Great Over Good: Filling Your Groups During Promotion Month

The most basic element of filling your small groups is the promotion month–the period when you are recruiting, inspiring, encouraging, teaching, preaching and using positive peer pressure to motivate your people to sign up for a group.

Make sure that your entire promotion month is dedicated exclusively to getting sign-ups. If anything is competing with group sign-ups, you will see less-than-desired results.

[bctt tweet=”Be intentional about choosing the great over the good.” username=”nelsonsearcy”]

For example, don’t divert attention by talking about a capital campaign, a women’s night, or a couples’ retreat during this month. These worthy causes will take attention away from your most important initiative: getting people connected in small groups. I’ve discovered the hard way that if people have more than one sign-up choice on a Sunday (for example, the ability to sign up for a group or to sign up for a retreat), they won’t sign up for either. If you want your people in groups, then joining one should be the only decision in front of them during your promotion month. Avoid putting drag on your own system.

No doubt, it takes discipline to focus your attention exclusively on small group sign-ups for a full month. There will always be competing causes trying to find their way into the mix. Be intentional about choosing the great over the good. That couples’ retreat, while amazing, will be over in a weekend. But if a couple signs up for a small group instead, they will be involved in a life-changing environment for at least a semester, and probably for every semester thereafter. They may even go on to be group leaders, and then team leaders.

Ultimately, the small group system will give them a much better opportunity to become fully developing followers of Jesus and help them connect in more godly relationships than the weekend retreat will. While a retreat is good, this is great.

– Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas, with Jennifer Dykes Henson

The above excerpt is from pgs. 195-196 of Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups.

Drawing from the startling success of small groups at The Journey Church, Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas debunk the myths, set the record straight, and show how church leaders can implement a healthy small group ministry that gets the maximum number of people involved and solves many of the important problems facing churches of all sizes. These practical strategies will produce life-changing results.

P.S. – Click here to grab your copy from Amazon today!

Your partner in ministry,

Nelson

About Nelson Searcy

Nelson Searcy is an experienced church growth strategist, pastor, church planter and coach, consulting with churches around the world. As founder of Church Leader Insights and the Renegade Pastors Network, he has personally trained more than 3,500 church leaders in over 45 denominations through live events, seminars and monthly coaching. Nelson is also the Founding and Lead Pastor of The Journey Church, with locations across New York City and in Boca Raton, FL. Nelson and his church routinely appear on lists such as “The 50 Most Influential Churches” and “The 25 Most Innovative Leaders.” He is the author of over 100 church growth resources and 18+ books, including The Renegade Pastor: Abandoning Average in Your Life, Ministry and The Difference Maker: Using Your Everyday Life for Eternal Impact, and At the Cross with the People Who Were There. He and his wife, Kelley, have one son, Alexander.