The Crossline Community Groups Podcast

Watch Out For The Land Mines: Selecting a Study

• Jordan Gash

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Have you ever felt like your small group is running in circles or being pulled down by the weight of a poorly picked study? That's where I found myself, grappling with my group's fixation on the Book of Revelation. This episode is my roadmap to navigating such challenges. We will walk through the treacherous path of selecting the right study for small group growth, unity, and wisdom, and we'll touch on why this choice can make or break the group's dynamic. 

But choosing a study isn't a shot in the dark. We delve into four decision-making approaches: command, consult, vote, and consensus, each one offering its advantages and pitfalls. We will also introduce and evaluate different study types - sermon-based, platform-based, book-based, and Bible-based. By the end, you'll be equipped with the knowledge and foresight to pick studies that work best for your group, avoiding those that can be a drain or even a landmine. Whether you are leading one group or dozens, this episode will arm you with valuable insights to cultivate unity and foster growth.

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Speaker 1:

Well, everyone, my name is Jordan Gash, I'm the Community Life Pastor at Crossline Community Church, and welcome to the Crossline Community Groups podcast, where we speak to those that are leading small groups or those that are overseeing a ministry overseeing small groups. This is for you. Well, we have a fun episode for you today, but before we begin, I want to first and foremost give an affirmation for anyone and everyone that is leading a small group or is overseeing a ministry of small groups. I want to bless you in Jesus' name and say thank you. Your ministry matters and we're doing amazing things for the kingdom. Like I said, we have a great episode for you today because it's the first of a series of episodes that we'll hit on over the course of this podcast called Watch Out for the Landmines.

Speaker 1:

Watch Out for the Landmines comes from personal experience that I've had over the years of challenges that come alongside and come against small groups, that really seem to derail small groups and really cause deep challenges, and they're landmines. Because I've gone through it, I've experienced every single one of these. I've lost some limbs, but I've learned to tell you how to avoid them now. So the first landmine that we're going to talk about is picking a study. That definitely can be a landmine that many groups will face because, as easy as it sounds, sometimes it's difficult picking the right study, what to study, and it could cause people to become bored, could cause controversy, it could cause lack of trust. It could cause a lot of things, but we want our studies to cause growth and unity and wisdom in the word. So picking a study is a big deal. So let me tell you a little story. I have a group and we've been going for about 10 years and we've done some great studies and we've done some not so great studies.

Speaker 1:

But the thing that keeps coming around is the desire to study the book of Revelation. I think there's a. There's this desire to understand the famous term of eschatology, the study of the end times, and that always seems to be a point of intrigue for my group and I know many groups. But if you don't know much about the book of Revelation, you got to know that it's a heavy book to go through and it's hard to really hit the study of eschatology or the study of the end times in a small and light manner. It usually involves a lot of in-depth study. It involves a lot of time to go through that whole thing, and so what I will say is we as a group have tried to start the book of Revelation, I think three times, and all three times we get somewhere in the middle and we get a little bit exhausted with the book of Revelation and we just never have really finished it. But we all love it, we all want to keep coming back to it. Maybe one day we will actually finish it.

Speaker 1:

But that's a funny story around really talking about the right study and choosing the right study for your group or looking into even better ways to study what you want to study, like the book of Revelation, and usually where you see this challenge most highlighted is in the beginning of a group. So say, you're a brand new group and you just finished that study that your church told you that you should study. It's the fall launch. You start this new group, there's a study that your church gives to you that everybody's going to be doing at the same time, and as you come to the end, now you're faced with what do we do next? I know that's the case for our church here at Crossline. As we always do a big fall launch. We create a study that we put out on right now media, we have books for it and everybody goes through the same thing.

Speaker 1:

But then, right around the week four of this five-week study, I get a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails, a lot of discussions. On the church patio is Jordan. We're almost done and we're not really sure what to do next. So how do you pick the right study? How do you avoid the landmine of really not letting this blow up your group? Well, there's four ways that you can make a decision around your next study, and this really comes from a great book that I really enjoy. It's called Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking when Stakes Are High, by Patterson, greeny, macmillan and Switzler. It's a great book just in general, but they talk about a section here around how to make decisions and there's four key ways to make a decision, and the four key ways that you could do are command, consult, vote or consensus. Command, consult, vote or consensus. Just my personal opinion. I don't know about UGP, but my personal opinion. I really think they should have got more creative with that vote. I mean you really you missed. You missed the opportunity to have the, the alliteration there, but I guess, and they just needed to go with vote. That's all they had. So command, consult, vote, consensus let's go over each of these and how they can apply to picking a study Command.

