Everything you need to know to get started in running your Connect Group at HTBB. A great way to get going is to get all your core team to listen to this and then meet to discuss.
1. Introduction
In this session we are going to look at the small group model that HTBB uses - which we call Connect Groups.
As you know we are very keen on Connect Groups - they are the heart of HTBB. And they are a key part of the story of HTBB. Three things happened at the same time which caused HTBB to come into being:
The first was that Archbishop Moon Hing had a vision for the diocese of West Malaysia to plant 200 churches and had been steadily working away at that planting around 50 congregations - mostly in the rural areas and kampungs, but he invited HTB, Holy Trinity Brompton, in London to consider sending a team to plant in KL,
The second thing was that the work of Alpha had continued to grow but especially in the Asia Pacific region, around 54% of Alpha courses now happen in Asia Pacific, and so Alpha needed a training hub that could serve and equip churches in our region.
But the third thing was that a group of 20-30’s had got together and run Alpha for their friends, and some had come to faith, and some had come back to their faith, and so they run Alpha again and the same thing happened and so out of this they started meeting in what we would call a connect group - or as they called it TWIJ (Tuesdays with Jesus)... And this group ended up being the core group that along with the team from HTB in London planted HTBB back in September 2014. And really without that group, without that connect group humanly speaking none of what we have seen happen could have happened. Connect groups are really special to us!!
We’ve recently had a baby and in preparation were reading a book called: ‘How to grow a baby and push it out’ and I'm going to try and do the connect group equivalent of that today: how to grow a connect group and push it out.
Because that’s a great aim for a connect group - to grow, because healthy things grow - spiritually and numerically, and then push it out - push it out in terms of challenging the group to serve our city, but also in terms of planting - when the group gets too big, plant another group which gives space for new leaders to serve using the gifts they have been given.
Keith Tuning
There’s a Band called the Rolling Stones, you can find them in your parents record collection, (which is like a physical version of Spotify), and they have been going for decades now but for their first few years they really didn’t know what they were doing. They released eight albums and each one was completely different. They’d been to India and had a guru so one album was all Sitars another, another album was was minimalist, and so on… they didn’t really know what they were doing.
Now part of the problem was that Keith Richards, the guitarist, was not a brilliant guitarist, but one day he had a breakthrough. He was messing around with his guitar and found a new way of tuning it...
What he did was he cut off the bottom string of his guitar, and then detuned the now top and bottom strings of his guitar so that strummed it now plays an open G chord. Now this is brilliant because you can play all the chords you need with a very simple hand position. In other words it makes a great sound and it’s REALLY easy to play.
Here’s the opening to Brown Sugar, its a really iconic sound but it is also really easy to play. And having been doing all these different things for 8 albums having now find something simple that works he’s just done that over and over again for 43 years, he’s done that same thing over and over again, 18 albums the same action, the same sound. But it works because ‘Simplicity is a powerful weapon.’
And a connect group is a really simple model that does a really powerful thing. It builds community. And we have a really simple model that is easy to replicate and works in lots of different contexts that we use for connect groups.
2. WHY CONNECT GROUPS
So before we look at the simple model - the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ - of connect groups; we need to ask: why we do them? What is the purpose of a connect group?
We’ll the purpose of a connect group is really simple, it’s about friendship. Friendship with each other and friendship with Jesus. In Mark’s Gospel Jesus summed up the law in “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” And your… your neighbour as yourself.” - Mark 12:30-31
Friends with each other
And so the first aim of a connect group is: to make a place where people can make friends and grow in that friendship. ie a place where community can happen. It’s been said that community rarely happens around a stage, but it easily happens around a table.
On a Sunday it can be quite hard at HTBB to make friends and go deep with them as there are so many people but also because there is other stuff going on. In a connect group we have the space and the time to get to know one another better.
Friends with Jesus
But as well as making friends with each other we want to grow deeper in a our relationship with Jesus, but this tends not to happen in isolation, growing deeper in relationship with Jesus and learning to love our neighbours is connected. Jesus when he wanted to make disciples didn’t do 1-1 coaching sessions he gathered a team and put them to work serving, serving those in the group and serving those outside of the group. We never see Jesus taking one disciple aside to do a special mentoring session, in fact its the opposite the one time Peter takes Jesus aside to try and correct him (ha -don’t you love Peter!?) Jesus pulls all the disciples in as he teaches him. Jesus taught his disciple to love Him in the context of learning to love one another.
