The Church Revitalization Podcast – Episode 290 – Build a Thriving Small Groups Ministry
New collaboration brings proven small groups framework to churches worldwide
May 2025 – The Malphurs Group is excited to announce a groundbreaking partnership with Build Groups, bringing exclusive small groups ministry training content to the Healthy Churches Toolkit. This collaboration represents the first time Build Groups has released content from their private consulting, making world-class small groups training accessible to churches of all sizes.
Addressing a Critical Gap in Small Groups Ministry Training
“There’s a very big hole in formal education for preparing someone to step into the role of being a groups pastor or into groups ministry,” explains Adam Erlichman, founder of Build Groups, in the recent Church Revitalization Podcast episode announcing the partnership. “Far more people are willing to lead a group than you think – even those who have told you they’ll never lead a group.”
The new content addresses this training gap by providing churches with a comprehensive framework based on six essential realities every small groups ministry must address: Discover, Develop, Deploy new group leaders, Connect them in community, Coach leaders ongoing, and Care for the souls of all.
Exclusive Training Content Never Before Released
The partnership brings six professionally produced videos to the Healthy Churches Toolkit, each focusing on one of the six framework areas. These materials are extracted directly from Build Groups’ consulting program, which typically costs thousands of dollars and requires 12-16 hours of intensive training.
“We have not given, released, or produced any content even close to what is in our consulting,” Erlichman notes. “Malphurs Group is going to be the first ministry, maybe the only ministry that we give any of this type of content to.”
Beyond Traditional Metrics: A New Approach to Small Groups
The training introduces churches to more effective ways of measuring the success of their groups. Rather than simply tracking attendance compared to Sunday worship, the framework encourages churches to measure group participation against total membership or active participants.
“If you have more than 100 people in your church, you want to be keeping some of these metrics and data points to measure quantitative things because they will inform you about qualitative outcomes,” Erlichman explains.
Practical Tools for Immediate Implementation
Each video comes with complementary templates that churches can customize to build out their own processes. The content covers everything from identifying potential leaders to creating sustainable shepherding systems that track individual attendance and engagement.
Scott Ball, co-host of the Church Revitalization Podcast and Malphurs Group Vice-President, emphasizes the practical value: “Most churches have their community life ministries just on autopilot. This training gives them the tools to move beyond that and create a truly transformational community.”
Supporting Small Groups Ministry at Churches of All Sizes
The partnership recognizes that effective small groups ministry isn’t just for large churches. “The issues that churches face, large and small ones, are almost the exact same,” notes Erlichman. “If you can take care of the fundamentals, any church of any size can build a thriving groups ministry.”
The training specifically addresses common challenges including:
- Preparing leaders beyond simple “pick and place” mentality
- Moving from head counts (for bragging) to soul counts (for shepherding)
- Building community that extends beyond scheduled meeting times
- Creating systems that help identify and connect unengaged members
Immediate Availability in Healthy Churches Toolkit
The exclusive Build Groups content is now available in the Healthy Churches Toolkit. Current subscribers with a Pluss account have access now and new users can access the training through a free 7-day trial.
The toolkit also provides a direct portal for churches wanting to explore deeper consulting relationships with Build Groups, along with access to additional printed resources and templates.
About the Partnership
This collaboration represents a shared commitment to serving ministry leaders worldwide. As Ball notes, “Our heart is to serve ministry leaders around the world,” while Erlichman adds, “We really believe in what The Malphurs Group is doing and the churches that y’all are working with.”
The partnership aims to help churches move beyond maintenance mode in their small groups ministry and create the kind of transformational community described in Acts 2, where authentic fellowship draws others to experience the love of Christ.
Watch this episode on YouTube!
Scott Ball is the Vice President and a Lead Guide with The Malphurs Group. He lives in East Tennessee with his wife and two children. (Email Scott).
Got questions? Meet with our team for a free Discovery Call.
Episode Transcript:
A.J. Mathieu [00:00:01]:
We’re talking building healthy small groups and a big announcement at the end. Stick around right now for the Church Revitalization Podcast.
Introduction [00:00:08]:
Hello, and welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the Malphurs Group team, where each week we tackle important, actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now, here’s your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ Mathieu.
Scott Ball [00:00:26]:
Welcome to the Church Revitalization podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I’m joined by my friend and co host, AJ Mathieu. And today, a special guest and friend, Adam Ehrlichman. Adam, you’ve been on the podcast once before. And just to peek ahead, we’ve got a fun announcement with you towards the end of the episode. So if you’re listening, you’ll wanna stay tuned all the way to the end. Adam, welcome back to the podcast.
