High Flying Small Group Leadership: 5 Tips for Safe & Effective Takeoff & Landing
They’re easy to spot. There are just some small group organizations and teams that appear to have it all together. They seem to easily fly from one thing to another. They energetically contribute, treating one another with respect. They seem to get so much done with fewer people, more joy, and less aggravation. So, how […]
Igniting Small Group Innovation: 5 Questions to Move Past Fear
It’s easy to let thoughts about failure and criticism hold you and your Small Groups back from innovation. All you have to do is nothing, just keep doing the same things, and you’ll continue to just drift along. When was the last time, in those fleeting moments of honest, self-reflection, you came to the realization […]
Small Group Trends: Are you doing these 4 things?
It used to be that only a few people at the top had all the power. Those living in the rarified air near or at the top of an organization chart, the greater the weight of their opinions and influence. Only leaders at the top, the people in front, had both authority and power to […]
Dances With Calendars: 4 Tips When Calendaring Your Small Groups
There is no other activity that’s good for “absolutely nothing” like calendaring. But as small group ministry leaders who are often thinking about late-summer recruiting, fall-launches, winter-holiday breaks, leader-training, etc – mapping out a calendar with our teams is usually something we are doing and re-doing throughout the year. When Dances with Wolves hit theaters […]
Trust – An Endangered Species? 4 Steps to Build Trust within your Groups
If trust has become an endangered species, how can we turn the tide towards restoration? It almost seems that the word trust has disappeared from our vocabulary. How often do you use or think the word trust in your daily experience? But perhaps more than disappearing from our language, trust is becoming more and more […]
Small Group Earthquake Plans
If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, it’s that we don’t know what’s next. So, your plans and preparations need to be like buildings made for an earthquake. The 2009 L’Aquila earthquake in Italy was devastating. It damaged thousands of buildings, both new and ancient, leaving 65,000 people homeless. The main reason for the extent […]
Small Group Pizza Crust
4 tips for handling the current undercurrent impacting interpersonal interaction in your small groups Small groups have been pushed, pulled, and tossed like so much, bad pizza crust. After years of stable, in-person small groups, they were canceled without an opportunity to gracefully say goodbye. We immediately began experimenting with online meetings via a plethora […]
8 Texting Rules You Should Know – Better Yet, Do!
By Chet Gladkowski There are many common misconceptions, things that people think or assume are true. Here are four familiar ones. Fortune Cookies come from China. Microwaves cook from the inside out. The Polka is a Polish style of music and dance. There are no rules for texting. All four are wrong. Fortune Cookies were […]
5 Tips to Creating Energized Emails
Your number one way of communicating with your small group leadership and members is email. Invented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965, email has exploded in use and distribution. Everyone has it, can navigate it, and they use it. And texting is just an arbitrarily shortened form of email. Whenever you first started […]
The Mountain/Bottom Experience
You go up the mountain to receive something: a beautiful and inspiring view. Moses went up the mountain to receive the 10 Commandments. Or you go up to achieve something. But when you come down the mountain, all the excitement is over. You’ve learned or received the revelation, insight, wisdom, knowledge. Now, you’re returning to […]
