It's been a while since I blogged here. So you'll know I didn't lose my hands in a freak accident and been unable to type, I've been forced to take a hiatus from blogging and writing for about a year now to jumpstart a new career. Not to worry though, TOUCH Outreach is still alive and well! I just needed to create a better income stream so Etna and have some income in our retirement years. As you know, ministry work doesn't pay enough to live AND save for retirement...

But frankly, there's not a lot of new things to say about small groups and cell groups that hasn't already been said here. HOWEVER, there's a lot to read if you're here for the first time. Use the links on the right or the search box to find your topic of interest.

Here are some quick thoughts I've had since I last blogged:

• The vision for Christ-centered small groups meeting in homes instead of rows in a building appears to be something God gave the Christian WORLD, but America has watered down missional living to showing up at a megachurch once a week and attending a self-centered small group meeting midweek for self-improvement. Seems like believers in just about every other country on the planet understand that church is about the presence, power, and purposes of Christ and cell groups are the norm now, not the exception. Thank God he has crushed the traditional religious nonsense sent out by Western missionaries at the turn of the century and the real church survived and has flourished abroad.

• The Boy Scouts of America: Folks, do not be surprised when churches and denominations join the Boy Scouts by compromising their God-given morals to retain their tax exempt status. This decision had nothing to do with being open minded and going along to get along and being accepting of people who don't think like us. This was about money. California would have denied their tax-exept status if they didn't change their policy on GLBT participation. 

Well, that should stir up enough emotion to get some comments, so I'll close there. 

Keep it (increasingly) Simple for the Saints

A few years ago, I endured six straight months of participation in a personal healing ministry (which shall go unnamed to protect the guilty). We met for three hours every Sunday evening for 26 straight weeks. Well, we did get Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Super bowl week off. But there were 26 topics that we were forced to endure. If this wasn't bad enough, we were given a 2-inch thick spiral bound book (8.5 x 11) as our course material. The ministry's president had obviously added to it year after year to shore up weak areas of each topic. Moving through the week's material to prepare for the teaching and small group experience required at least two hours of reading per week.

While the healing I received through the process was amazing and I recommend the process for anyone and everyone who will listen to me, I invested a few minutes of each week griping about "project creep" and how the ministry's president had no accountability in this area. He was left unchecked to add and add and add whatever he felt the material needed each time he taught it or reviewed it. In case you haven't figured it out, "project creep" is when you decide to replace the sink in your bathroom and by the time you're done, you've put in a sink that's three times the price of the one you actually could afford and you swapped out the toilet to match the sink and the lavatory handles on the bathtub to match as well. And then you had to buy all new towels to match and keep it looking fresh. Project creep.

Small group/Cell group ministry is often guilty of project creep. Training for leaders becomes more complex and bloated year after year in hopes it will create better leaders. The forms the staff ask the leaders to complete about their group began as five simple questions and now are two full pages. Truth be told, it's MUCH easier to bolt on another book to read or process or qualification to meet to most anything. But what is needed is constant refinement and the whittling down of what we have in place to remove the wasted time, redundancy, inneffective bits, and so forth. This is hard work and sacrificial. Many pastors have labored tirelessly on the development of a process and it's their beautiful creation that should only be embellished, not violently cut back to the bare necessities.

Guilty as charged!
In the late 90s, TOUCH developed a year long course for pastors that required five weeks of on-site training to transition their churches. The weeks together were precious for many pastors who participated, but the depth of the training did not create hundreds of success stories in America. Now overseas where the cultures are more relational and people aren't as frenetically busy, it was a perfect fit. But not here.

What we didn't do in our second and third year of offering this training was to simplify it. It was not until three years after we stopped the training that we took out a clean sheet of paper and said, "If we were to distill all that the pastor's training offered in those five weeks, just how little would we end up with that was indispensible? And looking at the indispensable bits, how could we make each one easier to adopt or more simply communicate?"

Years ago I was asked what an implementation team was to do with their time together after they'd helped a church create groups and the support systems needed for them to thrive. My answer? "Go back and examine everything you do and why you do it and see how you can do less and get better results. If the results suffer, you've oversimplified. If results are the same, you've removed the fat and that's a good thing."

Ministry project creep. Don't remain guilty of it now that you know about it.

Small Group Vital Signs Video!

Check this out. The video is a little dark, but it's worth watching. Mike's content in this video is found in Small Group Vital Signs, his new book, just released by Touch Publications!

Mike Mack - Assessment Session from Cincinnati Christian University on Vimeo.

Oh happy day!

I was so busy doing the dance of joy that I totally forgot to blog about the fact that Small Group Vital Signs is now available!

Check it out: http://www.touchusa.org/resources/small-group-vital-signs.asp

This is a wonderful book. I thoroughly enjoyed editing it and working with the author, Michael Mack.

You cell church guys and gals should not dismiss it because the title has "small group" instead of "cell group" in it. This book is perfectly suited for cell group leaders and it has Uncle Ralph's official stamp of approval on it for your use!

God's love is far more powerful than we can imagine

During my time with the Lord this morning it occurred to me that the Father surely mourned the loss of Lucifer and the angels cast out of heaven before the earth was created.

Lucifer was, after all, one of God's creations and it would not please any creator to destroy something he created, and created so beautifully.

How about Satan's future? One would think that seeing Satan thrown into the lake of fire after all the heartache and separation he's caused would evoke a celebration like the Wizard of Oz with shouts of "The witch is dead!" I'm sure we will all be glad that God has eliminated evil from the new earth coming sooner or later, but I cannot fathom he will be excited about destroying Satan, even though his love for Man far surpasses his love for his other creations.

That's just how much unconditional love the Father has within his nature. Just as Jesus washed the feet of Judas and did not retaliate against his accusers and even the Roman soldiers who drove spikes into his wrists and feet and hung him on a cross to die a slow painful death.

Thoughts?