Discussion Groups - 7 Church Services That Make First-Time Guests Return
I was recently listening to a Gen Z expert in the church world. He was young enough looking, and was wearing a red furry jacket with big sunglasses so I knew I had to take him seriously. He had some interesting insights into how we can reach this next generation, but what stuck out to me the most in his video podcast was his comment about in-person services vs online services. He said that if we as churches want to attract Gen Z, we must give them something they can’t get online. If they can get everything online that they can get in-person, they just won’t show up.
Over the past two and a half years our church has been experimenting with our weekend in-person services. We’ve been trying to find what Andy Stanley would call a uniquely better way of doing church. It’s still church, it’s just a better way of doing church. What we have focused on is making our church services more interactive. We were trying to give people something they had to show up for. They couldn’t get it online.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to share the 7 church services we have experimented with. I will share some of the wins and some of the challenges of each service and my desire for you is that these would inspire you to go out and find a uniquely better way of doing church.
Number 1 - Discussion Groups
Break out discussion groups
20-minute sermon followed by 20 minutes of breakout discussion questions about the sermon
How we do it:
We ask people to find 8 people around them
People move their chairs themselves to create a circle
Two questions
It’s preferred to assign a leader to each group, but there are many times that we didn’t, and it happened organically
Benefit / What it does for people:
It allows someone to make a friend inside of the worship service. When someone makes a friend in church they are more likely to return again.
It allows us to process what we just heard. One of the problems we have as Christians is we have a lot of information but we don’t do anything with it. The questions allow us to take the information from our head to our heart and maybe then we will go out and do it.
It deepens friendships and community.
What was challenging:
People say some crazy stuff and you never know what they are going to say in the circle. It might not be biblical or true at all. We had to get over that and know the church is the best place for those types of conversations.
Introverts can struggle with the stress of talking to strangers.
How to handle people that walk out because they don’t want to participate.