So connect group is a place where you grow as a disciple of Christ because as you commit to community you get stretched - you are stretched because loving people isn’t always straight easy and being loved isn’t always easy! - But as you learn to love others who are different from you, serving them in community you will encounter Jesus and you will be changed.
UP-IN-OUT
And that works out in a three way movement if you like: UP, IN, OUT. In our sessions we look UP in prayer and worship. Focusing on our friendship with Jesus. We look IN and grow as friends together in authentic community, but we also look OUT because true love seeks to serve, so we serve each other but also those in our communities.
Parable of the sower
The parable of the sower is really good image for us to use when thinking about connect groups. What we are told in the parable of the sower is that God is scattering his seed - in Mark’s reading this is people, Jesus explains it like this:
14 The farmer sows the word. 15 Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.
16 Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. 17 But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.
18 Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; 19 but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.
20 Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”
Mark 12:30-31
...there are people who are encountering Jesus and putting their faith in him, the crucial question is what happened to them next? And this parable says that the quality of the soil they land in is key to seeing their faith become fruitful.
Our job in running connect groups is to create good soil where people can be planted and grow. Where they can become friends with other people and be supported in the challenges they face, become friends with Jesus by reading his word and discussing it with others.
Verse 16 I think is really key for us: “they hear the word, and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they only last a short time.” In our model of church where Alpha is the front door, this is key because those who come to faith often have no root, they are often the only Christian in their family, they haven’t yet read the whole Bible, and they’ve only had 10 weeks of faith so probably hopefully haven’t yet been through a major crisis.
Connect groups are to be a place of good soil that they can then plant themselves into so that when “troubles and persecution come” they have the root not not only endure but flourish and |produce a crop - some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”
And we’ve seen than, some of our best leaders in the church are those who have come to faith through Alpha and found good soil to grow in within a connect group.
Kate’s Experience at MOLO (Mother’s of Little Ones)
And this is where having a simple model helps because for this to work it needs to be quite flexible because people have different schedules, availability, and needs - for example as many of you know we are in London at the moment, and Kate joined a connect group. Its made up mostly of mums, meets on a Monday Morning (because evenings don’t work for young children) and its chaos there are babies crying, and being sick, and fast asleep, but it works!.. and this connect group are great friends, they support each other in their joys and sorrows and pray for each other and most importantly they make the space in the week to be with others and Jesus and get to know each other better.
And there’s a WhatsApp group…
Pastoral Care
Connect groups are therefore also a place where pastoral care is provided for people, it is a place where people can find friendships, ask for prayer and get support when needed.
And we’ll discuss this in more details in another podcast - but the important thing I want to flag now is that if anyone ever comes to you with something that you don’t feel equipped to deal with - please come to us, were here to support and help you. So if someone is disclosing something to you, and you don’t feel you are able to support them you can just say ‘this is a bit beyond my abilities to support you, would you mind if we go and speak to one of the other pastors, about this, and I’ll come with you...’ And then get in touch and we’ll arrange to meet with them and ideally you at the same time if possible. And we’ll explore more of this in a later session.
Measure of Success
So some people might look at this group and think, oh they aren’t doing all the elements that you might think you’d normally do at a connect group, but the aim isn’t to tick all the boxes its to grow in friendship with each other and Jesus and that will look different for different groups - and the aim is that people would draw closer to Jesus and each other.
And connect groups are one of the proven models for facilitating this. So how do we build a healthy connect group? How do we grow a connect group and push it out….?
Summary:
Connect groups are about friendship.
Friendship with each other
Friendship with Jesus
As you commit to community and serve you grow
3. Team
So first and foremost the thing that is key in building a healthy connect group is a team. None of this can be easily done without the work of a team. Jesus when he started his ministry, one of the first things he did was build a team. He prayed lots and then picked his team. The key thing to remember is that TEAMS HAVE MORE FUN.
