One of the main topics that comes up every time I talk to someone about
groups is GroupLink. I’ll usually try to point you to North Point in Atlanta, GA since (as far as I’m aware) they hold the patent.
But if you insist on finding out how I did it, I’ll tell you something like this:

You’ve got to begin with a church-wide belief that small groups are the best
way to get-it-done! That vision has to come from the senior pastor and
filter down to the mom of a first-time guest. If you’ve got that in place,
then GroupLink becomes nothing more than planning a huge party!

Some of the Nuts-and-Bolts of GroupLink:
-We had people pre-register by filling out a Community Groups
Connections Card. This card was in our worship guide for two weeks and we
encouraged people with videos and announcements to fill it out. This card
asked for basic contact information, preferred location, childcare, age
group, type of curriculum preferred, and type of group preferred (you can
see our newest version of this card online at this site).

-The pre-registration card became the check-in sheet at the event.
We split the roster between three separate tables to try to speed up the
process.

-Once in the room, the group leaders stood behind tables with color
coded signs on them. Each sign gave away that group’s location, type of
group (men’s, women’s, couple’s etc…) and whether they offered childcare.

-The biggest WIN for our GroupLink event was the presence of
Connectors. The Connectors wore matching t-shirts with the GroupLink Logo
on them. They each had a clipboard with a list of the groups and leaders.
Their only job was to “work the room”, looking for that person who was not
engaged and try to get them connected to a leader.

-We also had cheesecake, coffee and a U2 concert streaming the
entire hour and a half on a huge screen. Who wouldn’t want to get into a
group when a fifteen foot rock star is yelling out ‘Yahweh’ in the
background?

-I would say that our first GroupLink was a raving success. We had planned
for about 250 people, but we bought emergency cheesecakes the night before
to feed 350, and we ended up with about 450 people at the event. As a
result, we went from 12 groups to almost 50 in just under 3 hours (of course
it took me until April to sort it all out…). Nevertheless, there are some
things that we will do much better next time.

Things to Improve:
-We will be much more prepared for the enormously overwhelming
follow-up that comes the next day.

-We will provide every one who comes in with a numbered token. The
person will give the token to a group leader if they join a group, or
they’ll drop the token in a box on their way out. This will allow us to
track who got signed up and who didn’t AND it will keep people from signing
up for multiple groups!!!

-Finally, we will try to figure out a much more creative way to
provide people with instructions about the evening. The Connectors did a
killer job but their job would have been much easier if we could have
provided more information up front.

John Bishop, Community Groups Director

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When I became the Small Groups guy for Elevation in July of last year, it
didn’t take me very long to figure out that I needed a team. For those of
you that deal with small groups, you know what I mean! After months of
struggling through too much work, I went looking for a team. At first I was
looking for two people: one who had great administrative skills and another
who was good with people. Once I found them, we began meeting as often as
we could.

Having a team of three people doesn’t make you three times as effective; it
makes you ten times as effective. The combined effect of having two other
brains on board was much greater than I expected. To give you an idea of
how much more we were able to accomplish as a team, let me give you some
numbers. When I formed the team, we had about 12 groups. As a direct
result of the efforts of the team, we were able to pull off a very
successful GroupLink event. Now we have about 45 groups. This process took
only 4 months. Obviously, there were a lot of other things involved, but
without the team the whole thing would have crashed and burned before it
ever got off the ground.

While we were brainstorming for GroupLink, Holly (the people person) said,
“I was thinking about GroupLink all last night and I wrote out a list of
things that I think might work…” Then she rolled out a memo-pad filled
with late-night scribbles. At the top of the sheet were the words, “Speed
Dating.” In about an hour we had wrestled the concept of “Speed Dating” to
the ground. The actual GroupLink event didn’t look much like “Speed Dating”
at all but having that idea as a starting point vaulted us weeks ahead in
the planning process.

So what kind of person makes the cut? I look for the person that is going
to think about small groups when I’m not around. The one that calls me on a
Saturday morning with the latest thought about how to improve the follow-up
process for the people on the waiting list. I look for the person that is
going to buy-in to the vision and purpose of Small Groups at Elevation
without any reservation. In short; I’m looking for passion! If they’ve got
passion, they can be on my team.

John Bishop, Community Groups Director

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If you’ve spent any time at all trying to coordinate all of the data that
comes with running small groups, then you’ve probably checked out of this
entry already because you know the importance of a database. But just in
case you don’t know, let me hammer on it for a little while. You need a
database that connects you to all of the other ministries in your church.

I made the mistake of spending too much time with spreadsheets. In fact, at
the height of my spreadsheet usage, I had about 8 spreadsheets running at
all times. That means that one person could be cut-pasted-and copied up to
eight times on any given day. With hundreds of people being moved around
every week, it was very easy to drop people through the cracks.

So then, I hear about this new technology that looks kind of like a
spreadsheet, but actually does more than store your information… You know
what’s amazing about a database? It automatically updates a person’s email
address in all of the records when you change it on just one little screen.
So instead of cutting-and-pasting someone until he looks like a 3 year olds’
craft project, I can actually track him with a simple left-click. I’m not
saying that spreadsheets are all bad. If you’re trying to organize your
mother-in-law’s recipes you could get a lot of mileage out of a good
spreadsheet, but for Small Groups, I would strongly recommend a database.

John Bishop - Small Groups Director

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There are many different philosophies for “doing Small Groups� at your church. In fact, I would say that there are as many different ways to approach Small Groups as there are churches doing them. One of the biggest questions you will need to answer when starting your Small Groups ministry is what will be your philosophy of Small Groups. Will you be open or closed, topical or demographically oriented, discipleship or fellowship etc, ad nauseam…

Elevation Church has committed to a Closed Group System (because we think it fits our personality and target group) with emphasis on Accountability, Belonging and Care (Check out North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, GA for the whole scoop on the ABC’s). One of the benefits of having closed groups are people get to build relationships over a period of time without having the process disrupted by new members who are added every so often. One of the biggest problems with closed groups is that they are closed; after a certain point you can’t add any more people to them even if you have a waiting list that is growing. So when your gettin’ it done on Sunday’s and people are coming to your church, you either have to violate your philosophy by making your groups open to new people, or you have to start new groups. Obviously, I wouldn’t recommend violating your philosophy very often, so the question becomes, how can I start new groups to keep up with the growth when identifying leaders can take so much time?

What’s our answer? Turbo Groups! Our turbo groups typically meet for about 8 to 12 weeks. At the end of that time the group multiplies. Not only do we gain a new group from the leader that is sent out, we also gain the advantage of filling the seats that those leaders left behind. Maybe it’s cheating; I like to think of it as doing my best to harness the momentum that God has sent us.

John Bishop - Small Groups Director

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