We work with a lot of churches that are stuck.
And because that’s our world, we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about the problems that churches are facing.
This series is a little different. We’re going to talk about where churches are winning because celebrating what’s working matters just as much as fixing what isn’t.
I had the chance to talk with Christy Gibas, lead pastor of The Table Church in Pittsburgh, PA, about their groups strategy. The Table Church is so committed to being a church of groups (not just a church with groups) that they changed the name of their church.
In this episode, Jimmy and I talk about how The Table Church is winning with their groups strategy and what you can learn from them.
- What’s your revolution?
- Groups as a front door
- Raising up group leaders & multiplying groups
Your neighbors already need what a healthy group has to offer. The question is whether your groups are built to invite them in. [episode 473] #unstuckchurch Share on X "Your systems are perfectly designed for the results that you're currently getting." [episode 473] #unstuckchurch Share on X I would even challenge you that every key leader on your team needs to at least be in a group, if not leading one, because culture trickles down. And if we want our people to do it, we've got to model it. [episode 473] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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Transcript
Sean:
Well, welcome back to the Unstuck Church Podcast. I’m Sean Bublitz, your host, and today we’re kicking off a brand new series on where churches are winning, specifically in how they’re helping people grow as disciples of Jesus. So before we jump into all of that, let me welcome in my co-host, Jimmy McLoud. Jimmy is the lead pastor at First Christian in Canton, Ohio, and an Unstuck consultant. If you’re a regular podcast listener, you heard Jimmy earlier this year when we talked about the senior pastor and executive pastor role. So Jimmy, thanks for coming back to help me with this series.
Jimmy:
Thanks, Sean. I’m excited to be back. I’m excited about this because I’m talking with a lot of great churches right now who are doing some really cool work with retooling their discipleship pathways. And the questions they’re asking me are questions we’re gonna address in this series. So this is great content I’m excited to put in front of churches.
Sean:
That’s great. We’re called the Unstuck Group for a reason. You know this. We work with a lot of churches that are stuck. Sometimes that looks like decline in their church. Sometimes it’s a growing church that keeps running into lids of growth. And because of that, our day-to-day reality, we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about where churches get stuck, sort of the problems in ministry, right? This series is a little bit different. We’re gonna talk about where churches are winning. And I think celebrating what works matters just as much as fixing what isn’t working. And this podcast just turned 10 years old a couple of months ago, so I figure we’ve earned a few episodes of good news here on the podcast.
Over the last few months, I had the chance to sit down with a handful of pastors whose churches are getting something right when it comes to discipleship strategy specifically. And I asked each of them questions about their strategy, what they’re learning, and what they would recommend other leaders do to see similar outcomes. So over the next few weeks, we’re gonna share what we heard in those conversations and some context around that. So if you wanna get better at helping people grow spiritually, and I hope that that’s everybody that’s listening today, this series is for you. And today we’re starting with a conversation on groups.
Jimmy:
And I love the idea of this series, Sean, because so many times church leadership podcasts focus on what’s broken and how to fix it. But a chance to talk about where churches are winning sounds like more fun.
Sean:
It does.
Jimmy:
I’m excited that we’re gonna do this. You know, most of what pastors hear is diagnosis, and it’s podcasts, and it’s blogs. I just came back from a church leadership conference in the Indianapolis area last week. We had a lot of our staff out there, and the experience was incredible, and there was a lot of good content, but so much of it had to do with where churches need to do better or should do better. And there’s kind of almost like a guilt-trippy kind of feel to some of that. And, you know, those are important conversations to have, and church leaders need to have those conversations. We need to address those tensions. But if those are the only conversations you’re taking in, that just leaves, as a leader, it leaves you thinking the whole church world is on fire.
Sean:
Right.
Jimmy:
So, you know, highlighting wins gives you a picture of what’s possible. And I love that for the churches that are gonna listen to this, that will learn from churches that they may never interact with directly, but they get to learn from their best practices through this series. And something I’m hearing is a consistent theme from the pastors of churches that I’m working with is that right now, leaders just need some hope that things can get better. Coming out of COVID, everything kinda boomed for a minute, and now that growth seems to have slowed, and what would’ve been some exciting things pre-COVID feels like maybe a stall right now. And so just a little bit of encouragement and hope for pastors I think is timely.