Connect Group Leader
Now in our model there are two roles within the leadership of a connect group. Firstly you have one or two connect group leaders. (This can be a married couple, or it can be two people who are not married, we say its best practice not to have people who are dating or engaged leading a Connect Group, as its quite awkward if they break up…)
and the connect group leaders are the pastors of the connect group. They take pastoral responsibility for everyone in the connect group, if anyone has a pastoral question or needs help their first port of call is their connect group leader.
They are also leading the team and build their core team.
Core team
Which is the second type of leader in our model. The core team are people who are committed to the Connect Group and lead different areas within the group, and as a core team member your role is to basically take as much of the practical stuff off the hands of the connect group leader so that they can focus on the pastoral work.
So you might have one person in charge of food, another worship, another admin - as much of the logistics as possible so that the Connect Group leader can focus on the people when you meet together.
Now what is really good is when the core team then delegate that work so rather than having someone who always gets the food, have someone who is responsible for delegating that to other members of the group because this spreads the workload, makes it sustainable but also gives other people opportunity to serve and own the group for themselves.
Administrator
Best practice is to appoint one person to be the administrator - this is the person whose job it is to reply when someone is connected with the group via the website. So you give the Administrators contact details to the Connect Team at HTBB and then when someone asks to join your connect group they make the link. Now at this point ideally you want the administrator to reply to any enquiries within 24 hours, this is the point where new people could easily be dropped so make sure when you pick an administrator they are someone who is reliable and organised.
There is a reason that administration is listed among the Spiritual all the others and that’s because it is key for making anything happen and thrive!
Picking People
Now it’s up to the Connect Group leaders to pick their core group, we’d say anyone can serve but you only really want people on the Core Team who are a) committed to the group but also b) committed to following Jesus as these are your future leaders as we’ll see later on.
And you are the best recruiters, always be on the lookout for people who have a gift that they aren’t yet using and try to find ways for them to use it to serve the group. Always be in headhunter mode!
Now whilst Connect Group leaders can pick their own core team the Connect Group leaders are chosen by our senior pastors Miles and Sarah, this is because the Connect Group leaders are the pastors of the church so the Church needs to be confident that they are good examples of Christian living but also we need to equip them with all they need to lead well.
So when it comes time to plant or if you need to recruit a new Connect Group Leader come and chat with the Connect Group team and we’ll work on a plan to appoint new Connect Group Leaders together.
The role of friendship
In all of this remember that its a lot more fun to be doing Ministry with friends (its a lot more fun doing anything with friends) so whenever I’m recruiting a team for something like this, I’ll ask who do I want to spend time with! The connect groups that fly are often the ones that have a group of friends at the core of it, but essentially a group of friends who are willing to open their friendship up to others. Which is what God did. What we see is the triune God, God who is three persons made space for a forth by sending the Son who came back with his bride. We are in Christ so it’s still three but we are pulled into that relationship of love, we are pulled into the loving embrace of the Father of the Son by the Spirit.
Training
Once you have leaders and core teams you have to train them and continue to invest in them, and truthfully this is something we’ve struggled with because we haven’t found a model that works, so we’ve tried a few things and here’s where I think we are headed in this next year. There are three stages:
1. Initial Training
All of the leaders need to be trained in some way. We are likely to adopt HTB in London’s way of training which is a four week training course that covers the basics of what we have talked about today and some other things as well.
To get onto this course you have to be invited, we take suggestions from staff team, the connect group leaders, and people can offer. We then invite them to a come to the training but this isn’t yet an invitation to be a connect group leader, and part of the training is that we would get to know you and work out if you are someone we think is called and capable to lead a connect group.
Then the training is four weeks, and you can find the notes to these sessions on Frog, its an electronic copy of this book.
Session 1: Envision
Why Connect groups matter, and their purpose.
A theology of leadership
Session 2: Equip (part 1)
Jesus model of Discipleship
An introduction to pastoral care
Group Scenarios
Mentoring and Safeguarding information.
Session 3: Equip (part 2)
How to maintain your own spiritual health
How to maintain your team
The format of the weeks.