Speaker 1:

Command can come in two different ways. Command can be one a command that comes from your church or your small groups, pastor. Or maybe there's something that you're being asked to do and that makes it easy, cause it's simply being told to you that that's what you're supposed to do and so you go, all right. Well, I guess that's what we're doing it and you, you're happy with it, you live with it, you go forward. But command can also come through the process of a leader. Deciding Command is if you can't pick it up even just by the name of it is when, when one person makes a decision about what is going to happen, it is wildly efficient. It definitely can get things done, especially if you have somebody that you really trust in that leadership position. It is far and away the fastest, easiest way to do it. But it's not a way that everybody always likes. Some people like to have input, but command is something that, if you are a leader that you're very confident about where you want to take, your group and your whole group trusts you and trusts your thoughts and your direction, and you have this shepherding care over your group and you're you're okay filling that role, then command can actually be a very efficient and easy way to decide what comes next in your study.

Speaker 1:

The next option is the consult option. Consult is a way where there's still key decision, a key decision maker or decision makers that are ultimately going to make the decision, but consult involves everybody in the group. You have a meeting after the end of your last study and you sit down and you actually talk about what are all our options, what do people want to do? What are you feeling? What's the Lord leading you in right now? Do we want to go this direction with this book of the Bible, or do we want to have this topical? Or maybe you heard something at a conference, whatever it might be. You could have this whole meeting that people offer their input that you're consulting with. So you consult with everyone, you take all those opinions into your notepad, you make notes, because that's important. Make notes about it, write them all down, whatever everybody's saying, and then, in the end, though, the leader or the decision makers take all those thoughts and ultimately have to make a decision on okay, this is a good one, let's go this direction. We have good resources for this and we're gonna move forward.

Speaker 1:

Voting I think you know what that means. Again, it's not a C, it's a V. But regardless of whether it's a C or V, it is very effective as well. It's a different way of being effective and if you have a lot of options, so you could do it in a way where it's kind of like a consult, but everybody just pitches in an idea that they want. I wanna do this study on parenting. I wanna do this study on the book of Ephesians. I wanna do this based off of the sermon series that we're going on. I wanna do a study all around food. I don't know whatever it might be, but it all goes on the table, you all put it out there and you get down to a vote. All right, everyone, we've got these four options, let's take a vote and we're gonna have to live with majority rules.

Speaker 1:

It's very efficient, but the thing about voting and again it goes without saying is you have to have a group that's okay with that. You have to have a group that's secure in their own emotions and secure in their own feelings to know that their first choice might not be the one that they go with and their idea might not be the one that people move forward with, and so I personally, I think voting works in certain circumstances. I would actually coach groups away from voting because, even though people may not say things after a while, after you've gone through one, two, three, four, five studies with your group, if there's a certain person that continues to feel like they're not being heard, it's gonna be this kind of unspoken challenge in their heart and they're gonna feel not super comfortable in the group and it's gonna result in really some disunity, some lack of connection and even potentially people leaving the group. So it works with the right group and you might have to talk with your group about that, but that's another thing. Consensus consensus is the least efficient. The least efficient Consensus is where you talk. You talk about all these different ideas and thoughts and you really come to a full consensus where everybody agrees and says that is what I want to do. That is where we're going, and the beauty about consensus if that's the direction that you're going to go the beauty about consensus is it could really bring some great unity for your group when everybody is in line with what you want to study and where you want to go, and not saying you can't have that in the other options. But when you really go through the long, hard, difficult conversation and coming in alignment and deciding on something that everybody wants to move forward with, it really can bring some great connection, great unity in your group, but it's at the sacrifice of some efficiency. Those are the four different ways that we get from the crucial conversations tools for talking when stakes are high book and those are ways that you can decide.

Speaker 1:

You're going to get my opinion because I'm the community life pastor here at Grassline and you're listening to my podcast. So this is what you're going to get my opinion, and I want to help people and I don't want to just give them a bunch of options and let them decide. You know have no insight into what I think. You know because I have thoughts and I think the ways that I'm having a hard time. Maybe I'm having a hard time explaining this. Basically, you're listening to my podcast and so I'm going to give you my opinion. You can take it or leave it. My opinion maybe is valuable to you, maybe you could care less and you're just listening to me on the way to work and you're like okay, I'm really still hung up on the whole fact that vote is not a C and it doesn't follow the literation. I don't know, but you're going to get it anyways.

