Media Outreach

Think Small.  Think Short.  Think less.  Think Individual.   Again, I don’t think that there is an accurate how to model that fits every church but these theme seem to keep rising.

• Think Short. Every small group ministry I talked to is running on a semester system: Fall, Winter/Spring and usually a short Summer.  I know there are 9 and 12 month closed models as well that are successful, but they seem to be pretty few a far between.  I like the semester approach because it seems like it gives natural points of momentum several times a year rather than one big push.  The semester approach also seems to break at the right times, which for a lot of our people means school breaks.  For example the first semester (Fall) will break at the end of November and start up again the beginning of February.  This is perfect to alleviate the sometimes stress of Christmas, winter break, new years and getting back to normalcy again.  Without this natural break, and a push toward newly formed Winter/Spring groups, you will naturally lose people who lose interest and motivation during these months.  This also, gives people who “don’t like the people in their group” a chance to switch without hurting any ones feelings.  Beautiful!

• Think Less. The heavy slant toward total grass roots marketing came as a surprise to me.  When I asked about sermon series, big graphics, mailers, banners, website, big “small group push parties” I got silence and an “uhhh, yeah … not really”.  They said that those avenues are great in the right context … in other words.  Rally around vision and what the individuals want to do.  You want people’s excitement and buy in to be extremely high and the marketing material to be there as a much needed support (so it has a high quality feel to how it is presented and supported).  Instead of the marketing and support presence being high and the small group leader and staff’s excitement having a “take it or leave it” attitude.  This lines up with the stats that say 81% of people that come to Christ are because of the invitation of a “friend” or “relative” as opposed to only 3% from a “church program”.  Also, very few churches did a sermon series to launch their small groups ministry, but all of them incorporated it in to the verbiage and points of at least one of the messages in every series throughout the year.

• Think Individual. One other thing is that most of these churches had their accountability worked into personal monthly trainings that their “coaches” or “zone leader” had with them and not just big once-a-semester meetings.  When you have affinity, study and fellowship based groups, the opportunity to get a bit “out there” is great.  Most of these churches had some sort of middle tier leader that didn’t have a group, but instead visited the groups under them randomly as well as phone calls/meetings every 2-4 weeks.  This not only helps to keep the ministries under authority but helps the leadership to recognize the rising stars who will be their future small group leaders.

pic by axle