Off the Agenda: Conversations for Building Church Leaders

Any church attempting to run a small-groups ministry will inevitably encounter a stiff obstacle to growth: the need for more leaders. This is actually a turning point in many respects—find a way to surmount this barrier, and there’s a good shot your groups will thrive and your church will be blessed by a “culture of discipleship.” Fall short, and your small-groups ministry will likely fall flat.

Of course, there is no shortage of recommendations on how churches can succeed in cultivating and training legions of group leaders (we are in the information age, after all). But recently I heard something new on this subject that makes a lot of sense.
I was interviewing Larry Osborne—pastor of North Coast church in Vista, California—on the subject of integrating church members into small groups.

One of the keys he mentioned was making sure that your best people are involved in the ministry as leaders (including, he added, pastors and staff…). Naturally, I was curious to know how North Coast surmounted the obstacle mentioned above, so I asked him about it.
Here is his response:

“Cut the competition. If a church has so much programming going on that people are stretched too thin—Adult Bible Fellowships, Sunday schools, midweek programs, large community outreaches, and so on—small groups inevitably will fall to the back of the priority list. You end up not having your key leaders with you because they’re already overwhelmed. So you get your non-leaders in it, and it’s amazing—when non-leaders are in things, people don’t go.”

I liked that idea. I liked it a lot, in fact. But it did spark another question in the interview: “Don’t you have people who want to start up new programs all the time? How do you process that without overwhelming people again?”
You can listen to Larry’s response below.

That sounds like good advice for all churches—even beyond the small-groups world.