Adam Erlichman [00:00:51]:
Thanks, man. You know, of all the podcasts I’ve been on, I don’t know that I’ve ever been invited back for a second one, which means I had I either had coffee when I came on this the first one, and I didn’t say anything totally stupid. Or you guys are just very gracious hosts. So I’m I’m very thankful to be back with you all and to hang out to talk more about small groups, my passion.
Scott Ball [00:01:13]:
Yeah. Yeah. We’re really glad to have you on. Actually, AJ didn’t get to it was just me and you the last time. Yeah. So I don’t know. Somewhere around the world, probably. But glad glad that AJ gets to join us this time.
Scott Ball [00:01:24]:
And we are talking about about groups. For the people who didn’t tune, it was almost a year ago or right around a year ago that last episode aired. So we’ve got a lot of new listeners and, a lot of new subscribers on YouTube as well, who maybe didn’t catch that one. So can you give, like, the 30,000 foot overview of who you are and of build groups and all that?
Adam Erlichman [00:01:46]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So, my name is Adam Erlichman. My wife, Anna, we’ve got three boys, 11, nine, and seven. You know, we got a rough, tough, tumbling, high energy, destructively graceful presence on our home, or also known as a frat house. You know? Yeah. Youth volunteer, youth baseball coach, all those things. You know? So but I I’m with build groups.
Adam Erlichman [00:02:07]:
What we do is we help churches increase their small groups ministry. We start and strengthen their small groups ministry, typically increasing their entire group’s ministry leader base by 30 to 50% in six to twelve months. And we go and do a deep dive, typically twelve to sixteen hours worth of content over ten to twelve months to get small groups going the way that they desire, to start to actually see the outcomes that they wanna see because there’s too many out there. And I would say it’s the majority of them that aren’t getting to see those outcomes that they want. And so we are as close as you can get to your formal education of preparing someone to lead a group’s ministry. Not lead a group. Ton of great resources out there for that, but how to lead an entire group’s ministry. So that’s a bit about what we do.
Adam Erlichman [00:02:50]:
We’ve got consultants around the country that work with us and partner with us, and you guys are one of our partners in in other aspects that that we love, that we get to send people to you guys to work on strategic envisioning and other aspects there. So, yeah, that’s just that’s kind of like the glimpse of the 30,000 foot view of what we do.
Scott Ball [00:03:08]:
That’s awesome. One of the things if you go back and listen to the episode from last March, you talked about how even though we’re we’re saying small groups, we’re we’re using that as a broad term, applies to Sunday school churches that use Sunday school and
Adam Erlichman [00:03:21]:
Percent. And I’d say that, like, some of the people that I work with, they’re like, let’s kill Sunday school. And I’m like, no. Don’t do that because I know so many people who are like, man, I wish we could have groups on Sunday morning. I’m like, oh, you mean, like, Sunday school? And and they’re like, oh, no. I’m not not that. I mean and I’m like, yeah, you do. And and it’s it’s like, that’s exactly what you want, you mean, and you miss it.
Adam Erlichman [00:03:41]:
And you can just because you broke up at some point, you can still get back together. Like, this could this is a great and beautiful love story.
Scott Ball [00:03:47]:
Good for families. It’s good for families, man. Like, families are busy to have groups on Sunday morning. I I’m kind of a fan personally.
A.J. Mathieu [00:03:54]:
So am I. It just seems like everybody has got it in their head that it’s this, like, this binary choice. Like, we move everybody into homes or or everybody is doing Sunday school the traditional way. And, like, you know, it’s really easy to come up with some, maybe some hybrid solutions here.
Adam Erlichman [00:04:10]:
It is. I’ll I’ll just say this quick because I know we got some other things y’all wanna get to. Hybrid churches that offer offer Sunday school and small groups are the most effective at assimilating people into the DNA of their church. They are the most effective at assimilating people into the overall involvement of the body and being involved in groups, then also eventually start to serve. If they’re in a group, they’re a lot more likely to serve. But the reason that is you got Sunday school. It’s a little bit safer to go into, a little bit more risky relationally to go into a small group at home. But if you have both, that hybrid, those are the churches that are best at assimilating is what I see.
