Ed Stetzer - Transformational Groups: Creating a New Scorecard for Groups

Transformational Groups, Digital Edition

Based on Print Edition

Copyright 2014

by B&H Publishing Group and LifeWay Research

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-4336-8330-5

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 269.2

Subject Heading: MINISTRY \ CHURCH GROUP WORK \ EVANGELISTIC WORK

All Scripture quotations are from the Holman Christian Standard Bible. Copyright 1999, 2000, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible, Holman CSB, and HCSB are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers. Also used is the King James Bible ( kjv ).

This book is dedicated to group leaders who diligently serve each week, leading their groups to love Jesus more deeply and to join Him on His mission to reach the world.

From Ed:

To the Life Group leaders at Grace Church. Your sacrifice and willing spirit encourages and amazes me. Without you, Grace Church would not be possible.

From Eric:

To the couples in our first small group in Miami (the Derringers, Prussners, Riggs, and Lewises): I thought of you while writing this book. Your presence and encouragement shaped Kaye and me.

Acknowledgments

There are too many people to properly thank, and we will inevitably forget someone (or even groups of someones), but we feel indebted to the following people for their contributions to this effort.

The Transformational Group research project and this book would not be possible without the tireless efforts of Scott McConnell, Director of LifeWay Research, and his team including Lizette Beard, Daniel Price, Matt Lowe, and Shirley Cross. Scott is a brilliant researcher and his team is without equal. We cannot imagine a more capable group of people and their diligence and excellence is evident throughout the book. Thank you.

The team at B&H Publishing continues to elicit our gratitude and respect for their extraordinary commitment to what they do. Devin Maddox, Jennifer Lyell, and so many others who have poured their time and energy into this effort. If this book is worth reading, it is in large part due to their efforts. We are incredibly grateful.

Dino Senesi is a friend and pastor and we are grateful for his faithful efforts helping us as we put this book together.

We also would like to thank Micah Fries, Vice President of LifeWay Research. Micah has shepherded this book from beginning to end, and without his energies the book would not be in print.

Finally, and most importantly, our wives and children deserve the lions share of our gratitude. With hectic travel schedule, busy work calendars, and additional demands that require work even when we are at home, our families support is absolutely necessary to everything we do, and without it, we would not succeed. We are well loved by our families, and for that we are grateful.

Introduction

Groups mattera lot.

In the midst of a thousand discussionsfrom being missional, to the value of preaching, to how we make better discipleswe cant forget the importance of groups in transformation.

Neither of us is in full-time local church ministry now. We serve the church by providing research and resources. Yet both of us are intimately involved in small-group life because we know groups matter.

I (Ed) serve as lead pastor of a church I planted a couple of years ago. Since my full-time job is president of LifeWay Research, I volunteer as lead pastor of Grace Church. We have a couple of full-time staff and a team of other volunteers.

I can do only a few things as a volunteer lead pastor. I preach and lead the staffboth of those are givens. But then I have to make a choice of what else I can do.

I could counsel, teach more, lead mens ministry, start something new, or a million other different things (many of which a full-time pastor would do). But I have to choose, and I choose leading a Life Group every Sunday night.

You see, Im convinced that you cant lead what you do not live . So I am a pastor, but I am a small-group leader. Actually our group multiplied two weeks ago as of this writing, so I am a multiplying small-group leader. Thats why I write this book.

I (Eric) serve alongside Ed as one of the vice presidents of LifeWay, where I lead the Church Resources Division. I also am honored to serve as teaching pastor in a local church in the Nashville area. Before we moved here, my wife and I were involved in small groups for young couples for many years in Miami. Those in our small group there are still dear friends and people the Lord used as sanctifying encouragers in our lives.

Since we are no longer considered a young couple and could not be a part of the small group as members, we now lead a young couples group at our church in Nashville. Some of the couples are so young they call my wife Mrs. Kaye, which has only heightened our awareness of our approaching middle-age status.

Kaye and I love being in a small group. We have seen the Lord use the community He develops in a group environment to mature His peopleto mature us. We lead a group not as a job but to invest in the spiritual transformation of others.

So we are small-group leaders and practitioners every week. Our desire is to serve you by helping you see group life lived out more effectively and fruitfully. We share as pastors, researchers, and small-group leaders because we are convincedand we think that you should be convincedthat small-group life matters. Church leader, your groups matter.

In a world that is pushing against community, the church must push for authentic community. We have to work to keep the values of the world out of the church body. The fact is that the worlds values are not the values of the people of God.

Yet we often forget that this includes community. The world pushes us to isolation and then offers superficial interaction as a false community. Part of what the church of God (as the people of God) must do is to show a better way. Its the biblical way of community.

So we share our hearts for community.

This book is a result of decades of pastoral leadership, countless small groups, and multiple research projects from the last three years. Our primary research sources come from three projects: the Transformational Discipleship project, the Transformational Groups project, and continuing research on group leaders. May it lead you to care about community enough that you take the necessary steps to help make small-group community a reality at your church. We also pray that it will help your groups make more and deeper disciples.

Transformational Group Manifesto

LeaderSpeak

Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

First Step: Create an intentional group DNA.

Were you to ever venture just north of San Francisco into Muir Woods, an incredible forest of sequoia trees, you would no doubt be provoked to a sense of awe over the strength and endurance of the massive trees. Sequoias are sometimes referred to as the largest living things on earth, reaching almost 250 feet in the air and standing for as many as fifteen hundred years.

When you stand before their enormous trunks and beneath a canopy more than twenty stories above you, its hard not to feel tiny and envious at the same time. If you could have a conversation with one (not that either of us have attempted that), would you not want to ask, How? How have you done it? How have you stood strong through all the storms of life, all the difficult situations? How have you not toppled?