From the category archives:

Small Group Life

Culture Shock

August 6, 2010 Small Group Life
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There are a lot of similarities between my last home, Chicago, and my new home in Northern Alabama. Chicago has its own music group: Chicago. Alabama has one, too: Alabama. Chicago has its own song: Sweet Home Chicago. Alabama has Sweet Home Alabama. In Chicago, Wind Chill subtracts from the actual temperature to make it [...]

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Patrick: Saint and Small Group Pioneer

March 15, 2010 Ministry Leadership

Patrick may or may not be a saint. It’s above my pay grade and out of my evangelical comfort zone to determine that one. He was certainly a godly man, a relational genius, and ministry innovator. One thing he wasn’t, was Irish. Patrick was born in Britain late in the fourth century AD. Captured by [...]

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Technology and Small Groups, Part Two

February 24, 2010 Miscellaneous

Continuing from the last post… here are some additional ideas on how technology can support small groups: An exciting recent development is the maturing of online video chat services like Skype and TokBox. Plagued for years by spotty service and poor video quality, they’re now ready for prime time. Live video has a “face-to-face” benefit [...]

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Technology and Small Groups, Part One

February 20, 2010 Miscellaneous

This week my friend Reid Smith asked me if I had any thoughts on how technology could support community. I started jotting down some ideas and before long had quite a list! In fact, we’ll split it into two posts. Here goes… Technology can revolutionize routine communication. A FaceBook page (and messages to fans) can [...]

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Peeling Groups

October 9, 2009 Guest Authors

This post is one in a series by guest authors who embrace the value of “thinking small.” You can read the author’s bio at the end of the post. My interest in oranges would have been short-lived if my only attempts at eating them had been with the peel still on. As it is, I [...]

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Help! I Need Somebody!

September 27, 2009 Miscellaneous

On April 13, 1965 the Beatles entered Abbey Road Studios in London, and recorded another Lennon/McCartney hit. It took them 12 takes to get it right: Help, I need somebody, Help, not just anybody, Help, you know I need someone, help. Less than a year later, 25 year-old John Lennon caused a worldwide scandal by [...]

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Wooden’s Socks

July 21, 2009 Group Leadership

Vince Lombardi famously started each season’s first practice with the same speech. “Gentlemen, this is a football.” One year a player (probably a lineman) responded: “Slow down, coach. You’re losing me.” Lombardi knew that you had to hammer the basics year after year, or risk loosing games because players couldn’t execute the fundamentals. Block. Tackle. [...]

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Accepting Opacity

June 29, 2009 Group Leadership

If you create small group environments to support spiritual formation, one of your top values is transparency. This is the degree to which members allow each other to see who they really are. It’s related to social intimacy (“Into Me See”), but since those x-ray glasses hawked in comic books don’t work as advertised, a [...]

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Remember Me

June 22, 2009 Small Group Life

The guy who passed me the tray seemed nice enough, but I had never seen him before. Our eyes never met. We were concentrating on the hand-off, knowing that a fumble at this point would embarrass both of us and disrupt the 4,998 others who were executing the same play. Concentric rings of tiny plastic [...]

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Clarifying

April 30, 2009 Small Group Life

The alarm went off at 3:00 AM. I didn’t hear it because I was already in the shower. The 5:40 AM flight seemed like a good idea when I booked it on Expedia. Now, groggy and disoriented, I would have traded the few bucks I saved for another hour or two of sleep. That’s when [...]

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