How to Create Your Small Group
Find Your Five
List three people who have highly impacted your spiritual life. How did you meet them? What made them so impactful in your life?
It might have seemed easy and natural for them, but it required much work and prayer.
Find Your Five
Find five people who will commit to the group. There are many places you can meet these people, but we encourage you to focus on the places most nearby and natural. You will see those people often, with little or no planning.
Some great places to find your five are your dorm, campus, job, warung, and coffee shops. Without even planning, you will see those people almost every day, which makes it easier to connect.
How to Find Your Five
Pray
Your recruitment starts now — with prayer. When you pray, you create divine appointments. Don’t just pray in your room. Go prayer walking on your campus.
Meet
Be where the people are. Help new people move into your kost, or bring them a welcome gift. Greet new students on campus, and see if you can help them with anything. Introduce yourself to visitors at church.
Be creative! Do whatever you can to meet and bless new people, especially at the beginning of the semester when people are forming their schedules and finding their friends.
TIP: Look through your social media followers. Invite your followers from your campus or area (even if you’ve never met them in person). This can be very effective, but you must cast a wide net (out of every ten people, maybe one will respond).
Be genuine. Take a real, personal interest in the life of the person. They’re not just a number to add to your Core Group.
Keep thinking about new ways you can add value to their life by serving them.
Ask unique questions that nobody else is asking them (not just “What’s your major?”). Go deeper. Be somebody they will remember. This can be a life-changing encounter.
Invite
Invite them to something. This means you need to have something planned, so you can tell them the time and place immediately. Don’t wait until you find people to plan something. Plan in faith that God will connect you with people who will come. They can’t say yes if you don’t ask, and they can’t join if nothing is happening. Remember, the invitation is only the beginning.
Explain what Core Group is and why they should come. How will Core Group make their life better? It’s your job to cast vision to your friends, new and old. Continue to cast vision every week.
“Core Group is a group of men/women committed to brotherhood/sisterhood, committed to God, and committed to mission.”
Use this as an opportunity to share your testimony with new people. Tell them how God used Core Group in your life, and encourage them to join.
In addition, share about what you do during Core Group meetings — the rundown — so they know what to expect when they show up. The fewer surprises the better.
Follow-up
48-Hour Follow-Up
After you meet somebody new, make personal contact with them again within 48 hours to make a plan to meet them again. A week later is too late!
Face-to-Face
Try your hardest to meet them again face-to-face within a week. A WA message is not personal. This is why it can be best to focus on people on your campus and your dorm because it is much easier to make consistent, personal connections with them.
Regular Hangouts
It is very important, especially at the beginning, to plan regular hangouts. Core Group is not a meeting — it’s a brotherhood or sisterhood — yet many of the people in your Core Group probably don’t know each other…yet.
It’s your job to help facilitate friendships where friendships did not exist before. We must grow our group from being just a group of individuals to being a Core Group of brothers or sisters. That cannot and will not happen if Core Group is only a weekly meeting.
First Few Meetings
Plan your first few meetings ahead of time. The beginning of the semester can be crazy, so plan ahead. This prevents you from being unprepared during those crucial first few weeks.
Call people into commitment. Cast vision for Core Group. Core Group cannot succeed without commitment. Little commitment; little impact. Big commitment; big impact. Sell it early and often. Share your story.
History Giving. Commit one or two Core Group meetings at the beginning to share testimonies. This creates a commitment to depth and openness early. Let people share what they are comfortable with, but as the leader, go first to set an example of vulnerability.
