Sunday School vs. Small Group…

We have a ton of great small group leaders and I am grateful.  Over the past few years we have started to encourage some of our leaders to move out of middle school and into high school with their small group.  After reading “Hurt” by Dr. Chap Clark, we started to wonder if we, as a ministry, we contributing to the feeling of abandonment in teens when we build great relationships with them in middle school only to dump them when they graduate.  We ask them to start all over again with new leaders as they enter a very difficult transition and have increasing feelings of abandonment.  I’ve not landed on “the” answer, but it seems good to send some of our middle school leaders along with our students into high school.

One of the biggest challenges this decision has placed on the middle school ministry is the need to recruit more volunteers.  We have traditionally had a very high retention rate with our volunteers (most have been involved for more than five years), but when you “kick some out” you naturally need to recruit more.  One the flip side, this has also netted some desire in the children’s ministry volunteers to move up with their Sunday school class.  This year, we have a decent number who have made the leap from 5^th grade to 6^th grade; from Sunday school teacher to small group leader.

I’ve noticed we need to equip these new small group leaders a bit differently than we equip a leader who is simply new to ministry.  The difference between children’s ministry and student ministry is pretty big and without some proper training, equipping, guiding, our small groups will become mini-Sunday school classes.  It seems that most of these new leaders are used to teaching rather than facilitating.  They are used to giving information rather than drawing it out of people.  They are used to “dumping” rather than helping students to “discover.”

There is nothing wrong with where they are.  What they have been doing is developmentally appropriate for children.  Yet, as these students hit middle school, they need to start to think more deeply.  They need to start connecting the dots of all the information they have swimming in their heads.  They need to start figuring out “why” something is the way it is rather than just accepting the teachers word for it.

How have you helped your small group leaders catch this vision?  I’m confident these new leaders will become some of our best, but we need to help them get there.