Jim Clemmer, a management guru, sums up a challenge most leaders face. “In the midst of tumultuous change, many … are confusing ‘busywork’ activity with results. Missing what's really important to long-term growth and development, they allow themselves to be tyrannized by short-term urgencies.”

Can you relate? It’s a new way of phrasing an old challenge that’s always going to be with us.

For your small group ministry, this challenge presents itself in a few key areas.   One has to do with the hard work of designing a leadership development strategy for group leaders. On the surface, it is does not appear to be an urgent task, and for that reason it is often pushed to the side.

You can avoid leadership development in your group ministry for a time—many churches do—and not see the negative effects. Short term, ministries can run on past momentum. Short term, churches can offer some training events or resources that are more stop-gap than strategic in nature.

But long term, the stress fractures will emerge.  I sat with a ministry leader yesterday and we talked about how his church had ignored leadership development for five years. And now the effects of neglect are showing.  Team leaders have lost the unified vision. Leadership skills that were once common are now MIA. Leaders have bailed, and the ministry is heading into a long run of rebuilding what has been lost.

It’s a common problem in group ministries. And tightened budgets only increase the challenges. Pastors and leaders are wearing more hats than ever and training budgets have been slashed.

While we can’t solve the issue entirely for you, the WCA Group Life team is offering help in leadership development. We’ve retooled the Group Life Conference 2009 (October 24) to be squarely focused on your small group leaders. (We are working on an event for 2010 for ministry leaders—stay tuned.)

The event is designed to help group leaders with spiritual formation in the lives of their group members. You can check out the event here: www.willowcreek.com/gl2009. We think this will help with the leadership development challenge by bringing to you and your group leaders world-class training that is characterized by three words:

1.      Developmental. Sometimes what we offer our leaders is simply more information. What they want need is help executing on the ideas they learn, not just more information. Working with more than 40 small group experts and practioners, we are crafting two full-day training events each year that are laser focused on the developmental needs of small group leaders. Attendees will walk away from this training with more than information – they will be equipped to lead differently in their next group meeting. And each of these events will offer fresh, new content for leaders. 

2.      Accessible. Travel costs take many events out of consideration – even if the content is great. That’s why we are working with the Church Communication Network (CCN) to deliver this training to a site near you. Currently we have more than 65 satellite broadcast sites in the US and six in Canada.  And more are being added daily. Our goal is to create a network so wide that no leader has to travel more than an hour to receive this training. (If you don’t see a city near you yet, consider partnering with us as a host site.) 

3.      Affordable. In tough economic times, ministries and volunteers are watching every dollar. We are, too. By taking a sharp pencil to the overhead costs, we are able to offer this training to group leaders at a ridiculously low price – group rates are as low as $39 per person. You read that right. And churches that host the broadcast also have access to more training: monthly group leader training from Bill Donahue; the Point Leader Café, featuring training for ministry leaders; and an archive of more than 30 hour-long group leader training sessions. In some cases, churches can sell the block of seats that come with being a host site and get a full year of training for their group leaders with no impact to the church budget. I think they call that free – a word you’ll hear from us a lot more in the coming days. 

For many years to come every trainer, consultant and organization is going to have to wrestle with these three characteristics for training they offer churches. I think we should have been wrestling with it a long time ago.

So what are your thoughts? Does this help? Is it a “nice try but not quite”? Seriously, we want to know. We are here to serve your church, your leaders. And if this doesn’t serve you, we will take another pass at it.

BTW: if you want more information about the fall conference, including options for attending or hosting follow this link: www.willowcreek.com/gl2009