SMALL GROUP TIP #19: GROWING OUTSIDE OF GROUP TIME

By Bill Search

There are some things that you can do to encourage growth in Christ outside of your group time. Let me suggest a few to you.

Encourage regular church attendance.

The first is encourage everybody to be a regular attender at church. That sounds funny and seems so obvious, but I have found many people are irregular in their church attendance. As a small group leader, you can encourage everybody in your group to regularly attend church. You will end up more spiritually renewed and refreshed for being in church.

Encourage personal devotional times.

The second thing to do is to encourage everybody to have a personal devotional time. This is really important for you to model the way and to talk about in the group. Make it a normal part of the conversation and encourage it to be a normal part of everyone’s lives. Reading and praying every day will likely help your group to become more like Jesus as a result.

Encourage other resources.

On that note, also encourage other good resources. Maybe you read a spiritual book that helps you live out the Christian life more. Or maybe you’re really moved by a new worship CD and so you recommend it. Maybe you even go out and buy a copy of that book or worship CD for your friends in the group. But whatever this looks like for you, encourage and recommend outside materials to aid in spiritual growth.

Encourage serving.

Finally, recommend that everybody has an area of service. And there’s no specific way to do this. Showing the love of Jesus can be done by serving on the home owners association board or by rocking babies in the church nursery. No matter what they do, their area of service is a testament to how much they love Jesus and as they share this love, Jesus will be more alive in them and they will change to be more like him as well.

Those are a handful of very simple things that you can do outside of your group time to help people change to be more like Christ.

*This is the nineteenth post in a series of 27 Tips for Small Group Leaders