Session 4: Empower
Prayer
Social Action
Prayer Ministry
Spiritual Gifts
Follow Up
Once people have been through the training and you think they are appropriate then you can follow up with a coffee and make a plan for them to step into leadership of a connect group.
2. On Going Communication
Once someone is in leadership we need to continue to communicate with them so we do this via a WhatsApp group but also a weekly update email, with info regarding what’s coming up, things to pray for and the Bible Study resource for that week.
3. On Going Training
And this is the piece that we haven’t worked out. We tried evening trainings but we found that there isn’t enough time in the evenings with the traffic to get enough done - also people are quite busy. When we started we tried every other week meeting with the CG leaders but it was just too intense and many of the groups wanted to meet every week. We’ve also tried lunches gathering the leaders and core teams and taking them for lunch on a Sunday - this works quite well, to hear from them, to give a bit of vision, but doesn’t really work for extended training or equipping. In London they have found day retreats quite useful - in places within London so we may look at that and make great use of our many public holidays!
4. Where: Location
So you’ve got your team the next thing you think about is location. Location is really important. We are physical beings and so we need physical spaces in order to gather together, and so there are some really ordinary things to think about:
Access to the building
Parking
Happy Housemates - they are your first neighbours, actual neighbours, you need to ask their permission. (Dan: my university flatmates loved it when I had connect group at the house as it meant the kitchen would actually get cleaned for once, the only time in fact.)
It’s thinking though all the things that will make it easy for people to come and so that they feel welcome when they do.
Hospitality
This is hospitality which is key. Hospitality is a distinctive of the Christian Life, in the same way God has invited us into his family we are to invite others into ours. Hospitality means that people know: “you arrival was anticipated”
It’s also worth thinking about vibe, put some music on in the background, dim the lights, have some snacks out. It’s asking the question how will people feel when they arrive, put yourself in their shoes.
It can also be worth asking new people once they’ve been there a few weeks and feel comfortable with you how did they feel when they came?
Security
On the location its worth mentioning safety, for obvious reasons it’s never great for any member of the group to be left alone with a member of the opposite sex at the end of the evening - especially if it’s a new guest that we don’t know yet. So just make sure that the core team / leaders don’t leave before the guests have gone, we’ve never had a problem in the past but this is partly due to people looking out for each other so keep that up.
5. When: Time and Date
Now originally we used to be quite prescriptive on when Connect Groups ran - we used to say Tuesday Nights only. This was because when communicating to people on a sundya it's a lot easier to say one thing than many things and also when you give people too many options they feel overwhelmed.
We’ve relaxed this recently and found that it has word for some groups, but a good principle to keep in mind is that to build friendships, little and often investment is key. Nicky Gumbel says that having the Connect Group mid week is helpful because then our interaction with each other is spread out across the week - so hopefully you worship and serve on Sunday and feel topped up - as it were for the week and then you get a boost again on Tuesday seeing people - which keeps you going till the next Sunday.
So you as a group can decide when to run it - but we say there are two times when it is not helpful to run a Connect Group and that is on Wednesday Evenings because that is Alpha Night - our one message to the church is “bring your friends to Alpha!” and on Sundays during the services because again our one message to the church is: ‘Bring your friends to Church”. We don’t want anything to get in the way of people being able to come or serve on Alpha or on Sundays.
Apart from that the rest of the week is your oyster though we’d say most have found that Tuesday Night or for Families with younger kids Saturday Mornings have proved the most fruitful.
6. Event
The next thing you need is a plan for what you are going to do and again this is a way of keeping things simple as once you have found a plan that works most people find it really helpful to stick to it.
Start and end on time
So to make your plan, first pick a start and end time - most connect groups start around 7:30 in the evening and finish at 9:30. Now we tend to say that best practice is always start on time. Traffic will always be tricky but unless literally no one is there start on time as it lets people know this is when we begin. If you only start when enough people are there what happens over time is that people know it’s flexible so they arrive later and later which means those that get there on time are waiting around and also anyone new, who are likely to be on time will feel a little adrift! Starting on time shows to everyone that you value their time.
