Small Group focus for the fall

This is a excerpt from a congregational email from Rich Nathan in July 2012:

A few years ago Jim Collins, who was a former faculty member at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and the best-selling author of the business classic Good to Great, wrote a fascinating book titled How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In. How the Mighty Fall is a study about why some formerly great companies are no longer great and why some have even ceased to exist. Think A&P, Pan Am, or Woolworth's. Many of the lessons that Jim Collins lays out concerning businesses can also be helpfully applied to churches. In several of his books, Collins describes how companies (or churches) become great. He writes: As with most climbs to greatness, it involves sustained, cumulative effort, like turning a giant, heavy flywheel: each push builds upon previous work, compounding the investment of effort - days, weeks, months, and years of works - generating momentum, from one turn to ten, from ten to a hundred, from a hundred to a thousand, from a thousand to a million. Once an organization gets one flywheel going, it might create a second or third flywheel. But to remain successful in any given area of activity, you have to keep pushing with as much intensity as when you first began building the flywheel.   Companies that cease to be great neglect their primary flywheels and turn to other activities.[1]

One of the characteristics that the Vineyard of Urbana has help through the years is a focus on small groups to bring about life change.  From the early years, we have always held our small groups as a core of what we do.  Small groups are one of our primary "fly wheels" if you will.

For this next year, we feel like the lord is again calling us back to focus on one of our primary modes of life change and relationships by way of "home groups".  As a small group team we look forward to a wonderful year!

Some of the changes that you will notice as we renew our emphasis on small groups are:
1. An all church catalogue for the fall trimester.  The weekend of August 26th we will be introducing a catalogue for everyone to take home highlighting the small group offerings for the fall trimester.
2. A renewed coaching system.  We believe that we are called to make disciples of Jesus.  We are working on renewing and reviving our coaching system for small group leaders.  We are hoping to create an experience of discipleship, support, and challenge to our leaders.  Small group leaders will hopefully in turn will turn around and do the same for their small group members.
3. World class conferences and training.  This fall you will notice that we have many conferences and training events happening at our church.  God has moved us into a season of bringing in outside speakers to encourage and teach teach our church.  These conferences are excellent opportunities for small group leaders to be apart of and to bring small group members to.
4. Growing and multiplying groups.  This next year we are renewing our focus on growing new "home groups" and multiplying our current small groups to allow others to experience the relationships and life change that is currently happening.

We are looking forward to an exciting fall of small groups!
The Small Group Team