One of the best parts of working with Unstuck as a consultant is sitting down with churches and learning from them. And as much as I’m grateful for that opportunity to bring clarity and help those churches find alignment and create great strategy, there’s a win for me in the church that I lead as well. And that’s just really simply, you know, it humbles me to think that somebody out there is doing things better than we are, but it also gives me permission sometimes to hear of a church that tried something different or outside the box. And we’re gonna talk about one of those churches today. And I think, man, if they could do it, we can try.
So wherever I meet with a church, geographic location, whatever denominational stream they’re from, the size of the church, it doesn’t matter. I learn something from them every single time, and I am so excited for what we’re all gonna learn from these great churches that are crushing it in different aspects of making disciples. This is gonna be a series that makes us all better.
Sean:
I love churches learning from other churches. We try to create spaces and opportunities for churches to do that. I just came back from a cohort we hosted in Phoenix of campus pastors. And we had campus pastors in the room representing a number of different multisite churches. And we certainly shared some content and talked through some things, but man, it was great to see those campus pastors in that unique role, connecting with other campus pastors that are leading in similar churches to them. And there’s already connection, relationship, sharing ideas going back and forth.
We actually have two similar environments to that that are coming up in February of 2027, so just a couple of months from now. One is for multisite church leaders, and the other is for executive pastors. Jimmy, you and I had a senior pastor, executive pastor podcast series a number of months ago. Both of those cohorts are gonna be hosted in Phoenix. It’s a beautiful area to be in February, for sure. So if anybody out there listening is interested in those cohorts, you can go to theunstuckgroup.com/cohorts to learn more.
And before we get into the rest of the content for the series, I wanna stop and just say thanks to our podcast sponsor, Planning Center. If your church is struggling to stay organized and connected, Planning Center is a great all-in-one church management software that’s really built just to help simplify administration so that you as a leader can focus on people. Planning Center will help you track first-time guests, schedule volunteers, manage check-ins, accept online giving all in one place. So you can learn more about Planning Center if you’re interested, and you can actually start for free with them if you just go to planningcenter.com.
All right. So Jimmy, let me start with what we hear from a lot of churches when it comes to groups, groups ministry specifically. Many churches struggle to kinda engage people in groups that are actually effective. You know, even churches that are tracking, when they look at their metrics, a high percentage of people in groups, they’ll tell us that they’re not confident that those people are really growing spiritually. They have participation in groups. What they don’t have is confidence. And that’s one reason why our Unstuck Process, when we start the discipleship conversation, we don’t begin with strategy. We actually begin with something we call the spiritual catalyst.
So let me explain to our listeners a little bit about what I mean there. Think about your own story. You know, if you’re a follower of Jesus, there are probably certain experiences in your life that drew you closer to him. For some of you, that was teaching and worship. For others, it might have been serving, maybe a mission trip or a team at your local church. People who discipline themselves to be generous with their resources, they would often say that giving grew their faith. And the one I think is maybe the most common in all of that is relationships, you know, a person or a group of people who helped you grow closer to Jesus. Jimmy, does that fit at all with your personal story? I know it does for mine, but have any of those catalysts been significant for you?
Jimmy:
Yeah, absolutely. And as you were talking just now, Sean, I was thinking of specific examples of how each of those catalysts have been impactful in my life. But the common thread all along has been relationships. Going all the way back to my high school years. I had a youth pastor who was very intentional about investing in a group of us, a few students to help us grow, not just spiritually, but specifically in our leadership capacity. I came from a large church with a large youth group, but he identified a few of us that he saw something different in when it came to leadership potential. And he connected us with each other in a small group, and then he poured into us collectively and individually, and he gave us opportunities to lead. He challenged us to serve. He took us on mission trips, all those kinds of things.
But the fuel on the fire for us was his time and access to him, and then the relationships that he put us in. So to this day, years and years later, I still recall some of the lessons and the principles that he taught us. And I’ll use those things with our staff team. I use them in my preaching.
Sean:
That’s awesome.
Jimmy:
I use them when I’m working with churches for Unstuck. But the interesting thing is I mentioned that leadership conference a few minutes ago. I saw a friend of mine last week who was there that we grew up in our youth group together. He was part of that same leadership development group. I probably haven’t seen him in 20 years, but our conversation immediately went back to those years together and what a difference they made in our leadership and how that’s still making a difference today.