Nicky Gumbel shared a story with us about how after a Sunday service he was chatting to a couple who had come to HTB for the first time that week. And they said that at 9:29 they watched Nicky and Pippa walk up onto stage to begin at 9:30 on the dot and as they did she turned to her husband and said “This is is our home!”. She said to Nicky we’ve been to so many churches and non of them start on time, I’m a head mistress my time is valuable and I can’t afford to waste any of it!
Also whatever happen: always finished on time.
Finishing on time is key because firstly it means that you are more likely to spend your time well. Also if you don’t have a clear end time people don’t know when it's okay to leave! Some will need to get going at 9:30 to get back for a babysitter or because they start work early the next morning.
If you finish late it's probably because you are having a good time but what feels great at 11:30 at night doesn’t feel great when you get up at 6:30 the next morning... and it means people are less likely to come the following week because that is the memory that sticks!
Also for the hosts you need this to be sustainable for the long term and staying up till late in the middle of the week every week isn’t a healthy practice.
So a typical running order is something like this:
Soft Start & Food
7:30 soft start, with food. Begin the food and by eating together - this means you can get going even if people are stuck in the jam, and remember new people are nearly always on time! So you don’t want them just hanging there waiting, put a plate in their hand and that’s a good start for them feeling welcome!
Introduction
8:00 hard start with a welcome and ‘How are Yous?’ go round the group and ask how is everyone doing (a brief recap on what’s going on for people) this stops us from racing in and reminds us that we are there for each other, it also makes for an easy way for people to get to know each other and share as much or as little as they feel comfortable with.
It also creates space for people to share good or bad news so that it doesn’t just get shared at the end as everyone is clearing up, we want connect groups to be a place where we can share our lives with one another.
Top tip: It’s good often for one of the core team / leaders to start this as they can set the bar as to length - (the ‘how are you’s’ are not a biography from birth), and also share something real, ie if everyone says “I’m fine...” nothing’s really been gained, be honest if you are good - say why! If you are a little low share that and why, you don’t have to go into details but it lets people know its okay not to be 100% okay all the time.
Worship
8:15 Worship - Sing together, either use Spotify/YouTube with the Lyrics screen, HTBB has a playlist of the songs we use on Sundays, or if you have on worship leader then use them, and connect groups are a great place for people to step out and practice their giftings. The worship team at HTBB also offer training for anyone who would like it on how to lead worship in connect groups. But find a way to worship together - it sets the focus and direction of what you are doing, It has always struck me that at the end of the Last Supper just before Jesus goes to Gethsemane to pray and prepare for the cross we read: “when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the mount of olives…” - Mark 14:26
Jesus is about to do the most important thing the in the history of the world and he takes time to stop and sing a song of worship. Worship is really key for us, and there seems to be something special about sung worship.
Bible
8:30 Look at the Bible together - we’ll talk about a few ways to do that later on.
Prayer
9:10 Then we would finish by praying together and for each other. Now praying for each other I think is likely the most important thing a connect group can do together. Time and time again we see that the connect groups that learn to pray for each other are the ones that really come alive.
And as well as praying for each other every week we send out to the connect group leaders some prayer requests for HTBB so please pray for that as well as praying for our nation and the world as well. Connect groups is one of the main places that as a church we intercede together for God’s kingdom to come.
Finish
Then 9:30 we finish. As we said it is really important to finish on time, it lets people know that you value their time, in the long run it makers sure that you keep to the task at hand and makes the time you do spend together more purposeful.
Tidy Up Team
At that point we’d usually say okay who can help tidy up - have a clean up party (do you know what? Washing up and cleaning is really fun with your friends, it’s no fun on your own... if everyone has left and it’s the third week in a row that you are doing all the cleaning - that is not much fun. Finishing at that set time earlier than you need to get to bed is a really good practice. Teams not only have more fun, but this also gives people an opportunity to serve which is key to them finding ownership of the group.
Finish earlier than you need to
We’d also say finish earlier than you need to, so we’d finish at 9:30 knowing that mostly it takes everyone 30 min to leave, also I call this the GOLDEN HALF HOUR of meaningful engagement. It’s often then that some of the best conversations happen, as people do things together, or they break up into smaller groups people feel a little more confident to share what they feel or think and this is where connection can happen (also the person who you’ve wanted to talk to 1-1 for romantic reasons can now happen...)
