Thank you for volunteering to be a Vineyard Small Group Leader! I know that doing this is a sacrifice of time and energy, but I pray that you will be personally enriched become of it.
On this page I just want to give an overview of the qualifications and expectations for small group leaders at the Vineyard. We do not expect you to be a part-time theologian, a gifted teacher, or to have all the answers in order to facilitate a group. Our goal is not perfection but consistency between our groups. If you have any concerns about the issues raised below, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly (479-650-1861).
Again, thank you so much for your willingness to lead in this essential ministry of Vineyard Fort Smith!
Kevin
Purpose
Small Group Leaders are responsible for providing their group with vision, direction, and support. They primarily serve as shepherds by facilitating and monitoring their group.
Qualifications
Connected. You have made a commitment to Jesus as Lord, followed by baptism, and a commitment to Vineyard Fort Smith as your church.
Culture. You have embraced our groups strategy and values (outlined below).
Character. You are know for your integrity by those who know you best.
Chemistry. You get along well with other Vineyard leaders.
Competence. You have previously participated in a Vineyard small group.
Priorities
There are several elements attached to Vineyard small groups, both optional and non-negotiable. Optional elements include:
Music - you don’t have to have music as part of your regular meeting. If you’re blessed with someone in the group that can - go for it. Or you’re welcome to play a couple of songs from YouTube or Spotify. It can be helpful to put people into a place to hear from God or receive ministry, but not required.
Food - do whatever you want, full meal, dessert only, or nothing. If you do a meal or dessert one way to share the load is to ask people to bring something or assign someone to be the meal coordinator.
Childcare - again, do what you can with your space. You can have no childcare at all, be open to children attending but no designated child care, or arrange for a child care person to watch kids during your meetings. If you have a lot of parents with small children one option would be to have couples take turns each week.
These are the optional elements to a Vineyard small group. But there are also some non-negotiable aspects of a small group as well. These include:
Content - use the discipleship content that’s provided “as is” (currently Practicing the Way - more below on this). It’s been thoroughly vetted and approved by the elders, and it won’t be helpful to voice your disagreements about any content to your group. If you have a concerns please bring it directly to me.
Prayer ministry - we are a Vineyard. Part of what that means is that we still think God is “doing the stuff”. Every meeting needs to have space to pray for each other. There are a couple of complementary ways this can happen each week. 1) ask for prayer requests and then let the group pray over each one. Try and keep the focus to those in the group and not “aunt Ida’s bum foot”. 2) create space for people to just listen to the Spirit and respond as led. Do either/or or both/and. Bottom line: it’s important that you leave enough time to not rush this part of your group meeting!
Content - we use material from Practicing the Way. This is a resource that we feel gets to the heart of what it means to be formed as an authentic follower of Jesus. We also supplement these sessions with a more traditional Bible study. All of this will be made available.
PTW - is video based content. Each week you will navigate to our church YouTube channel where I will have all the videos for this semester - typically 4. Each video is arranged to have an introduction, a pause for group discussion, then a main teaching, followed by another pause for further discussion in the group, and then a final closing segment. By and large you will just follow the instructions on the screen. All the discussion questions will be on the screen when it has you pause the video.
Bible study - something new we’ve added is a Bible study that will help us actually open the scriptures and go deeper with the topic or hit it from another angle. Your role is still as a discussion facilitator. You don’t need to teach anything. The study will have a passage that can be read aloud, some commentary for you if someone needs more clarity about an aspect of the passage, and then a series of discussion questions that hopefully lead to life application.
So the regular flow of each semester will be to watch a PTW video one week followed by a corresponding Bible study the following week. Then back to the next video the next week and then Bible study the next. Back and forth through the 8 week semester.
Depending on the size of your group and how talkative they are, it can be challenging to get through all the questions. Couple of ways to handle. One, cherry pick what you think are the best questions - ones that really get to the heart of the topic. Two, if you have space, divide your group into small units and ask someone in each to lead the discussion. If this is an issue you may just need to experiment to determine what works best for your group.