Life Group Meetings

Life Group Relaunch: As of September 2021, Life Church has re-launched our life groups!

Meeting Material

Life groups will generally use material from our Sunday sermons as the basis for their discussion of the Word during their weekly meetings. For the convenience of our members we usually include discussion material with the notes for our sermons. You can read the sermon notes and discussion material (as well as listen to the sermons) at the following link:

Sunday Life Page (Life Church sermons)

Not all life groups will choose to use this material, but it’s there if you need it.

Meeting Schedule

Most groups will have a weekly formal meeting that lasts about 90 minutes. Some groups may choose to meet less frequently (e.g. every other week, once a month, etc.).

Meeting Location

Life groups can meet in a variety of ways:

Check out the following:

Meeting Format

Life group leaders – pace yourselves. Look over all of the meeting components and make sure you have time to cover all of them.

The weekly meeting has 4 main components: Welcome, Worship, Word, Witness:

Welcome – 15 minutes (5-10 minutes during Sunday breakout sessions)

Spend about 15 minutes in casual conversation and/or an ice breaker activity that helps people relax and join in. Remember to start the welcome part of the meeting on time — you don’t have to wait for everyone to arrive. Please also end the welcome part of the meeting on time — you can move on to worship even if everyone hasn’t arrived yet!

Here are some options:

Worship – 20 minutes (optional for Sunday breakout sessions)

Word – 40 minutes

For each question, spend 1 – 2 minutes in silence before opening up for people to respond. This will give everyone a chance to respond and will help to keep the most naturally talkative members of the group from dominating the discussion.

Here are some resources for the Word portion of your meeting:

Witness – 15 minutes

You will find a comprehensive list of potential activities for the Witness portion of your meeting here:

Life Group Witness Page

The material below has been copied to the Witness Page and will eventually be removed from this page:

Here are some resources for the Witness portion of your meeting:

Please note that your life group meeting faciliator may switch around the order of the “4 W’s” every now and then.

Additional Life Group Meeting Components:

Immediately after this reflection time, members may want to write down any thoughts or impressions that come to them and anything that they feel the Lord is saying to them or to anyone else. Encourage the members to consider how they might incorporate more reflection in their daily, weekly, and monthly routines.

Default Material

(Use these when there are no specific discussion questions for the passage:

Taken from:

 

 

Volunteer to Help Your Life Group Leader

One of the best ways that you can prepare for life group leadership is by volunteering to help lead a portion of your life group meetings. Mature believers will recognize that just because they are willing to serve doesn’t mean that their life group leaders will be able to “read their minds” or receive a “word of knowledge” to that effect. It’s important for you to let your life group leaders know that you’re willing to serve. Let them know that you’re willing to lead one of the four sections (i.e. “Welcome”, “Worship”, “Word”, “Witness”). Life group leaders will typically set up a rotation so that each member gets some experience at leading a portion of the group. Make their job easier by volunteering to lead. Make their job even easier by being willing to serve for an entire month. This will reduce the overhead involved in managing the rotation list.

Meeting Ground Rules

Life Groups need ground rules so that members have a common understanding of how the group functions and so that everyone will experience the group as safe space. Although they will probably have many common elements, each group should establish their own ground rules. The following resources may be useful for developing ground rules:

It will be a good idea for life groups to revisit their ground rules and to check-in to evaluate how the group is performing from time to time. On those occasions, it may be useful to consider some of the following questions:

Revisions

10/22/2021 – updated to add common life group resources block at the bottom of the page.
11/09/2021 – updated to add meeting schedule and location.
11/20/2021 – updated to add ground rules.
11/18/2021 – updated to add reflection questions for periodic life group review.

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