So absolutely catalytic for my growth and development as a leader. And I fully believe that a pathway built on those spiritual catalysts that you mentioned is vital to a church’s ability to make disciples, but for the pathway to be effective, even more than being built on great programs, it needs to be built around intentional environments that put people in proximity with other believers so that relationships can form.
Sean:
Yeah. I love that, Jimmy. I have a very similar story, but that is a great example of how those relationships now years later are impacting you and your ministry and really helped you grow but are now helping more people grow spiritually. So I love that.
When we work with churches on their discipleship path and we talk through these catalysts, the next question after that we ask leaders in the room is what’s the right environment at your church for the people at your church to experience each of these catalysts? And when most churches think relationships, they think groups. You know, can people experience other catalysts in a group? Of course they can, but for most churches, relationships are the primary catalyst.
And I think given what’s happening in our culture right now, just more broadly, Jimmy, that’s a really good thing. I looked at some data and according to the CDC, one in three adults in the United States reports feeling lonely. I would guess it’s similar to that in other countries where we have listeners from. And about one in four say that they don’t have the social and emotional support that they need. That’s roughly 85 million people who feel lonely and 65 million without support. And a lot of them live on our streets, right? They’re our neighbors. So if we’re asking not just how we make disciples, but how we make disciples in response to our culture, groups, relational groups are a great environment for it.
Jimmy:
Yeah. Those statistics are pretty shocking. And this is a conversation we’re having at our church right now. At this conference last week, I ran into our friend Carey Nieuwhof, and he gave a great talk on AI in the church. Of course, he wrote a new book that’s just come out about AI and the future of the church. And something that he said that resonated deeply with our team is AI can simulate a lot of things. And, you know, anymore, worship isn’t the draw to a church that it used to be because you can listen to, you know, 100 worship bands on Spotify. And if you can’t find a preacher in your community that you like, you can go on YouTube and listen to anybody from around the world. But what AI can’t simulate and what social media can’t replace is real human connection.
And I think it’s crazy that we live in the most connected society that has ever existed, but people are lonelier than ever before. That should completely change the way that we talk about groups in our churches. We tend to pitch them like a next step for people who are already in, but 85 million lonely people tells me that, man, groups might be the best evangelistic tool that a church has, but it’s probably also the greatest missed evangelistic opportunity for a lot of churches. So, you know, when we’re talking with people inside or outside the church, nobody needs another event on the calendar. We’re already super busy. What we need is somebody, or better yet, a group of people who know our name, they notice when we’re missing, they know what’s happening in our lives.
And without getting into preaching a sermon on the podcast…Every time I go back to the first few chapters of Acts, we all want Acts 2:47. Every church leader wants the Lord to add to our number daily people who are being saved. Everybody wants that. And so we try, you know, like every time a new trend emerges or a new program comes out and it works for one church, we’re all trying to do it in our churches. And, you know, that’s been the case for years and years and years. When I think the answer is exactly what we’re talking about today, and that is the thing that drew people to the early church was a kind of community that they couldn’t find anywhere else and they were beating down the doors to be a part of it.
And if church leaders in our culture are wise, they’ll hear the statistics you shared and they’ll say, “Man, we have to figure out how to do that.” Andy Stanley said, “Your systems are perfectly designed for the results that you’re currently getting.” And unfortunately, for a lot of churches, the results they’re getting are slow growth or no growth. And we’ve got back doors that are wide open. And the truth is, you can have a great Sunday experience. We should try. You need to have a great Sunday experience. But if you don’t have an environment built for deeper connection to happen, you’re gonna lose people and it won’t take long because they’ll leave a church with a great Sunday experience to find a place where they can truly belong in Christ-centered community.
Sean:
I think you might have just started a sermon there, Jimmy, and I love it.
Jimmy:
I feel like we should sing and go home, Sean.
Sean:
All right. I don’t know if I can follow that, but let me try. So let’s get into solutions. What do we do about it? Let me tell you about what one church did. Back in 2024, we started working with a great church called the Table Church in the Pittsburgh area. Some of you listeners of the podcast heard their lead pastor, Christy Gibas, earlier this year on a multisite series we did. So Christie was kind enough to sit down again and share a little bit of their story with me. And I picked her brain, kind of quizzed her on their group strategy. And here’s why. The Table Church is so committed to groups that they changed the name of their church. They used to be Crossroads.
