Author Archive for Clint Calvert

Creating Care Groups That Serve Others

Now more than ever people need care. How can the church effectively provide this care? People in the church need to be organized and trained to care for one another, their neighbors, and isolated, hurting people.

In the past, Sunday Schools or small groups might be organized in terms of care groups. These care groups were designed to discover the needs of people in the Sunday School class or small group to be sure the needs got met. The expectation to meet these needs might be shared with other church leaders or the pastor.

Two shifts are needed. The first shift needed is for the group itself to respond to the need once it is discovered. The second shift is for the needs of people who have never attended the group to be considered as a means of ministry and outreach to them. The pressure people are now experiencing presents an opportunity to address church and community needs differently.

Care groups may not be a new idea to your church. But shifting the expectation for service to the care group itself might be. Consider these steps in re-framing your care groups from needs discovery to needs meeting groups:

  • Determine the number of care group leaders needed and expectations for them
  • Enlist care group leaders and provide training for them.
  • Create care groups by organizing people by geography, life situation, or interest.
  • Balance the care groups mixture of regular, sporadic, and never-attenders.
  • Provide regular feedback for care group leaders so they can learn through serving

The need for care is not the only need people have. People also have a need to serve. People need the spiritual growth that comes from serving others. If the need for serving others is understood as a means to spiritual growth, people may start finding value in serving.

Written by Clint Calvert, Church Leadership Catalyst,  Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention.

Fostering a ‘Praying for the Lost’ Culture in Your Group

How can I make praying for the lost a cultural value for the group I lead? My friend, Jack Bell, has given me a sure-fire way to get people to turn a behavior into a habit. Jack says, “Tell them why, show them how, get them started, and keep them going.” These four steps can get your group praying for the lost so regularly that it becomes a cultural value for your group.

‘Tell them why’ means reviewing for your group the scriptures’ admonition to pray for lost people. ‘Show them how’ means demonstrating to your group how to pray for the lost with a specific list of people. ‘Get them started’ entails having your group members create their own lists of lost people to pray for. ‘Keep them going’ requires raising the issue of praying for the lost and the answers to those prayers in every meeting the group experiences.

Dwayne McCrary suggests keeping a list of specific lost people you are praying for as a leader. He then encourages you to get people in your group to keep and pray for a list. Finally, he envisions your group praying regularly for lost people as a part of each group meeting you conduct.

If you are not yet praying for specific lost people daily, this practice needs to become a habit in your life that your group members will follow. A good place to get started is a website named blesseveryhome.com. Once you create a free account, this site will prompt you to pray with a daily email listing five neighbors from your neighborhood. The site gives you a place to indicate when you have prayed for them, when you have shared Christ with them and whether they have indicated that they are a Christ follower.

Blesseveryhome.com could also be the beginning of the prayer lists your group members will create. Ask members of your group to pray for the lost specifically by name. Group members can visualize the impact of their prayers and gospel sharing in their own neighborhood. Sharing about prayers and answers to prayers becomes an agenda item every time the group meets. Once this happens for several weeks, this practice is on its way to becoming a cultural value of the group.

Clint Calvert is Church Leadership Catalyst for the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention.

Learn and Share a New Gospel Presentation, Share with Your Class

3circlesWHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Learning and sharing a new gospel presentation is important for the leader, for people hearing the gospel, and for the leader’s class. The leader, as a Christ follower, needs to share the gospel in order to be obedient to the Great Commission. The leader needs to become acquainted and proficient with ways of sharing the gospel that will be heard in the hearer’s context.

Decreasing biblical literacy and religious skepticism have created an environment where new ways of sharing the good news are needed. The class needs examples from leaders who are growing in their capacity to share the gospel and with the encouragement that this is something they can do as well.

WHAT DO I DO? I recommend learning the “Three Circles: Life Conversation Guide.” The Three Circles is largely devoid of church language. And when biblical terms are used they are well explained.

This gospel presentation has sufficient training resources for the leader to learn it’s language and sequence. The North American Mission Board hosts online training for the method here: https://www.namb.net/video/3-circles-life-conversation-guide. In addition, a smartphone app for iPhone and Android is available to assist both presenters and hearers.

LifeWay has produced a five-week resource for training a class in sharing the method called: “Life on Mission: A Simple Way to Share the Gospel.” Ultimately class members will find inspiration in the example of a class leader who will “go first” by learning and sharing a new gospel presentation.

4 Ways to Find Great Illustrations

illustrationsWHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Using great illustrations vitally captures the attention and imagination of a class. In the face of ever-decreasing attention spans, the use of great illustrations may mean the difference between a learner grasping the point of the lesson or mentally checking out for the duration of the class.

WHAT DO I DO? Here are four ways to find great illustrations:

  1. Listen to National Public Radio. NPR features many programs with fascinating concepts. NPR hosts websites with links to podcasts, pictures, and transcripts in support of their programming. Many “drive-way moments” when I continued listening after parking have become materials that were repurposed as great illustrations.
  2. Utilize Google News Alerts. Gmail account users can create news alerts which will notify them any time a specific phrase appears in the Google News aggregator. This is especially useful if your class is studying topics relating to current events.
  3. Read, Rip, Fling, and File. When reading magazines, tear out or copy articles you need to use later. When you read electronically, copy and paste the contents into a new document and then save in a portable document format. Fling these materials into a pile physically or electronically. File these materials topically or by keywords for later use as great illustrations.
  4. Use Examples from Movies or Sports. If you can credibly re-create a touching scene from a movie or re-enact an amazing sports feat, you will grab your listener’s attention. Unless prohibited by copyright, showing a clip of the scene will engage your learners.

Conversation, Community, Conversion

Have you ever accidently locked yourself out of your own house? If you haven’t hidden a key somewhere or can’t remember where you hid a key, you have to check all your doors and windows to see if you inadvertently left one unlocked. As you search you hope that your neighbors recognize that it is you attempting to break into your own house and don’t call the police.

Initiating a conversation is trying to find a place to “break in” to a relationship. We pry the perimeter of our observations of another person, trying to find a place that is unlocked so we can have a conversation. Church planter Aaron Proffitt teaches the concept of “Rocking Philippians 2:3 & 4”  which means when you meet someone you intentionally “rock” the conversation to be about the person you are meeting. You consider the other person more important than you and keep the focus of the conversation on them.

Once rapport is established, an invitation to community may follow.  The person you meet may not be interested in your faith, but they wouldn’t mind having coffee with you sometime. In Tim Sander‘s, Love is the Killer App, Tim describes creating experiences for others as becoming a “bottomless cup of coffee”. This word picture portrays an attractive availability for others who grow to trust us as a result of our practical care for them.  Disciple-making requires a warm, stimulating “cup of coffee” experience. As a Christ follower, you sincerely care about others and want to include them in a community that can be hopeful and supportive of their potential spiritual growth. 

At some point, the people you have been in conversation with may want to join you in Sunday School or a small group Bible study. Once in community, conversion or life transformation can take place. What better place for a person to discover their need for the life changing work of Jesus Christ than with others who have previously made this discovery?

“Americans give a tremendous amount of credit to anyone who can name a pain that they’ve been experiencing but have been unable to locate,” says Michael Lerner. Our name for the pain Lerner is describing is the need to make Jesus Lord of one’s life. Lerner continues, “People are attracted by and motivated to groups by the experience of community, caring for others, and the group’s ability to recognize and address the deep distortions in life that are caused by a societal ethos of materialism and selfishness.” Christ followers initiate conversations and care enough to create communities (Sunday School classes and small group Bible studies) where conversion can happen.