I had an interesting comment via Twitter in response to my article on How Do You Assign Coaches? Life-Stage? Geographic? Random? The reader said, “Our leaders coach who they raise up and multiply out.”
See where they’re going? A group grows and then births a new group, led by an apprentice leader. A classic example of cell group or meta church practice. Core-to-crowd.
I asked the reader, “How’s it going?” and “Will it scale?”, followed by, “What’s your average adult worship attendance? How many adults in groups? And how
many adults at your Christmas Eve services or last Easter?”
Why did I ask those questions? Two main reasons:
- First, what works in the beginning or at one size won’t necessarily work as an organization matures or as it grows. This recognition is at the heart of my article on The Unexpected Twist in Saddleback’s Exponential Growth Formula.
- Second, it’s important to understand the whole scenario before you conclude that the current solution is working (or working as well as it needs to work) given the win that’s been clarified. The Catch a Moving Train Scenario and The Second Question Every Small Group Pastor Must Answer both play important roles in the diagnosis.
As you probably know by now, I want to be an evangelist for the truth that your Easter adult attendance or your Christmas Eve adult attendance is a much better gauge for the number of people you should be in the business of connecting. The average weekend adult attendance only reflects the average. It doesn’t reflect the total number of adults who call your church their church.
The reason the shepherd with 100 sheep in Luke 15 knew to look for the one that went missing was that he knew the total number. Not the average. Feel me?
Need a little more? Spend some time with part 1 and part 2 of my series, If I Were Starting Today. It’s so important, I wish it was required reading for small group pastors and directors.
Want do you think? Want to argue? Have a question? You can click here to jump into the conversation.