Also you may find that someone has something they need to talk to someone about but didn’t want to say in front of the whole group. So this creates the space for that to happen.
We used to found that this was a really fun way to finish the night as anyone who needed to get off could (we had a trader in our group who worked the US markets so she needed to finish at 9:30 to get to work!), and those who want to hang can.
I am a night owl but Kate is not, so she would hang around till 10 and then just go to bed and leave others to let themselves out. She’d disappear. Alternatively don’t be afraid of kicking people out, you won’t be able to finish every theological discussion or ethical conundrum... don’t stay up all night trying to fix the worlds problems it might be fun in the moment but your tomorrow self wont thank you for it.
Most you’ll do
Now this is the most you’ll be able to do, this is the maximum, but don’t be afraid of doing less. For example we didn’t have a worship leader and were quite small at the start so we would have worship music on during arrival and dinner but didn’t used to sing together.
But the absolute minimum is that you spend time together and you pray for each other, if nothing else happens - the traffic was so bad only three of you made it, the food didn’t even arrive just pray for each other and pray for the world and that is a win!
7. Membership
Recruiting
There are two routes into a connect group, one is that someone invites them along, this is definitely the easiest way to join a group - as put yourself into the shoes of someone attending a group for the first time, you are in a strange building, meeting a new group, you may not be sure what to expect, it’s like the first day at school. But if you can arrive with someone or just know that they will be there when you arrive it is a lot easier.
Now this can be someone you know, we encourage all Alpha group hosts and helpers to invite their groups at the end of the course to join their connect group. But it also can just be people that you meet. You are the best recruiter for your connect group and the cafe after church is one of the best places to recruit from.
The other way people join connect groups is through the ‘connect process’ an online form they can fill out on the website where they give us their details and we look at their location and age and then put them in touch with a few groups we think they might be a good match for.
Now we don’t assign people to groups, if they would like to join a different one that is completely up to them, they tend to be the best judge of where they fit so we let people try a few out if they wish - but we say once you’ve found a group, commit to it.
Commitment
Which is different to Alpha, on Alpha we say to people, come along - you only have to come once if you hate it you never have to come again, with Connect Groups we encourage people to commit.
This is because the beginning of all discipleship is commitment. Just be there, consistently present. Never be ashamed of asking people to commit and engage as its very very good for them! Jesus was not at all apologetic as he said to his disciples: “You, come follow me.”
In the moment that someone commits to a connect group - they move from a consumer to a servant - which is good for us as Jesus said it is better to give than to receive. People will grow more through being committed to a challenging group of people than they will by simply attending a group of people that they find it easy to get a long with.
Service
Now once someone has committed you want to find a way for them to serve. We want to give everyone the opportunity to serve the connect group. Ideally there should be NO SPECTATORS. This is because it is better to give than to receive, so we want to give space for everyone to use their gifts - their spiritual gifts in the opportunity to pray, bring words of knowledge, understanding, encouragement, and practical gifts of service such as getting the food, tidying up, leading a section of the meeting.
8. Teaching
Earlier we mentioned teaching, that each week we want connect groups to look at the Bible together because we believe that as we read the word of God together we will encounter Jesus and will be transformed.
Now one thing to keep in mind is that Connect Groups are about growing friendships with each other and with Jesus - and for both of those to happen you need not just preaching but also discussion and interaction. Jesus used both models of teaching - the preach (see the sermon on the mount), and the conversation (see the story of Nicodemus), but with both of these there often follows a discussion - you keep seeing Jesus time and time again take his disciples to one side and unpack as a group what has just been said.
So whilst preaching is definitely one way you can provide the teaching element in a connect group - it may not be the best way as you may run out of time to discus and interact with each other - we don’t have all the time in the world so we have to prioritise.
So here are a few ways you can read the Bible together as a group:
Swedish Bible Study Method
The simplest way is the: ‘Swedish Bible Study Method’, you take a passage (maybe the New Testament Bible in One Year Reading for that day) print it out for everyone. Then one person reads it out aloud, then with pens people mark on the passage three things:
Questions you have (?)
Things that stood out for you (!)
