The Seven Deadly Sins of Small Group Ministry: A Troubleshooting Guide for Church Leaders

Front Cover
Zondervan, 2009 M08 30 - 256 pages
Assessment and solution for seven commonobstacles to building small groups.It’s one thing to start a small group ministry. It’s another tokeep the groups in your church healthy and headed in thesame direction. Whatever your church’s approach maybe—whether it is a church with groups or of groups—sooner or later, as a leader, you’ll need to do sometroubleshooting. That’s when the expert, to-the-pointguidance in this book will prove its worth.The beauty of this book lies in its unique diagnosticprocess. It allows you to assess, diagnose, and correctseven common “deadly sins” that can drain the life fromyour church’s small group ministry.In The Seven Deadly Sins of Small Group Ministry, whatwould take you years to learn through trial and error isdistilled into some of the most useful information you canfind. Drawing on the knowledge they’ve gleaned fromworking inside Willow Creek Community Church, fromconsulting with hundreds of churches, and fromconducting conferences and seminars worldwide, smallgroup experts Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson furnishyou with proven, real-life solutions to the toughestproblems in your small group ministry. This is not theory—it is hands-on material you can read and apply today.
 

Contents

Introduction
7
Unclear Ministry Objectives
15
Strategies and Tools for Developing Clear Ministry Objectives
33
Lack of Point Leadership
49
Strategies and Tools for Choosing Effective Point Leaders
63
Poor Coaching Structures
75
Strategies and Tools for Rebuilding Poor Coaching Structures
89
Neglect of Ongoing Leadership Development 101 8 Strategies and Tools for Developing Leaders
115
Closed Group MindSet
127
Strategies and Tools for Transforming Group MindSet
141
Narrow Definition of a Small Group
153
Strategies and Tools for Broadening the Range of Small Groups
167
Neglect of the Assimilation Process
185
Strategies and Tools for Improving Assimilation 199 Conclusion
213
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About the author (2009)

Dr. Bill Donahue is the author of the bestselling Leading Life-Changing Small Groups, Building a Life-Changing Small Groups Ministy (with Russ Robinson), Coaching Life-Changing Leaders (with Greg Bowman), and the Equipping Life-Changing Leaders DVD.

Russ Robinson, formerly executive director of small groups at Willow Creek and senior pastor of Meadowbrook Church in North Haledon, New Jersey, is coauthor with Bill Donahue of The Seven Deadly Sins of Small Group Ministry. He continues to speak and write while practicing law in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

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