Tween Small Groups

This is a blog series on our first year of C-Groups for Switch. It’s a five part series with this post being part number 1. Here are the links for the other 4 parts:

Part 2: The Program

Part 3: Building Community

Part 4: The Curriculum

Part 5: Changes for next year

We just finished up our C-Groups for the year last Wednesday night. It was incredible to see just how much of an impact they have had on the tweens and our leaders. I hope that next year we make some even more changes for our tweens and ramp up recruiting of more incredible leaders and blow our students away.

Over the next few posts I would like to give you some things that we did during our group times that really aided us and some things that I wish we could have done this year.

First I would like to say that, our groups turned out so much better than I had hoped they would. I was initially frustrated because we needed to provide something at church on a Wednesday night. I know that some of you are planters and don’t have a building of your own, we do and I hope this doesn’t come across as me wasting a blessing. Our facility is multi-use. Adults, students, and kids coming for discipleship, business training, parenting, sign language, cooking, etc. come to our building throughout the week. It’s a great thing.

However, sometimes kids especially are there because someone in their family is there. They don’t want to be at the church and so it makes my job a little more interesting during that time. I was a part of training some childcare workers a few years ago and it just seemed like a difficult environment to really provide something of value to those students on Wednesday nights.

But I knew that this was not only a wise decision from our Family Pastor but one that needed to be done. So with a little bit of reservation we began to pour some time and resources into making a small group environment on Wednesday nights.

But we also had groups that were happening in homes. Now I am a huge fan of home groups for multiple reasons. Kinestic learners rejoice in homes because couches and being outside is available to them on a more regular basis. I figured that if I made the home groups incredible enough that I could reduce the number of students on Wednesday nights and therefore make great groups more possible. Smart huh?

One problem. More tweens wanted groups than I thought. It literally blew up, it was nuts. I will never forget that first night with over 50 tweens in a room, thinking to myself, what are we going to do with these tweens?

Instantly a quote from Jim Wideman came to mind:

If you don’t want your parents to think of your ministry as babysitting, don’t baby sit.

That is when I decided this Wednesday night thing needs some investment and we began to look at ways to do so.