Things you can apply to your life. (->)
Then you go around and share and discuss. (Don’t skip on the printing it out for everyone and the pens as the physical element really helps people engage).
The first strength of this is that there are no spectators, everyone is expected to bring something but meets everyone at their level so they can bring whatever they have.
The second strength is that this gives us the maximum time that we are both engaging with the scripture and with each other - as our aim is to build community discussion is a really key element you need to foster.
The other positive is that it takes very little preparation, at a minimum its just print and hand it out. But if you have time someone can do more preparation and research before and so help to guide the conversation with background information. Low effort is a win if you have only just finished work at six and the person doing a talk has pulled out because they’ve got a fever... or so on.
The downside is that it can take time for people to get the discussion going if the group is a little shy. But its worthwhile because once people are confident everyone can engage at the level they are at (and we found that this works with new Christians as they are seeing the text for the first time and often see things those of us who have heard it before miss.)
The Swedish Bible study method works really well as both a staple teaching method but also as a backup if something else falls through.
The final positive of the Swedish Bible Study Method is that we live in a world where you can constantly hear the worlds best preachers as you sit in the jam, go for a run - and this is amazing but Jesus said its not just hearing the word its doing what it says that counts, and Connect Group is the place where we can take what we are learning and thrash out with others:
‘WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR ME?’
What shape does this take for me in my life mon-fri 9-5?
And Swedish Bible Study Method lands with the ‘what does this passage say to do’ which means it pulls us away from just having a nice intellectual discussion about faith and says: okay how are you going to Love Jesus and your neighbour this week?
Video Preaching
Another way to do teaching is to use a video, and obviously there is world class teaching available for free at a tip of our fingers, but the one downside of this is that you can spend a lot of time watching a screen and not enough time interacting with each other.
We know some groups who tell people listen or watch this talk before you arrive and then they discuss it when they arrive.
We found the best videos to use were really short ones, ie the Bible Project Videos are five minute summaries of Bible Books or key biblical concepts. Our connect group came out of our Alpha Group we had a a lot of new or not yet Christians and so we went through the Old Testament books using the Bible Project which we found created really fruitful discussions.
Live Preaching
Another great thing you can do is that Connect Groups are a brilliant place for anyone who has a give of teaching to start exercising that gift. All the best preachers are people who spent a lot of time teaching in smaller contexts. Also we have lots of ordinands at SPTC who would love to come and share with you, that’s a win for both of you as they get to practice preaching.
And there are many other ways that you can do this, but the key elements are: look at the Bible, discuss it together, work out how does this change how I live?
9. Prayer
Now the most important thing, as we said before is that you pray for each other…. at one point we were so bad at this, we’d run out of time, or someone would need to leave, before we had prayed that we put an alarm in and whatever was happening - we’d stop and pray together, because God wants to do things among us and its important that we leave space for him to move - he’s a gentleman he will never force himself in.
Now one thing we want to happen in Connect groups is that people learn to pray. Lots of people don’t know how to pray and we are modeling it for them here. As we said our Connect Group came out of our Alpha group and we had lots of people who didn’t know how to pray or believe in pray. In fact we had one guy who when we did prayer requests would say: “I don’t believe in prayer.” So we’d ask: “We’ll if you did believe in prayer, what would you ask prayer for?” And he’d then usually ask!
So we’d often do it like this, go round the group and ask who would like pray for what, offer to pray for anything that has come up and then if there are a few things that are similar you might like to pray for all of those at once, or if you want to be efficient we used to get everyone up, in a circle - get the blood moving - lay a hand on the person to your right and pray all at the same time, then pray for the person on your left…
Now these prayers don’t need to be long winded, or intensity...intensity is not a fruit of the Spirit…
I love St Benedict’s rule on this: ‘Prayer should be honest and brief unless you are taken up in the Spirit.’ - Jesus says don’t pray like the pagans who babble on - be to the point it’s your Father you are talking to!
But it can be energetic, I love this saying: “We pray in faith because we have a big God who loves to give good gifts to his children when they ask!”
Also please pray for the world and the church - Connect groups are one of the main places prayer happens in the life of the church and we send out to the connect group leaders a list of things to pray for in the weekly email.
