Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Jumping in the deep end

Here we go..I've never blogged either. I have been posting comments so I'm not completely lame. Scott's admonishment today really made me feel like I wasn't pulling my weight, so I thought I better hold my nose and take the plunge.

I took another plunge Saturday evening. We held our first HOST event. When we were at Saddleback they explained that they refer to their small group leaders as hosts.
H ave a heart for people
O pen your home
S erve a snack
T urn on the DVD
We decided to take the same approach. We asked 30 people if they would come and explore the possibility of being a small group host. 26 of them came Saturday evening to our program.
We called our event Extreme Makeover, Church Edition. Everything we did that evening was centered on that theme. We even borrowed New Pointe's idea and had a Trivia Quiz based on the TV show and gave away gift cards to Lowe's for the winning table. It was a terrific event. We answered questions, shared our vision and encouraged them that they could host a small group.
Everyone at our event signed up to be in a Turbo Group for the next six weeks. We are dividing into four small groups to experience group life and have some hands on training as leaders. We are using Andy Stanley's study, Go Fish.
I have never held a program ( I was Director of Christian Education for the past 7 years) that was blanketed with more prayers or as passionately planned as this was. Our Small Group Advisory Board worked tirelessly to make this night as impactful as possible. This is such a leap into deep water for us. We know we are in way over our heads but it is what we are being called to do.
I know we are going to take in some water and flail about until we get this up and running. In the meantime I will be watching all of you perfect your strokes in the deep end. Aren't we lucky to be in this together?

2 comments:

John Bunn said...

Awesome, Elizabeth! Thanks for sharing!

Scott Bell said...

You go Small Group Girl! What a great first event and turnout. Let us know the next time you have something going on so we can be very intentional with our support and prayers for the event and all of the people God will move to be a part of it.

See, the water gets warmer once your in it for a while.