A.J. Mathieu [00:04:46]:
We’re far enough now into the small groups movement, you know, twenty plus years of strong movement that, you know, newer buildings don’t have any education space built in. They’re like, we’re not planning on being here other than Sunday. And so, obviously, that’s a major limiting factor. But some of these older churches that had that space, they’re probably pretty glad now they’re still in those older buildings. Maybe reinvigorate that use.
Scott Ball [00:05:11]:
Yeah. That’s true. A lot of those rooms have gotten cobwebs over the years, and I think they’re kinda glad to be, you know, scraping those out and getting those rooms used again, which is a good maybe a good transition to our first question, actually, Adam, which is, in the years that you’ve been involved in starting and running build groups, how has your understanding of group dynamics evolved as you’ve worked with more and more churches in the group space?
Adam Erlichman [00:05:36]:
Yeah. Certainly. I’m gonna go back just a little bit further even to whenever I was first getting involved in groups ministry. So when I was doing college and young adult ministry in Lynchburg, Virginia, and started doing that, and and that was I was at a church that was primarily all Sunday school based, like large church. I think they had close to a thousand people who were all in Sunday school class, and they still had plenty of education space. It just was that great setup that was a blessing. We were of this like, no, we gotta be small group. And so we were in a Sunday school.
Adam Erlichman [00:06:08]:
I had become a teacher in a Sunday school, but we gathered a few people out of there without really the consent or approval of the church and started a small group in our home. And we quickly learned why it would be so important to have the support and sanctioned approval of our church. And that because we went in there just guns a blazing, nothing but passion and vigor, and no competency,
Introduction [00:06:33]:
no training, no preparation for what we were. We’re just like, this is just gonna happen.
Adam Erlichman [00:06:34]:
And I will tell preparation for what we were. We’re just like, this is just gonna happen. And I will tell you guys, like, it it was it was bad. It was so bad. It was maybe the worst small group of all time. Okay? It’s, you know and and part of it is is heartbreaking as I as I I’m gonna tell you what, you know, all had happened. We we start this group. We get several young families in there.
Adam Erlichman [00:06:57]:
Long story short, of those couples that join that group, there’s about 12 total of us, two of them ended up getting divorced within two years. One became a homosexual. And so like that whole group fell apart within six to twelve months. And we’re going, Oh my goodness, I’m the worst small group leader. Part of what I have learned in the evolution of just my own experience of groups and groups ministry, a lot of what I learned at the pain point level was at the front lines of being a group leader. And so now coming onto this side of it, I’m going, Hey, I remember when I was a group leader, if I wasn’t supported, this is kind of what would happen. A large part of why people don’t make disciples a day, according to data from Barna and Lifeway Research, is people don’t feel prepared or equipped, right, to do to do ministry. Too many church leaders, they will pick them, they will place them, but they did not prepare them, so now they are positioned for failure.
Adam Erlichman [00:07:47]:
And if you’re doing that, you’re not looking for potential new leaders, you’re looking for prepackaged leaders. Potential leaders are ones you prepare. Prepackaged leaders, you pick and place. And and so for me, part of my understanding of what I’ve just grown and learned about small groups, one is it requires more than one or two weeks of training. If it’s potentially one of the most spiritually formative ministries in your church, You cannot microwave it into a two, you know, thirty, sixty minute training or interest meeting and then flip it and go, oh, hey. Now, this turned into your formal training all of a sudden, like, it was a timeshare, you know, presentation. Yeah. Here’s your list of names.
Scott Ball [00:08:28]:
Or that training is just content.
Adam Erlichman [00:08:30]:
Yes. That too. Right? It’s it’s like a lot of churches, even if they do have the training components in there, Scott and AJ, they’re like, alright. We’re gonna get you doing 500 pushups. This sounds really impressive that, you know, anyone could do 500 pushups in one day and then they get to launch the group. And it’s like, okay, now run the 40 yard dash. That training had nothing to do with what they were actually gonna do when they started leading the group. So my understanding of small groups has grown significantly in that one, it is not as simple as people would think it is.
Adam Erlichman [00:09:01]:
Two, there is really not any formal education that holistically approaches and helps prepare someone to step into the role of being a group’s pastor or into group’s ministry, there’s a very big, hole there, I would say, just in, you know, capital C Church in preparation for that. And people truly need and want someone who’s gonna lay out a pathway for them of what it looks like to start, to begin, to be equipped, and to launch. And so this is the other thing I’ve learned. Far more people are willing to lead a group than you think. Some of the people that have literally told you, I’ll never lead a group. Those people are probably actually willing to lead a group if you had a process to prepare them to do that. And so the other thing I would say outside of that, guys, I know because there’s there’s a so many places I could go. Right? Because I feel like I learn something new every week as we work with churches around the country on this.