Speaker 1:

My personal favorite is the consult, is the consult option. I think that's a great option. It still is efficient. It puts power to the leaders and those that are making decisions and yet it still involves everyone so that they feel heard. And when you have a good leader that truly listens to everyone, truly takes notes and really processes and prays about the next study, I believe it's hard to go wrong. If you have that trust and that confidence and you've really given people a time of day, I really think that that's the most efficient way and the best way for small groups. People sign up to be leaders and so, to a degree, you need to lead. And if you need to take a break from leadership and invite somebody else to lead and invite, do that. Invite somebody else to take that role on for a little while. It's okay to switch leaders and rotate leaders as well, but whoever is the leader really should be in the process of making decisions.

Speaker 1:

Now, what would a consult meeting. Look like I speak about this because we just actually had this in our group just this last week. We just finished a study and we had a consult meeting around what the next study is going to be, and the best way to do that is to make it casual, make it something that maybe involves food. It's a break from your normal study time and it's more of a fellowship time. So you have some food, you have some gathering, you enjoy that time together. But then you have a lot of specific time within that moment to sit down and say, all right, guys, we finished up our study, what are we looking at doing next?

Speaker 1:

And at this point you've also prompted people to come with some of their ideas. So they're not just getting this cold turkey, that they've actually thought about it. They come to that consult meeting with some ideas and so you sit down over food is a great option and you start putting it out there. This is my thought. These are some ideas here. I actually brought a book. My girlfriend said this that this is a great option. My buddy at work is doing this thing. Whatever it might be, you bring that to the group. You have this whole dialogue. The leader takes some really good notes, really listens to everybody, puts it all down and then says, all right, friends, I'm going to take all these ideas. Thanks so much for your input. If you have any more thoughts over the next 24 to 48 hours, let me know via talking to me through a phone call or a text. But in the next few days I'll make a decision and it's important that the leader is prompt with that, jumps on that opportunity to take all those things that are fresh in his or her mind and praise about it, thinks about it, makes a decision and moves forward. And in the end, whatever decision you make, even if it doesn't go as smoothly as maybe you would hope, it's okay, because in a few weeks you'll have to do it again anyway. So you'll be, you'll all be brand new anyway. So it's okay to have a couple of misses over the course of your long journey with a small group. It's okay and you can enjoy it. You can still grow out of each of those things.

Speaker 1:

Now, what are some of the options that you have available? When picking a study? Now, I had four ways of making a decision. I have four ways to look at the options. The four options available are sermon-based, platform-based, book-based or Bible-based. Sermon-based, platform-based, book-based or Bible-based. Sermon-based is you are gonna take the sermons that your pastor or your teacher or maybe even somebody. Maybe there's a series by another pastor that you guys really like as a group. You could do that, but a lot of times it goes around the church that you're centered around. So here at Crossline you would listen to the sermons that come from some of our teaching team and led by our senior pastor, jp Jones, who's an amazing teacher, and you would listen in. And if you don't go to church that Sunday, you'd have to go back and listen to the recording. Everybody listens to that and you come with some questions that you're gonna discuss about the sermon. A lot of times your church may be one that actually provides questions for you. You could check on that. A lot of churches may do that and you may not even know it, but you could talk to your small group pastor or talk to your pastor and say, hey, is there questions that are associated with your sermon or do you have notes that we can use to help guide our small group? That's an option, platform-based that is.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of platforms that you can use for small groups. The thing that we use here is Right Now Media. We love our partnership with it. It's kind of the Netflix of Christian content and there are thousands and thousands of Christian studies that have been approved and vetted by Right Now Media that you can go and search whatever topic you want and look it up, and some small group series is gonna come up and you can watch it. It's usually video. It has a video associated with it. You watch it. You could even buy some of the resources or use some of the resources that are connected to each of those studies that are linked up with each of those studies, and that's another option Platform-based Book-based.

Speaker 1:

Book-based is you? Somebody in the group loves a book? They have a book. I read this book. It's incredible. My friend Gigi right now is all vibing on this book called Freedom in Christ. She loves Freedom in Christ. She wants to talk about that and you could bring this book and saying this is a great book. I think we should go through it together. The thing about book-based is it involves homework. You have to read the book coming into group and some people might like that, some people may not, but sometimes a great Christian book could be a perfect option, and a lot of these books also come with end of chapter discussion questions already, so those are potential. It's using a book-based.