And Christie told me that the change was really about reinforcing discipleship. They wanted to be a church of groups, not a church that just had groups. And that’s the culture they’ve been building towards over time. And she said something in the conversation I really love. She said, “You can change by evolution, or you can change by revolution.” And their approach to changing the name of the church was really to change by revolution. I mean, this was a big, significant change in their church. You know, most churches would rather do almost anything than change the name. So I think for this church, it was a really bold move as part of their strategy to kind of reinforce groups is gonna be a primary focus for us.
Jimmy:
And I give them a lot of credit for that. The church I pastor is named First Christian Church, so the branding team worked long and hard on that name. And we’ve talked about, you know, kinda… We say that we’ve joked about it. I think we’re more serious than we want people to know because none of us wanna lose our jobs. But it’s a big deal to do something like change your name. And I love that the Table Church didn’t… They didn’t just get up and make an announcement that groups were important, but they made a decision that was costly in more ways than one, but it shifted their culture in a healthier direction. And sometimes to move that cultural needle, you have to do something massive or revolutionary. You have to change something dramatic.
And the line that stuck out to me, Sean, was they wanted to be a church of groups, not a church with groups. I hope every person, every church leader listening to this episode caught that because most churches’ groups are like an option on the menu where they should be the featured item. And I don’t think every church has to change their name for this to work, but for the Table Church, that was the revolution. So I do think that’s what a church that’s stuck needs to determine, what’s our revolution gonna be? In other words, what decision can we make, you know, or what change can we bring that’s gonna tell the people in our church? And maybe even more importantly, it’s gonna say to the people outside our church and our community that we’re serious about this.
Sean:
Absolutely. Yeah, here’s what’s really cool about that story. So when we engaged back with the Table Church in 2024, they were actually already… They’d been through this name change. They were already tracking over a thousand people in their church connected in groups. And there’s some great stories within all of that. But I started the conversation with Christie again with a question that I get all the time, especially from churches that are serious about groups. And it’s a more foundational question, how do you define a group? And I had asked her, how does the Table Church define a group? And she started with the body. Talking about just kind of the human body, the cell is the basic building block. And a healthy group, she said, kind of exists as that cell. And they think about a healthy group as the basic building block, the foundation of their church.
And a healthy group, she said, focuses up, in, and out specifically. For them, they’re trying to help their groups focus on up, meaning prayer and worship happening within their groups. It’s practical and it’s focused on scripture. In is caring for one another. That’s what people do naturally when they gather together is they provide care and support. And then out is actually, and you touched on this just a second ago, Jimmy, who you’re inviting. Their groups identify specific mission fields to connect with, the mission field around where their group meets, the neighborhood that they’re in. So at the Table Church, groups actually have a missional component. They have an outward-serving focus really built into their function from the start. I really like that definition of a group, Jimmy. It’s very strategic, very well thought out. My sense is that when people are on a mission together, they actually build relationships more effectively. Do you agree with that?
Jimmy:
100%. And I love the missional focus of the Table Church’s group culture. When a group only looks inward, they become cliques. And cliques are already a problem in the church. And churches may not even know it as much as the people in their community know it, but cliques are already a problem. The insider versus outsider barrier that exists is massive. And so we can’t perpetuate that by allowing our groups to be completely inward-focused. But when there’s a mission involved that’s focused on the Great Commission, it keeps groups thinking bigger. So then when you have a conversation about groups multiplying, raising up leaders, making space for more people to connect, the response is gonna be more naturally enthusiastic rather than oppositional where, I mean, every church leader’s heard, if they’ve had that conversation, it’s like, “You wanna break us up? We’ve been together for, you know, years and years.” And everybody gets all upset and it ruffles feathers.
And it’s like, man, if you bake that into your culture, it’s so much easier to talk about it later. The thing that I’d add to that is I believe it helps not just to be on mission together, but also to have clarity on each person’s role in the mission. So like, is it the leader’s job to lead every time or do we rotate leadership? Do we share leadership? Do host homes rotate so that everybody has a chance to practice hospitality, but also to invite their neighbors, you know, into community? And there’s some biblical stuff there. Is it the leader’s job to care for the needs in the group, or does every group member understand they have a shared responsibility to each other in that way? That sounds like Acts chapter two to me. You know, is the group gonna serve together somehow?
