Dear Small Group Leaders,
It was a great Palm Sunday at Church today! The message videos are available at www.christchurchsl.org/sermons. The discussion guides of “When the City Was Stirred” and the leader tips for this week are available on the www.smallgroupleaders.net site or in the small group leader weekly email. Please send a friendly email reminder about your meeting this week to your group members and be sure to include the discussion guide and link to the sermon videos.
Discussion Guide- 3-25-18 Sermon Discussion Guide- Praise and Palm Sunday
Survey for All Group Members- Semester End Survey For ALL Small Group Participants
Survey for New People Who Did the First Survey- follow up participation survey v2
This Week’s Leader Tips in Video, Audio and Text Formats:
Video Format-
Audio Format-
Text Format:
Leader Tip #1- Post-Participation Survey for New People in Small Groups
Earlier in the semester we asked all new people to fill out an anonymous survey using a ID passphrase at the top. Last week and this week I am attaching a follow up survey for them to fill out to see how participating in a small group is impacting their remembering and applying the weekly sermon messages in their lives. Please print, distribute and collect the follow up post-participation surveys for those who filled out the first one, requesting that they write the same passphrase ID on their page that they used last time to help connect their two forms while maintaining the anonymous nature of the surveys.
Leader Tip #2- Winter Semester End Survey for ALL Small Group Participants
For those of you who did not do a pre-participation survey earlier in the semester because you were already a part of a sermon based small group for some time, don’t feel left out! I have a general feedback survey page with open ended questions so that ALL the small group participants have the chance to offer their feedback about their experience. This will help serve to improve our small group ministry and inform the group leader about their intentions for the next semester. Please print, handout and collect these surveys labeled “Semester End Survey For ALL Small Group Participants.” Note: if they are doing a follow up anonymous survey, they don’t need to do the semester end survey too. It was already included at the end of the follow up survey.
Leader Tip #3- What’s next? The Spring Mini-Mester?
Having a 10-11 week semester in the fall, and a 10-11 winter semester as well as a 5-6 week Spring Mini-Mester, helps give helpful timeframes of commitment for participants. This is particularly helpful in recruiting new members to the group at the transition points of a new semester by adding an expiration date on their commitment. Since the end of our winter semester commitment is this Sunday, now is a good time to talk with your group about the group schedule for after Easter. This offers them the opportunity to announce their plans to either sit out the next semester or to re-up their commitment to participate and consider inviting someone new to the group in the upcoming semester. After the Spring Mini-Mester, your group is free to continue meeting weekly if you wish to. But, many find that their summer vacation and travel schedules make it difficult to have enough people for a good sized discussion group and choose to have monthly summer fellowship events instead.
Leader Tip #4- Easter at Christ Church
Please consider inviting neighbors, co-workers or friends to Easter service at Christ Church, especially if you get the feeling that they are not attending a church somewhere. If they are, no harm in asking anyway right!? There are invite cards at the welcome table in the Gathering Hall if you would like to make use of them. Also, we are encouraging those who comfortable walking, to park in the extra parking lots across the street by the middle school tennis courts or next door by the little league baseball fields to free up more spots for our guests to use in the main parking lots. This also helps with traffic flows in and out of the parking lots. Our sunrise service is on Town Square at Jupiter restaraunt at 7am, and all are invited to come and bring their own chair to this Easter outreach event. Hope you can also join us for our special services on Maundy Thursday at 7pm in the family life center and Good Friday at 7pm in the sanctuary.
I hope you all have great small group meetings this week in talking about our messiah and Lord who stirred up the city on that first Palm Sunday long ago. I believe that as we surrender our confusion and our wishes, and our pains and our sins to Him, we find Christian hope that is far greater than anything we could imagine. As we journey through holy week together as a community, I pray that Christian hope would become more and more real to you all the way unto our celebration of its inauguration in the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday.
Blessings!
Dan Conway
Pastor of Discipleship & Outreach
Christ Church