As much as you can keep this fun and engaging as - as we said - at the end of a long day a quiet meditation session of prayer is a sure way to get everyone ready for bed - but they still have to drive home!
And we are going to do the next four sessions on how to pray for each other and prayer ministry at HTBB.
10. Planting
So all of the points so far have been how to grow a connect group, the last two are on how to push it out! Or as we call it ‘Planting’.
Planting is really important because once a connect group gets to about 25 people it becomes quite hard to get to know everyone. Also it means that there are less opportunities to serve and so for people to grow in their giftings.
When the group gets too big the temptation can be to shut the doors, but if you do this the group will eventually die - this happens for two reasons.
The first is that naturally cities have quite a high turnover in our last connect group we had 3 people move not just out of the city but relocated to entirely different countries all within the same month, at the same time people’s jobs often change and we had two people change jobs to the other side of the city and so couldn’t make it across the city in time after work so they had to change Connect Groups. Cities can be quite transient.
But the other reason is that the moment you shut the doors you are becoming inwardly focused - in Jesus’ words if you hold onto your life you will lose it. Now this is painful - the original connect group that planted HTBB the first thing we had to ask them to do was to stop meeting for the first few months and all be group hosts and helpers on the first run of Alpha - then after that we had to ask them to do an even more painful thing which was now don’t start meeting again but plant several connect groups. This is costly because you want to be with your friends but they did it and God honours it! From that one connect group we moved to four, and now we have around 17 - because they were willing to make space for others by planting. Planting is painful but it’s worth it, Jesus original team weren’t always the best of friends but were a tight group by the end and then they get sent off in all directions all over the known world - painful but boy are we glad that they went!
Core Team
So best practice is to start preparing to plant before you need to and this is done by having and investing in your core group. These are the team that will likely go off to lead the plant group, not always sometimes some stay but ideally its them because they’ve been watching you been trained by you so will now be pros at it!
When you start to think we need to plant, you then need to have a conversation with us, you get to pick your core team but the connect group leaders are picked by Miles and Sarah - because it is a pastoral role and we need to be confident that the Connect Group leaders are all prepared, equipped, and mature enough to take on the responsibility - its not good news for anyone if they aren’t. So please speak with us before you speak to them but you are the best headhunters - come to us and say, I’ve got so and so and they are brilliant they should go off and plant in so and so place and then we can meet with them and have an initial conversation.
CONCLUSION
So that was how to grow a connect group and push it out… and we want to finish by Thanking you for all the work that you are doing --- you are investing in God’s church, you are building his kingdom, you are loving his people. And you won’t always get to see all the fruit but it is there…
Later greater same...
Going back to the parable of the sower… one thing Jesus teachers us in that parable is that the fruit is always later. You won’t see all of the fruit that you are growing but it is there. That’s the promise of God. But you won’t see it all, the principle in this parable is that there will be fruit but it is later, greater, and the same. You reap what you sow, you get more back than what you sowed, and it comes later.
Another way of thinking about it is the more lasting something is the longer it takes to grow, Mushrooms grow overnight, Oak Trees take centuries. We are growing Oak Trees, as Isaiah called them people who will be oaks of righteousness in this world and so a lot of the fruit of your connect group investment you won’t get to see - but it is there. Know that this is a worthwhile task, that it will change lives and will build God’s kingdom here in KL.
More?
To finish I just want share a recording with you of David Hurst. David and his Wife Deidre have the record for the longest running connect group at HTB - it is 38 years old this year! Their group has a special focus of welcoming in those who have real trouble integrating elsewhere in society; the homeless, people with addictions and mental health issues. And I wanted to know how do you keep on going in this kind of ministry:
(Audio Recording of David Hirsh)
Isn’t that wonderful, the fruit they’ve seen from the soil they prepared. And the amazing thing is as much as you try and bless others, God will always bless you more back.
Now there is much more we could say, but in the words of Jesus, you can not bare it now... you’ve been listening to us for 45 minutes now! But remember:
Keep it simple - its a simple model don’t over complicate it.
Keep it sustainable - invest in teams.
Keep it focused: Connect groups are about friendship with Jesus and each other.