I would just encourage church leaders to clarify what they want to see from their groups. What are the markers and the goals of a healthy group and what do they produce? And then give that clarity, not just to your leaders, but communicate it from the stage, present it in group recruiting pushes. Clarity is kindness. So giving that kind of clarity up front not only helps relationships grow in healthy community, but it’s gonna help you recruit and train more leaders, which everybody needs more leaders.
Sean:
Here’s another thing that I love from Christy’s story. She said now that they’re connecting people in relationships and on mission together, groups have become another front door for their church. So we’ve already talked about this a bit already, but here’s specifically how that has played out. She told me a story about Brandon and Nicole, a young couple who weren’t attending church anywhere at the time. They became friends with some people from the Table Church who just lived in their neighborhood, and those neighbors actually invited them to a table group, a group environment. And they started attending the group, coming fairly often. They went through what the Table Church calls step one, which is the church’s kind of equipping track towards being a part of the church.
And then they took an even bigger step and they went to dinner at Christy’s house. So they showed up at Christy’s house as a new person exploring faith and exploring the church, and Christy got to meet them there. And what she learned in the dinner is they did all of that before they ever attended a weekend service. And, you know, most of us build our discipleship path assuming the weekend is the first step. Interestingly, for Brandon and Nicole, it was closer to the last one, which is fascinating. I think that’s the power of those relationships playing out.
Jimmy:
That story is one of my favorite stories I’ve heard on the podcast in a while because it blows up every discipleship pathway diagram that I’ve seen in churches in a long time. Because when we map out these pathways, groups usually come after, you know, attend or connect, or we’ve got like three steps built in front of those, and we assume that the pathway starts in the sanctuary or the auditorium, but we’re hearing more and more stories of churches who are getting it right in this area because they’re starting to realize that a healthy discipleship journey more often than not starts at a dinner table and not in a pew or in a chair.
So on a side note, the other thing from the story that jumped out to me, Sean, was I think it’s awesome, and this is really unusual that Brandon and Nicole had dinner at the pastor’s house before they attended on a Sunday morning. I’ve never heard that before, and I love that they were willing to take that step, but I also love what that says about Christy. And maybe it’s not practical for some leaders. It scares them, you know, terrifies me. Maybe it’s not practical for some leaders to just invite a bunch of people they don’t know into their home. But, you know, another Andy Stanley quote that I love is, “Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.” So if you can welcome a family here and there into your home, you’re modeling for the rest of your church what you want them to do, and that’s exactly how to foster healthy community, build a healthy group culture for your church.
Sean:
Absolutely. Yeah. There was one other thing that stood out from my conversation that I think church leaders need to hear. She said that they’re always making mistakes because they’re always experimenting. So I don’t think Christy … There was no sense that this should be shared, and they’re perfect. But they’re always learning. They’re trying new things. You know, when they changed the name of the church, getting buy-in from the groups that already existed there was hard. That was difficult for them. So they still have some groups at their church they lovingly call legacy groups. Those groups probably aren’t gonna multiply in the future, and I would bet that every church listening probably has a few of those in your church. New groups at their church are different, though. Every new group starts with a multiplication date because they’ve found that once a group meets for more than a year, it drifts towards that inward focus.
So leaders start out of the gate with an apprentice and a goal of when they’ll launch a brand new group. And I just appreciate the honesty there. They didn’t wait for every group to get on board before they moved forward. They built the new model into new groups, and they just kinda let the legacy groups exist.
Jimmy:
I love that.
Sean:
It’s such a great story. So let’s talk about what you do if you’re a leader and you know you need to create a better opportunity for people to experience the relationship catalyst. I asked Christy specifically where she’d encourage leaders to begin, and she said, “Start with some very simple things, but whatever you’re doing, just make sure it’s reproducible. The people leading groups, they’re not biblical scholars, so make sure that what you’re doing you can replicate and you can easily equip others with those resources.”
She also said that they had to help their people kind of grow in invitation. So now they teach the BLESS model to help groups be intentional about relationships. If you haven’t heard BLESS, BLESS comes from David Ferguson’s book, Begin with Prayer, Listen, Eat, Serve, and Share Your Story. And that is just a great framework to help teach your people how do we build relationships with others that maybe we don’t know at all yet and are outside the church and faith right now.
