| Weekly sermons form basis for small groups
By Tim Ehrlich
LAKELAND — The Rev. David McEntire, senior
pastor of The United Methodist Church of the Palm Beaches, had been
looking for more than a year for a program to develop small groups
within his Palm Beach District church.
Tom Fox, director of Youth and Young Adult
Ministries at St. Andrew’s United Methodist Church in the Tampa
District, had been given a double challenge by his senior pastor, the
Rev. David Fuller: create an additional Sunday School hour to help
ease overcrowding and create a young adult ministry.
Both men hit upon the same solution: use the
weekly sermon as the foundation for small discussion groups.
McEntire worked with his church’s associate
pastor, the Rev. John De Marco, for about six months to develop a
small group ministry that would help give new spiritual life and depth
to their church. “Small groups are the life blood of the church,”
McEntire said. “They are the best place to make disciples and grow
committed leaders.”
The two settled on the “Together and Growing”
(TAG) Team format about a year ago as the best way to develop the
small groups. The teams started with four groups and 45 members and
have grown to six teams and 70 members, including two youth TAG teams.
They meet in members’ homes in the evening every week. McEntire and
De Marco write the one- to two-page curriculum used each week based on
the scripture text for the next Sunday’s sermon. They distribute it
to group leaders on Monday for them to share with their groups.
In addition to prayer, fellowship and Bible
study, the TAG teams also have a strong element of Wesleyan
accountability. Time is taken at the end of each meeting to hold each
other accountable, using three discussion questions: “How is your
prayer life? How is your devotional life? How is your relationship
with Christ?”
McEntire said that format has benefits. “It is
helping us develop leaders who are sold out for Christ and are willing
to serve the church,” he said. “We are seeing wonderful results at
a number of levels. Church members are listening to the sermons and
thinking about the scriptures in ways they never have before. Our
other ministries often had been groups that got together and did some
work and went home. Now, they are becoming places where we minister to
each other spiritually and practically.”
TAG team leader Dino Benvenuti agrees. “The
TAG team is a great way to create bonding through fellowship and
holding each other accountable in small groups within the church
community,”
Elements of the TAG Teams’ format have also
been applied to the church’s other ministries. McEntire and De Marco
lead a monthly accountability meeting for all small group leaders. The
focus is asking the leaders to share answers to the TAG Team
accountability questions.
Located in a suburb of Tampa, St. Andrew’s has
grown by more than 100 members every year for the last four years.
Sunday school enrollment is now more than 700 for a facility that has
a capacity of 390. A building plan is underway, but it won’t be
completed for another two years. The church is feeling the growing
pains, as a result, especially during its Sunday school hour.
St. Andrew’s has strong children’s, youth
and adult ministries, with about 100 youth participating Sunday
nights, but lacks a strong young adult ministry, according to Fuller.
“It has really troubled me that we do not have
an effective young adult ministry…,” Fuller said. “The idea that
we can only do Sunday school one hour a week has also been
unbelievable to me. If we can have Sunday school at a different hour
we will have doubled our capacity.”
St. Andrew’s pastors give Fox, the study’s
group leader and developer, a copy of their sermon on Friday, and he
prepares questions for discussion. Immediately after the church’s
middle service the group gathers in the empty Sunday school area for
refreshments and study.
The Bible study group began in February with
five people and within eight weeks had grown to 20 regular attendees.
“This plan has succeeded because it draws on
the base of people who have already heard the sermon and are looking
forward to discussing how they can apply it to their lives,” Fox
said. “This plan features a Bible study on the scripture verses, a
group prayer time sharing joys and concerns, a time to explore the
main ideas of the sermon and how they apply to daily living through
questions, and fellowship time that includes coffee and donuts. It
appeals to people of all ages because everybody likes talking about
the sermon and how they can apply it to their life.”
Fox plans to split the class and form a new
group this summer.
To learn more about developing TAG teams see The
United Methodist Church of the Palm Beaches’ Web site at www.gbgm-umc.org/umcpb.
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