I love to study the Bible but recently my Bible study led me to a surprising conclusion: We should quit telling people to study the Bible, and start telling them to meditate on and delight in it. This is what happened. I was teaching a class on how to study the Bible and in preparation […]
Archive | Small Groups
Discovery Group Format 2.0
A new way of doing small groups is sweeping around the world. Instead of focusing on learning and talking about the Bible—as we have so often done in the past—the Discovery Group format focuses on listening to and immediately obeying the Bible. The change is subtle but powerful and brings wonderful results. The simple Discovery […]
How to End Your Small Group
I hate to break it to you, but your small group is going to end. Every small group, even the very best, is going to close someday. Jesus is no longer meeting in person here with his twelve disciples, and you are not going to do life indefinitely with the wonderful people in your current […]
What Do You Study in a Discovery Group?
How do we make disciples who make disciples who make disciples? Recently an exciting new method of doing this is sweeping around the world. It’s called the Disciple-Making Movement. At its heart are Discovery Groups focused on discipleship—obeying everything Jesus commanded. (Matthew 28:18-20) In an earlier post I wrote about how a discovery group works, […]
A New Small Group Method for Making Disciples Who Make Disciples
A simple but revolutionary way of doing evangelism and small groups is sweeping the globe. It started in India but it’s rocking the world. In suburbs of San Francisco, slums of South America, and Muslim tribes of Africa, the lost are being won, disciples are being mobilized, and churches are multiplying. It’s called the “Disciple-Making […]
Why Small Group Coaching is So Important
For 20 years I have been researching what makes small groups grow. This has involved many rounds of data gathering and careful statistical analysis. Over and over again the results reveal: The most important factor for the health and growth of a group ministry is coaching. For some reason, I woke up at 2:30am today […]
The Next Big Thing in Small Groups
Ka-Blam! My concepts of how to do small groups, evangelism, and discipleship, just blew up. I thought I knew a lot about these things. I’ve been a pastor, small group writer, and small group consultant for 30 years. I even did my Ph.D. research on what makes groups grow. But recently my paradigms of small […]
4 Reasons Why Every Pastor Should Lead a Small Group
I’ve been in full-time ministry for 35 years. During that time I’ve served in a number of different roles such as a missionary, senior pastor, associate pastor and missions pastor. No matter what role I have been in, I am almost always leading a small group—sometimes more than one group. There are four reasons why […]
4 Powerful Questions to Engage Your Small Group in Any Bible Passage
Helping your small group respond to God as you dig into the Bible together is largely a matter of asking the right questions. The most common mistake that group leaders make is to ask too many questions. If you ask too many questions, you don’t delve deeply into any of them and the same two […]
A Curriculum for Christlikeness?
By Jim Egli on October 19, 2014 in Curriculum, Discipleship, Small Group Leader Resources, Small Group Meetings, Small Groups
My favorite curriculum for small groups and smaller discipleship groups are the three books by James Bryan Smith entitled The Good & Beautiful God, The Good & Beautiful Life, and The Good & Beautiful Community. I have gone through the first book with five small groups and the entire series of all three books with […]