And what I love about Christie’s perspective is the intentionality behind how they’re developing more groups and more leaders. I’ve seen this play out a lot of times. A church is desperate for more group leaders, so they put people in the role before they’re really equipped for it. And that, in the short term, fills the gap, but it doesn’t build anything that lasts long-term. The Table Church took time to chart out a reproducible way to multiply groups and equip leaders who lead them. And that is the glue, I think, that holds all of this together. It’s the relationships people experience in their groups as they multiply for the future.
Jimmy:
Yeah, that is a great framework for multiplying groups and leaders. BLESS, by the way, church leaders, gosh, if you’re looking for a really easy read for some of the people in your church, if you’re trying to kind of reset your evangelistic culture or group culture, BLESS is a fantastic book. The two keywords that she used were simple and reproducible. So yeah, BLESS is a great framework. I know it works. We’ve used it in our church, but church leaders would be wise not to get hung up on a model, but to focus on those keywords and principles, and specifically for multiplying leaders, I wanna emphasize simple. Christiy’s exactly right. Most of the people leading in groups in most churches are not Bible scholars. Many of them are not even close, but with the right preparation, they can be really fantastic group leaders. Where we get ourselves stuck is that group ministries are usually led by staff and staff love curriculum; we love programs; we love trainings.
Sean:
That’s true.
Jimmy:
And if your group culture is effective, you really don’t need a deep and lengthy training program for group leaders. Just being a part of a healthy group in your church should be almost all the training that a potential leader needs. And so rather than a super deep and complicated process to qualify a leader, your ongoing training is more vision drips along the way, and it just keeps the culture tight that way, but it’s not like a graduate studies program that you have to go through to, you know, graduate and become a group leader.
And back to what I said just really quickly about every group member knowing their role. If your group leaders understand from the get-go that part of their job is to identify a potential new leader from within their group and then begin to intentionally share leadership with that person, you’re gonna grow a group culture that organically reproduces, and you won’t have to rely on this never-ending hamster wheel of recruiting leaders and trying to keep leaders and then recruiting more leaders and making space, and sometimes you can’t make space fast enough to keep up.
Gosh, a group culture that organically reproduces itself that way would solve so many of the headaches that church leaders have when it comes to groups. So just communicate that value from the get-go with your leaders and let them know that’s an expectation upfront. And most of them are more than happy to make that a part of how they lead their group. They just need to be told.
Sean:
That’s right. Yeah, that’s good. So if you are a church leader right now and you know that your group strategy could be more effective, here’s just a few thoughts on what to do, just really practical kind of first steps. First, I would say start with clarifying your why. And I know a lot of things start with that, but this is so critical for your team. Is the relationship catalyst actually driving your group strategy, or are groups more like one of the programs on the long menu? How should what we know about loneliness, disconnection, all of that, how should that shape your ministry decisions when it comes to groups? I think you need to clarify and just answer that why for your team.
The second thing is set goals, like Jimmy talked about, set goals for development and for multiplication. A lot of churches struggle to engage people in relationships because they don’t have enough leaders equipped to lead a group well. Once you set goals, you’re gonna talk about groups more often in your leadership team meetings and even from the platform, because you have those goals you’re driving towards.
And then the third thing would be resource your groups ministry effectively. We say this all the time, what gets leadership and resources gets done. And if groups are a stated priority by you, but nobody owns them and there’s not really a budget line for them, groups really aren’t a priority at the end of the day. Those are my three. Jimmy, would you add anything to that?
Jimmy:
Yeah. The senior pastor, the lead pastor, that senior leader has to own this, and they have to do it publicly. If groups only get talked about by the groups pastor, well, everybody expects that. That’s their job. And if groups are just an announcement in a long list of announcements, people are gonna hear it as an opportunity at best and an obligation at worst, but either way, it sounds optional. But if the senior pastor… Say, you know, the senior pastor’s in a group or leads a group and the senior pastor talks about not just groups in a general sense, but they’re talking about their group and they’re telling stories from their group, people hear that entirely differently. “I’m in a great men’s group at our church. I try at least once every couple of weeks to mention that. So I might tell a story, I might just reference it in passing in a sermon or from the stage, but I want our people to know this is not just a value that our church professes to, and it’s not just a value I profess to, but we live it out and that starts with me.
