While I was at LifeChurch.tv I got to experience 8 church-wide small group campaigns…it was awesome and we learned a TON!! Because so many people return to churches all over the world in September and January, many churches run their small group campaigns during those months. If your church is one of those, below are a few last minute ideas and free tools that might add some value to your church’s campaign.
- Add LEADER Training Videos To Your DVD Curriculum. Most small group campaigns include free DVD curriculum for small group leaders. So why not take advantage of the tremendous amount of space available on a DVD to add some training? Simply add additional menus on the DVD with some training videos. Every small group ministry leader has struggled getting group leaders trained, so sending training to the leaders is a valid solution. By adding a few short videos that answer leaders’ frequently asked questions, you are putting training directly in their hands! Now you’re thinking, “I don’t have time to shoot leader training videos.” That’s okay, use these videos from Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Bill Search, the small group pastor at SECC, sent this link to me and asked me to pass it on to church leaders. Bill says this is a free resource for all churches. Feel free to download the videos and use them however you wish. Choose the videos that you think are best for your leaders and add them to your DVDs.
- Add GROUP Training To Your DVD Curriculum. Leader training is not the only training problem in small group ministry. A frequently overlooked problem is the fact that group members don’t know how to be good group members. So how do you train group members? Adding a short 90 second (or so) video on the front end of each week’s video curriculum can teach group members a few things they should expect from one another. Here are 4 videos that we put on DVD our curriculum at LifeChurch.tv. One video would automatically play right before week’s curriculum. 1) Building Trust 2) Promoting Spiritual Growth 3) Developing Relationships 4) Being Intentional. Download these videos using www.savetube.com and add them to your DVDs. TIP: if you don’t call your groups “Life Groups” then simply re-record your own voice-over. Click here to download the scripts for these videos.
- Provide Invite Cards for Group Leaders. It’s important to equip your group leaders with tools to help them get new people in their groups. Personal invite cards are a simple way to help your leaders out. Here are some pdf templates that you can give your leaders so they can fill in the appropriate information, print out the cards, and hand them to potential group members. Blue, Gray, Navy, Red, Instructions. Be sure to provide the instructions to your leaders! TIP: If you want to change the format or color of these files, you may do so using Adobe Designer.
Providing these three tools can help make your already awesome small group campaign even better. Go ahead…turn up the dial to 11!!
Alan – this is AWESOME & timely! Wow – this is incredible – I was just sitting down to work on our upcoming October group campaign.
-clark