some of these events will be celebratory and I will focus on encouraging the leaders. Others will be very vision focused and I’ll spend most of the time driving home strategies. But these things really don’t matter! What does matter is this: Leader Development can’t ever fall off my radar again.

John Bishop, Small Groups Pastor

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Here is a list of equipment that we use. I will detail out the setup in future posts. I really like the digital console, it has helped with saving monitor settings and overall mixes. We currently do not run a separate monitor board.

Sound Mixer - Yamaha M7CL-48

4 Mid-Hi speakers - EV QRX 212/75

4 Subwoofers - EV QRX 218S

3 Amps - Lab Gruppen Fp 6400

Wireless Mics - Shure ULX Wireless systems

Wireless In Ears - Shure P4TRE systems

Headset Mics - DPA 4066

Snakes - CBI and Whirlwind

Cases and Racks - Road Ready

Damion Pirolli, Production Director

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