I've had the privilege of being involved in small groups for over 25 years as a participant, leader, pastor overseeing small groups, and as director of a network of missional communities. Over the years, I have learned that there are essential skills for leading a small group effectively. I have broken them down into four categories: preparation skills, skills for leading a small group meeting, shepherding skills and outreach/multiplying skills.

Preparation Skills 

Preparation skills relate to who we are as small group leaders and how we prepare to serve our small group members.

• Growing as a Small Group Leader - In my blog on the Dimensions of Christian Leadership, I look at several key growth areas for leaders. As small group leaders grow in these seven areas, they will become more effective in leading their small groups.
• Discernment – Observing and understanding ourselves, the individuals in our groups, and our culture.
• Biblical Understanding – Studying a passage of Scripture and understanding its intent and how it might apply to our lives today.
• Making the Most of Curriculum – Using Bible Study guides, videos and other materials to help group members understand and apply biblical truth.

Skills for Leading Group Meetings

Leading the actual small group meetings is obviously an important skill for small group leaders. Here are some that I have found are important:

I was overweight. I ate too much unhealthy food and didn’t exercise enough. I wasn’t grossly overweight, but the spare tire above my belt was slowly getting bigger.

I hadn’t seen Dave for about a year. When we met for a coffee, I could believe how much weight he had lost. He looked healthy. I asked him what had happened.

Dave shared how he had had started tracking his eating and exercising with MyFitnessPal. I was intrigued and decided to try it.

With the program, you set a weight loss or weight-maintaining goal. You then enter the food you eat and the exercise you get. The program tracks your number of calories (or other things you want to measure).

My initial goal was to lose one pound per week. I still remember the first time I entered that I had eaten a piece of chocolate cake. To my utter amazement, I learned that I had just eaten one-quarter of my calories for the entire day!

I carefully entered the information for a month until I intuitively knew what I needed to do to stay on track with my eating and fitness goals. Within six months, I was at a good weight. More importantly, I had established healthier eating and exercise patterns that I have maintained (for the most part) for the past three years. I still hop on the weigh scale each night to make sure that I’m on track and make adjustments, if necessary.

Since getting more serious about my health, I read an amazing book by Gary Thomas, “Every Body Matters: Strengthening Your Body to Strengthen Your Soul.” Thomas talks about how physical health connects with spiritual health. Based on my understanding of Scripture and what I gleaned from Thomas’ book, I would suggest three ways that physical health connects with spiritual health:

All of life is a spiritual discipline

Tis’ the season to think about New Year’s resolutions. As you do, I would encourage you to channel that desire for change into developing a personal growth plan for the next six months. Here are three important steps to develop a plan that will help you put feet to your desires:

1. Identify 1-3 areas of your life where you would like to see change

Where would you like to grow? It’s important that you are fairly specific. For example, you may want to grow spiritually over the next six months. That’s great! Yet, I would encourage you to think about a particular area of your spiritual life that you would like to grow. For me, I would like to strengthen my prayer life. At this stage, we are simply expressing good intentions. In my experience, most people stop here. The next step is critical to actually translating the good intentions into life change.

2. Develop 3-5 SMART action steps around each area where you would like to see change

As you think about actions steps that you can take to develop the area(s) you identified in step one, make sure that they are SMART: