There are tons of ways to equip and encourage small group leaders. These days, we’re leaning-into Huddles as the main way to get the job done.
What are Huddles?
Simply put, it feels like small group for leaders via care, celebration, and collaboration. Because we are all passionate about leading, there’s a natural cross-pollination of best practices and case studies for tricky group situations.
How did we just do them?
As Groups Pastor, I ran 3 huddles for the men who lead groups while Lindsey Wiggins, Beka Simmons, and Patty Brillhart ran huddles of women who lead, for 8 total huddles in 2 weeks.
So, why are they important for Gx2?
Like a huddle in sports, Huddles for group leaders forces everyone to look at everyone, not everyone to look at someone (typical training model). We get together and brag on what Jesus is doing in our groups, which spurs one another on towards becoming better leaders. We hold each other accountable for discovering future leaders to develop as Apprentices and deploy into new groups. We pray for one another to be more sensitive to what God is doing in members’ lives. We brainstorm best practices and difficult group situations, which develops leaders and members. Huddles always produce hard conversations, new opportunities, and a vision for what can happen.
In this, Huddles are multiplication incubators that naturally foster growth–in quality of current groups and quantity of future groups. They may be an excuse to share a biscuit at 6am, or may be the key to every group launching a new group–I’ll let you decide.
— Jeremy Simmons, Groups Ministry Lead
