What is the Gospel? (Probably not what you think!)

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How to Stimulate Better Discussions.

Guest article by Mark Howell http://www.markhowelllive.com R eminder : Two of my core assumptions are (1) if I want to make it possible for everyone to be part of a group, I need to lower the bar for leaders (and raise the bar for coaches and coaching) and (2) part of lowering the bar for leaders is that I need to provide material that almost leads itself. That said, here is how I train leaders to stimulate better discussions. Five Keys to Stimulating Better Discussions First, think ahead of time about where your members need to go … You don’t need to spend a lot of time on this, but it does help to think about the individual needs of your members as you’re looking over the upcoming session. Although this is a challenge in a newer group, it gets easier the longer a group has been together and the more you know about your members. One way you can speed up the process is to have each of your members take the Purpose Drive...
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How to keep the next generation in church.

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The latest research indicates that 70% of the kids who grow up in our youth groups are not staying in church. Project that out for about ten years and we have disaster. Based on data from Essential Church, the trend looks like this: For a free sample of the book, see http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/files/lwcF_PDF_Rainers_Essential_Church_Sample.pdf Another good book on the subject is Ed Stetzer's Lost and Found. Let's look at it more personally. My oldest son graduated from High School in 2004. He walked across the stage at church at the recognition ceremony along with 20 or so of his classmates. Most of them had been very active in youth group. Very few of them are active in church today. In fact, my son may be the only one. If you are in the mood for a good depression, do the math at your church. Dig up the list of the kids that graduated five years ago. See if you can figure out how many of them are in church ...
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Puzzling data regarding lecturing teachers

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Many of you know I am working on a new book on What Makes Groups Grow. I am puzzling just now over the data regarding teachers to lecture. Here is the puzzle: Teachers who use all lecture were the second mostly likely group to be growing Teachers who use all lecture were also the most likely group to be declining (by a wide margin) I have my own theories as to why this is true. What do you make of it? How could the lecturing group be both likely to grow and likely to decline?
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