Speaker 1:

Finally, there's Bible based. You can pick a book of the Bible and just come to group, you read it together and you discuss it. You can buy a study guide through the navigators or through other options. You can buy a study guide that goes with that book of the Bible and use their discussion guide, or you could just read it and have a discussion just straight out of the Bible. What are the thoughts here? What is our response? What is this teaching us? You can use a very simple model called Discovery Bible Study, which involves a couple of questions. Simply, why don't we rephrase what we just read in our own words? What does this passage teach us about God? What does this passage teach us about us? If this is truly God's word, what is this passage prompting us to do? Then you have an I will statement out of that. That's another simple way that you can use a Bible based small group study. Those are out the options sermon based, platform based, book based or Bible based.

Speaker 1:

The last things I will tell you before we wrap this whole thing up is I would say what to avoid. You really want to talk about things that are landmines, things that can really bring challenges to your group. These are a couple of things that I would very much encourage you to avoid if you can. The first thing I would say to avoid is avoid really long studies. Maybe your group is down for that, maybe your group is accustomed to that, but studies that go longer than seven, eight, nine, 10 weeks long Once you really even get above 10, it's a long slog for a study. We are human and a lot of times, unless it's very fresh every week, we can get a little bored. It gets feel like it's dragging out. I would encourage you to avoid long studies. I think max of 10 weeks is where they were, I would say. Now, every group is different. You might be a group that is all game to go take the next 30 weeks and go through the book of revelation. I don't know, maybe that's you Good on you, go for it.

Speaker 1:

My personal opinion avoid long studies Also, especially if you're in a season with kids, like our group is. I would avoid studies that have a lot of homework, things that you have to do a lot of reading in preparation, answer questions, take tests I mean spiritual gifts. I mean spiritual gifts gifts. Tests are great, but it's really great when you have a small group that you can, either with some minimal preparation or even being able to do everything within group. That's always very helpful and convenient and still is great content for groups.

Speaker 1:

Another thing I would avoid is try to watch out for studies by potentially controversial authors or teachers. Unless you're equipped to unpack it, I don't think it's necessarily wrong to go through things that maybe is a little bit more edgy, or buy somebody that is this name that people are talking about as oh, this person's a little off, I don't know. This is the big talk in church culture Unless you feel that you are equipped to go through that discussion as a leader and as a group. I would be careful with that because it could bring a lot of confusion with unanswered questions. Now, if you have somebody in your group that is very wise in theology or very wise in cultural issues and knows how to discuss that kind of understands both sides of every argument and can discuss that, then go for it. I mean that could be something where that leader can guide people through some of the trigger parts of those studies.

Speaker 1:

Avoid irrelevant studies. If you are a I mean, this is an extreme example if you are a group of young families, you don't want to read a book around empty nester. I mean, maybe that later on that's going to be great, but right now you don't need that book. You're not an empty nester, so you don't really need to connect with that. So don't do it, just going to feel disconnected. And now that was an extreme example, but you got to think about it.

Speaker 1:

There are studies that just simply aren't really relevant to your season of life or where you live or what you do. So I would say avoid that, because those aren't going to give you really what you're looking for. They could be fun, but they're really not going to provide great insight and feedback for you as a group. So there we go. That's some information around picking a study, avoiding the landmine of picking a study, because what I will say is, though some of these things seem basic and common knowledge, you'd be surprised how many groups I talk to that get in little tiffs or a little conflict with picking a study, or they get stuck. They really don't know what to do or how to decide and they just go around the carousel around what to do or how to do it, and that can be a really tricky thing, and maybe that's your group hopefully not, but if it is, these are little tips on how to get around that and to avoid the landmine.

Speaker 1:

Make a decision around how you're gonna make decisions, decide how you're gonna decide whether it's gonna be command, consult, vote or consensus, and then stick with it and make sure you agree as a group. And then look at some of the options that you have. Well, it's sermon based, platform based, book based or Bible based. Those are some other options. So well, friends, that's it. That's all we got for you today on the Crossline Community Groups podcast. Hopefully this was helpful. Hopefully this will increase your efficiency and value in your group. As always, I like to close out every session with a prayer of blessing over you. So let me pray this, and this comes from Philippians, chapter one, verses nine through 11. And this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best. It may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. God bless y'all. Have a great rest of your day.