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Mar
3
F Leader , I Leader , Susan Hill

How Social Events Strengthen Your LIFE Group and Attract Guests

by Susan Hill

As a LIFE Group Leader, I am amazed at how effective social activities are for building relationships within the group. A few years back, the LIFE Group that had been meeting at my home on Wednesday nights moved to Sunday mornings on campus. I didn’t anticipate any changes in the group, but I was in for a rude awakening. Longtime group members who had spoken freely in my home were now virtually silent in the classroom on campus. As new members joined our group, longtime members shared less and less. As this trend continued, I was dumbfounded.
Despite the awkward transition, we started to plan social events outside of group. One Sunday, we had a picnic in the park. Another time, we attended a play at a local college. We got together and painted canvases on a Saturday afternoon. I immediately noticed that group members were talking and sharing more in social settings than they were during class. Slowly, relationships were building. This carried over to Sunday morning group time. My longtime members started speaking up on Sunday mornings like they had in my home group. Newcomers began sharing sooner than before. Before long, group members were getting together on their own during the week.
At Christmas, we decided to have our party at a local restaurant on a Saturday afternoon. I encouraged group members to invite people who weren’t connected to a LIFE Group. Honestly, I wasn’t overly optimistic that many newcomers would attend a Christmas party. To my surprise, six new people came to the party and three of them came to our LIFE Group the following Sunday morning.
This group transition taught me that social activities strengthen relationships in LIFE Groups and are evangelistic in nature. There are countless people who might not be willing to come to church but will gladly meet a group of friends at a local restaurant. After they meet new friends, they are far more willing to visit church.
As you consider ways to serve those you lead in your LIFE Group, don’t underestimate the value of getting together for social activities. People join a LIFE Group because they want to be a part of biblical community that extends outside group time. This describes the New Testament church that Paul describes in Acts 2:42, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

Feb
24
F Leader , Jay Fennell

Leading an Externally Focused LIFE Group

by Jay Fennell

One of the biggest challenges in leading a LIFE Group is keeping the group externally focused. An externally focused group intentionally builds bridges into the lives of others, especially non-group members. Externally focused groups travel together toward Christlikeness but always looking outward for others to bring on the journey with them. It’s a challenge to lead a group to be externally focused because the natural tendency for any group is to be internally focused, especially groups a year old or older.
The key is to lead the LIFE Group to be internally healthy, but externally focused. Internally, the group prays and cares for each other, strives to build Christ-honoring relationships and studies and applies the Word together. But they also have their eyes focused outward toward others who aren’t connected in community, passionate about developing new relationships with new people, and inviting them to join the journey.
The leader sets the tone for a group that operates this way. Here are some practical ways a leader can keep a LIFE Group externally focused:

    • Fight the natural inertia of inward focus. Regularly remind the group members to make room in their lives for new relationships. Remind them there are people who are disconnected but desperately looking to be connected. Keep it ever before the group that there are people that still need to be reached.
    • Recognize the empty chair. Always have at least one empty chair or seat to represent the person who is not present. Draw the attention of the group to that chair, challenging them to prayerfully consider the person who needs to be in it.
    • Make invitation an expectation. Inwardly focused groups don’t invite their friends, neighbors and acquaintances. Stress the importance of inviting people, expect them to do it and make it a cultural norm of the group. It’s typically true that the LIFE Group leader must model this behavior before it becomes adopted by group members.
    • Consider what God is doing outside the walls. The LIFE Group leader must be sensitive to the work God is doing outside the walls of the classroom or living room, and he/she engages the group to partner with God in that work. Groups that serve together outside the walls have externally focused hearts and minds and God blesses the work of their hands.