This week Pastor Geoff Surratt, over on his personal blog started rocking the boat with his multi-part post entitled “Why Small Groups Don’t Work”. Catchy enough title to bring plenty of conversation. Grab a cup a coffee before you settle in. Geoff spent plenty of time framing up and delivering his argument that essentially says that the “missing link in church small groups” is a “driving missional focus”. Cool. Well I have zero authority to speak to the theological implications of the current “dilemma” with small groups in the church (if there even is one) but if they are broken, how can technology assist in fixing it?

First off I’d like to point out the obvious. Technology made this discussion possible. If the church is due for a change in small groups then my guess is that it would be delayed several more years if it wasn’t for the internet and the various platforms that connect so many church leaders so effortlessly. I’m sure Geoff’s thoughts had been bubbling up and forming for several months but in a matter of hours if not minutes, he was able to publish his thoughts to thousands and spark a very awesome discussion. But onto the real point of this post

How are you using technology for your small groups?

Why are you using technology for your small groups? In what capacity does it help? For example, we’ve had requests before to add attendance tracking to MemberHub to help small group leaders report attendance to their “small group coach”. I didn’t even know that sort of thing happened in small group ministries.

Help us technology folks out by providing your insight into where YOU think small groups are heading and how technology can help make them a powerful tool in the Kingdom.

We’ve made some recent enhancements to the hub Home Page and the hub Join Page that will help administrators to further customize their hubs.

Every hub in MemberHub has a corresponding public-facing Join Page. This page is where prospective members can learn about the group and either join right from that page or request to join. These pages are especially useful if you take advantage of putting a Hub Listing widget on your organization’s website. For example, you could list your small groups hubs at your church on your website. Visitors can then click on each group to learn more. The link will take them to the Join Page for that hub where the will see a description of the group, a member count and NOW a personalized group image!

We have a Knowledge Base article you can read to learn how to set up your Join Page(s).

While we were at it, we gave hub administrators the ability to upload an image to their hub’s Home Page too. Hub administrators can simply click the blue Edit Homepage button at the bottom of the Home Page to upload an image. We heard this suggestions quite a bit, so enjoy!

Drop us a comment below and let us know what you think. Do not hesitate to contact us over on the Support Forum if you have any questions at all. We’re here to serve!

Recently, I caught up with Kevin Joyce of Imagine Fellowship in San Antonio, Texas. I would call him the lead pastor but he actually goes by the title “Lead Life Changer”. And I would call Imagine Fellowship a church, but it’s more like A.A. And that’s what they want to do, duplicate the model that A.A. has leaned on since the 30′s to help people all over the country. A very ambitious and inspired vision that Kevin shared with me.

You see Kevin has a hunch that “God is trying to change the church model” and in conjunction with that leading, Imagine Fellowship has made a pretty amazing change to their model. In Kevin’s words:

We have decided that we are stopping our weekly Sunday service (starting the end of November). We will meet once a month to do a big community service project on Sunday, and will only have one Sunday service a month. What will we do the rest of the time? We will meet weekly in groups, serve our community in creative ways, and love God and people with all of our hearts.

They put “all the purposes of the church in groups.” A small group setting is basically their “main church” and through a discipleship process they call “1on1″ new leaders are raised up. Kevin commented that “most people will share their life with one person or one couple” and it’s in these settings that real relationships are built and life is really experienced. By identifying a series of ten opportunities the 1on1 process helps people and potential leaders open up and really experience change. After this 1on1 discipleship process, the new leader is encouraged to start a new group. And just like AA, they want to have groups all over the country, not just in San Antonio. According to Kevin the vision is “less about a local church and more towards a movement.”

This past Sunday was Imagine Fellowship’s last corporate worship until January 3rd. What will their members do without a church service on Christmas? My guess: love God and people with all their hearts.

What do you think about this? Do you think that God is trying to change the church model? If so, how does the church embrace this change and prepare for the future?

Are your groups organized? What are your ministries, small groups and other teams in your church using to handle the logistics, planning and coordination that makes each group tick? What about  your volunteers? Does your group communications remind you of this closet?

For many groups, it’s like this:

• One person maintains an email list (likely an email group in their mail client)
• Other members must dig for an old email to find the entire list to start a new thread
• People are keeping an array of emails locally that contain important information
• Each person has an outdated version of an important document
• Each person is responsible for remembering events and keeping their calendar
• Some people miss events
• One person remembers to send everyone reminders to events

Here’s what it can be like for those groups:

• Each person can send a message to the entire group, quickly and easily
• No one has to maintain that list, all the members are always in it
• All discussions that take place in the group are preserved
• A file repository contains the latest version of shared documents
• As people add calendar events everyone is notified via email
• Members are automatically reminded of events with emails and text messaging
• Members can be reached instantly with text messaging to cell phones

Ah…each compartment (group), organized and all in the same place. Eureka!

Does this sound nice? Do your groups have this now? What are you using? Will you try MemberHub and let us know what you think? If you’re using MemberHub now, will you share you feedback with us?