GLC - Session 4

Session 4: Bill Donahue

Bill started off with a funny story about having a car problem. Life happens he says. We often don’t see it coming and we end up in a challenging situation where we have to make critical and problem solving decisions. However often we make dumb decisions and choices in these times OR don’t make the easy decision that is so obvious.

Bill is hysterical and so real. He has a great presence on stage. He is so straight forward I love it. It seemed like a good idea at the time is his main topic. Learning from failures and bad decisions in ministry and individually:

Strategic Ministry:

(1) Obsession with vission while ignoring reality

a. We need to be evaluating and taking real looks at the “orchard.” Some times you have to walk among the streets and take an inventory to see what is and if it lines up with the vision.

(2) Implement a strategy without building an infrastructure.

a. 40 days of purpose can be followed by 4 weeks of chaos

b. I think this is a little bit of a problem with our small groups at St. Paul’s. I have noticed this even with my own group. We are doing Nooma videos and mainly because I wasn’t sure what to do and didn’t want to have to do a lot of work. But it is a little weird because it is usually disconnect from the Sunday services and series. I think it would be nice to have small group material that followed all of the series. Are a basic template that we can apply to any topic.

(3) Empowering leaders without developing them

a. Small groups leaders its your responsibility to make sure that we are seeking training and development for our growth.

b. Small group leaders need to have training, support, and development from the church

c. Four things that groups can be lead by: Process, Value, Curicculium, Leader. All of these combined can make a solid group, however Bill would say that we need a leader to make successful groups.

(4) Launching groups that never seem to become community

a. Not only use leader training material but group training material

b. Taking self obsessed individualist people and throw them in a room, the WONT become a vulnerable community.

Heart Level:

(1) What do you do when something your leading fails?

a. If it’s our fault, we need to own it and name it. Everyone knows you’re going to make mistakes and just wants us to own it.

b. We need to make sure that we can forgive ourselves as others forgive us.

c. In our world right now we have desperate people, with desperate needs, in desperate places.

d. God can redeem failures even though we can always fix them or change them.

I have lead multiple small groups over the years. Ones that were peers, others that were younger and part of my ministry. In most of these situations I was the leader because no one else would be or could be. Because I can lead some things, myself and others think that I can lead small groups too. I’m not sure why I lead them because I am actually not good at it at all. It is definitely one of my non-gifts haha.

I think that we need to seek out and train and build up people with the gifts to lead small groups. This talk was probably the most challenging so far. On our church and on myself. On our church about the work we need to do with our small groups and how important it is that it is imperative that we get this one right. On myself for what I said above and that I need to be in a small group that can truly provide community. But I can’t wait for someone to come along nor can I lead it, I need to seek someone out to lead it.
Where are we missing this one at St. Paul’s? What do you think?

How are small groups falling short at St. Paul’s and what do you think we could be doing better and what are we doing well? Please post and share so that we can grow.