And I would even take this one step further and say, if you really want to be one of those churches like Christy talked about, a church of groups and not just a church with groups, I would even challenge you that every key leader on your team needs to at least be in a group, if not leading one, because culture trickles down. And if we want our people to do it, we’ve got to model it.
Two other things, measure what matters, man. Don’t just measure bodies and chairs. Total group members is a good number to track, but you’ve got to go deeper than that. So count apprentice leaders or count new group launches and count groups that multiply through cell division or whatever it is, but go deeper than just counting attendance and figure out what vital signs you need to keep a pulse on to measure the health and the scalability of your group culture.
And last, give people an easy first yes. Like that might be short-term groups, it might be defining a start date and an end date. It might be a low-commitment on-ramp, but people are much more likely to try something that has a clear starting and ending point. You know, the greatest fear we have is getting in a small group, and everybody’s weird. You know, it’s like, I don’t wanna eat your weird snacks and your cat sits on my lap every night and, you know, so if I don’t like this group, I have a way to gracefully bow out. Well, that takes away my greatest fear to try a group in your church. So give them that clarity. Don’t make it difficult for people to say yes and make sure that they have the comfort of knowing they’re not joining a group from now until forever, but if they need to change it up, they can do that without offending somebody later.
Sean:
Man, isn’t that so true? And you said earlier, you know, the whole Brené Brown quote, clarity’s kindness. Just if I have to come to you at some point and say, “Eh, I don’t really like your group. I don’t think I’m gonna do this anymore,” that’s a really difficult thing to say yes to at first. But if I know coming into the group, well, there’s gonna be a kind of a set end date where I have the opportunity to gracefully bow out, then I’m a lot more likely to say yes. And I think probably because of that, I’m a lot more likely to have a great experience too.
Jimmy:
For sure.
Sean:
All right, Jimmy, this is a wrap on episode one. It’s been a good episode. What do you hope that pastors might take away from our conversation today?
Jimmy:
Well, my hope would be that pastors ask one really honest question. It’s a difficult one, but the question is, does our group culture naturally make us more inward focused or more outward focused? Does it help us focus on people who aren’t here yet? Are we creating new spaces for people to connect or is this just a gathering place for insiders? I think the Table Church has proven you could change this culture without blowing everything up. Now, they did a drastic thing by changing their name, but that’s encouraging to leaders.
So listen, leaders, what shift might be next for you? What’s that revolution, whether it’s a big one or a small one, what’s the thing that’s gonna help you live out your mission? If you need help figuring that out, that’s what we do at the Unstuck Group. And we’d love to walk with you as you navigate those next steps with figuring out your discipleship pathway or clarifying your group culture and your plan to reach more people and connect them to your church. Just remember, your neighbors are lonely. You don’t have to go look very far for people to find, you know, people that are looking for a place to connect. They’re lonely. They’re not necessarily looking for a church, but they might be looking for a table, so give them one to sit at.
Sean:
Yeah, that’s good. My thought would be very similar. You know, most churches, they measure groups just looking at one number, how many people are in one. And that’s a good number to know, but it doesn’t tell you whether anyone’s actually growing at the end of the day. And the Table Church is actually watching different things. Are your groups pointed outward? Does every leader in your group have an apprentice? Does everybody in the group or new to the group know when it’s gonna multiply? Participation tells you if people showed up, but multiplication tells you that something’s actually growing. And back to what you just said, Jimmy, remember there’s one in three adults in the United States, again, probably similar numbers in the other countries we have listeners in, that feel lonely right now. Your neighbors already need what a healthy group has to offer. The question is whether your groups are built to invite them in.
So if today’s conversation got you thinking about your own groups ministry or your discipleship path as a whole, that’s the kind of thing we help churches with every week. Our Unstuck planning process helps churches assess their discipleship pathway, where you’re winning, where you’re stuck, and also what to do about it. And then we help you kind of reimagine your strategy and build a plan to move forward. So you can learn more about that if you go to theunstuckgroup.com.
And one more thing before we go, if this podcast has been helpful for you, would you leave us a review on whatever platform you’re listening on right now? It takes you about 30 seconds, but it helps more church leaders find these conversations. Next week, Jimmy and I will share the story of a church that’s winning and engaging people in serving, and what church doesn’t wanna win at that right now? So make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode.
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