Mavis Moon

Hi Ashley,

I have two things that have worked pretty well for our small group. I find that it is a real challenge to get people to do any "homework" in between meetings. No matter how well-intentioned we/they may be, most of the time no one reads or prepares beforehand. So, I'm always looking for something that will work well and not involve pre-meeting prep (except for the leader).

One thing that has worked well is outlined in this Banner article:

https://www.thebanner.org/tuned-in/2016/06/small-group-suggestion-real-simple

You can see it gives this format:

First third of the meeting:

- Read aloud a passage from the Bible. Eugene Peterson's The Message has chapters broken into nice segments for this purpose.

- Go around the circle, asking if anybody has any questions about the passage. Trust the Holy Spirit to provide an answer from the group members.

- Go around the circle again, asking if the passage struck a meaningful chord and if a new insight arose.

- Repeat as often as time allows.

Second third of the meeting:

- Go around the circle, allowing people to share thoughts from the previous week. Prayer requests are welcome. Those who prefer to say nothing can simply pass.

Last third of the meeting:

- Go around the circle again, this time praying aloud and remembering to pray for those who asked for prayer. Those who prefer not to pray aloud can say "amen" when it's their turn.

A couple of rules:

Food and drink should be simple and affordable for all.

I also had good luck - and good discussions - using the book, 90% of Helping is Just Showing Up by James R. Kok (https://www.amazon.com/90-Helping-Just-Showing-Up/dp/1496113799). Our group read through parts of it at the meetings, and discussed it there. Even without prep, we had good discussions.

Hope that helps!

-- Mavis Moon

For our replacement of Power Point, our church tried Easy Worship and Pro Presenter by having our "Power Point team" try using them for a couple weeks. We ended up not going with either but instead are using Proclaim. That has turned out to be the easiest to train people on (our team is several people who take turns doing the slides at a service, so no one on that team becomes a "master user"), and the people who create the slides like it, too. 

For planning our services, we use Church Planning Center (https://planning.center/). It's working great for the worship leader and pastor and secretary who update it throughout the week. Our volunteers are doing well on it, too. We started small with just the true worship planning team on it, but now we have accounts for all volunteers - sound, power point, praise band members, accompanists, nursery, hospitality elder, deacon who intros and prays about the offering, everything. The secretary offers personal assistance for those who need it. There are a couple people who don't have email, but not too many.

I'm encouraging our secretary to move toward using Church Planning Center for our membership and offering tracking, too. I think it'll be good to have all that in one system.

I also like the "Salt of the Earth" calendar that Joyce refers to (http://christiancalendar.squarespace.com/). It is not something you can download and print, but you can order it and it is a beautiful calendar with art and with information on the litugical seasons and holidays. I think you would like it a lot.