Every now and then a leader needs to take inventory about how their group is going. For all-church group life evaluation, forms and online assessment tools are great. However, there is a need for each group leader to take a reading of where their own group is at. It’s not meant for deep evaluation.
One form of evaluation comes through the power of story.
One evening at our group I started by telling the group they could choose Option #1 or Option #2. I gave them no indication what was behind ‘door #1′ or ‘door #2.’ One of the outspoken individuals picked #2 and everyone else just fell in line. I got more insight as to whom I could approach as a future apprentice.
Well, option #2 was an exercise that required self-examination and some serious thinking on the part of the group members. I handed out this page and challenged everyone to think back over the past year and see how they’d grown in the four core values. Then to spend time thinking forward about how they would would like to grow in the four core value areas.
But wait, that’s not all, then they were to spend time thinking about how the group could help them grow in those four core values. This was one uninterrupted quiet time about 20 minutes long… okay, there were a couple of times when little kids interrupted us to tell mommy that they needed to go potty.
After the quiet time, we spend about 45 minutes discussing our thoughts. We focused mainly on the future personal growth and the group involvement in that growth. It was a great discussion. We learned some things about each other, both vulnerability and acceptance were present. It was one of the best group nights we’ve had.
