John Ratz second guest speaker. Small group specialist.

What makes a good team?.Answer. A great guy to develop small groups and discipleship group. Grew up in pastor home and lived in hong kong. Loves Chinese food. Went to Syracuse his dad got his masters there. Then moved to kenya africa for four years. Then lived in Canada. The shortest trip was 634 miles. His dad is a missionary. Western Canada attended Bible college. All the moves he has made was a normal transition for him. He has friends all over north america. His toughest move was to Montreal , Canada. It was a french speaking culture. The french is catholic about 97% of the population. Ends up going into the ministry at bright moor cathedral with young married couples and technical staff in 1993. This church was new on the curve with technology and it was a created position. Better to have people sitting in circles then rows and not at the back of heads. The groups teach how to apply scripture to life. The church prior had tried twice , but they failed. The senior pastor was for it. It is a timing thing. He was to put up or shut up. Spent a year preparing for the groups to go into session. He had 120 people on a Friday night to talk about what the groups entailed. They figured if the vision strategy was good they would come out for a Saturday for more info. The people that came were the only ones allowed to be in the groups and for 8 weeks taught them how to do it. After that they told them to find a host home and start people coming to theirs.In five years they had 60% of the Church of 1200 in small groups and knew all the people in the group. Took specific times to see who was in the small groups. Model was inductive Bible studies. They met on Thursday and Sunday nights. He had training hours on Saturdays for two hours how to ask question for their groups. What is the writer saying saying to the audience and what is he saying to us now.If you can get through these question you can lead any groups. The hard part was help fine tuning people to know vision clearly. He learn that he needed coaches to help supervise and teach them. THis was pure small groups inducted at someones home. He never used pastor sermon for topic to teach on at small group. When doing the Bs attitude they did not like that they had one verse. At the end of one month no ran out of time with one Bs attitude. Bensalem he only was hired to handle small groups. If you want to make a call call in the first 24 hours of Monday. A basic phone and prayer and glad you are with us call. If you are new come up after service and get a 5 dollar gift card if new. CLC first day call all leaders. Forty groups there already. A bunch of the leaders did not go to the Church. No common vision or instruction or investing with training the people. In someways it was worst then starting groups because of the lack of vision. Free marketing small groups. Groups are about discipleship and growth. Free market small group is a group of people with common interest would meet together and do there thing. There was no real Bible study , but relationship with people. No real depth to this technique of biblical growth. Neighborhood small group. A group everyone can walk to. Understand culture of the church you are going into. Every church is different. Discipleship has to be one on one. Example is a trainer in the gym with a new client get them on a plan. Teach people to become self feeders. Start off with 8-12 then go to a group of 4-7. Then to 3-4 to hold accountability. Then one on one for mentoring. This will help the believer become a self feeder of the Bible and relationship with God. This what small group ministry is all about. Walking Gods children to a close relationship with him.