Adam Erlichman [00:09:56]:
Like, I didn’t realize how important data points were.
Scott Ball [00:09:58]:
Yeah. Well, that’s a good question. I mean, so that’s that’s a good pivot point. I I’m with you, by the way, a %. And I I end up spending probably fifteen or twenty minutes of our workshop time with, many of the churches that I work with simply trying to win them over that that counting things is okay. Like, that that it’s not like a sin to count. But so when it comes to measurements and numbers and so on when it comes to groups, what specific metrics do you think that churches should track to assess the health and, like, the impact of their group’s ministry?
Adam Erlichman [00:10:31]:
There are so many aspects of group’s ministry that are untapped or undiscovered in a formal education sense to prepare someone to lead them well. And data and metrics is one of the biggest parts. There’s no book you can pick up that goes, hey, here are the the different standard, like, metrics and data points that you would wanna use in groups ministry now that, like, there are different people at different churches who are doing things at their ministry, at their level and, you know, whatever church that might be, where there’s some good data points they’re keeping up with or keeping track of. But it is not prevalent. It’s very much the minority. And typically, it’s going to be your larger church who probably has some extra staff to do those things. But but the truth of the matter is, like, anyone can do this stuff. Any church of any size.
Adam Erlichman [00:11:18]:
If you have more than a hundred people in your church, you wanna be keeping some of these metrics and data points to measure quantitative things because they will inform you about qualitative outcomes and results that can come about. Some of the metrics and I’ll say this has probably been one of the gold standard metrics that’s been used that I think has a little bit of holes in it, that I would I encourage churches to do it a little bit differently, but I’m happy that we have this one. This percent of a church’s group’s attendance compared to their overall worship attendance. So they’ll go, Hey, how many people are in a group compared to how many attend on a Sunday? And they might have, you know, 300 in service and then a hundred in groups. And so they would have 33% of their Sunday morning worship service in a group. Now that’s great, as long as you don’t have 900 members that didn’t show up that Sunday.
Scott Ball [00:12:12]:
Right?
Adam Erlichman [00:12:13]:
If that is your reality and you’ve got a thousand members and your average attendance is two fifty, I’m just kind of using some different numbers, make it a little bit easier math for anyone to listen to the audience there. Well, that means like if you had all two fifty people in a group that are attending a service, that means you have a %, which looks really impressive. But I think God cares far more about all the souls who have said, No. This is my home church. I am a member here. I have submitted myself and my family here, and I’m trusting you as our overseers and shepherds to steward our souls into greater Christlike growth. And so my encouragement of a of a big baseline primary statistic for looking at healthy groups, the first big one I would say is take how many people are in a group divided by how many total members do you have at your church. So how many
Scott Ball [00:13:08]:
That that assumes that they’re cleaning up their roles.
A.J. Mathieu [00:13:11]:
That’s what I was gonna say.
Scott Ball [00:13:12]:
Yes. Which a lot of churches well, you know, and you you’ll you’ll encounter some, like, nondenominational churches or whatever. Like, we don’t even have church membership, you know, which is silly.
Adam Erlichman [00:13:21]:
And there’s ways to measure that. You can measure off active active participants as opposed to just members by, you know, name or something check marked in the database.
Scott Ball [00:13:30]:
Right. Yeah. And the hard thing too about average worship attendance, and and I’ll admit I’ll freely admit we’ve used that as a baseline number a lot, is it is a little bit of a moving target. They’re they’re having to roughly guess. What we’ve seen a lot of churches do is essentially what you’ve said, you know, because we we ask them to self report rather than give us weekly weekly data and then us average it. We’ll ask them to give us their average worship attendance for for the whole year. And what we have found that those churches tend to do is exactly what you said. They’ll go, well, you know, on a Sunday morning we got about 200 people in there, but we we’ve really got about 350 people who who are active in in attending, you know, in a given month, and that’s the number that they put down.
Scott Ball [00:14:08]:
But you’re probably right that we should be more specific and say, like, you know, active monthly attenders or something like that, and average worship attendance so that it’s a a closer baseline number to the people who would call their church home. Yeah, that’s a that’s a good point.
Adam Erlichman [00:14:23]:
And you’re always going to have people who are not an actual member in your database who are going to be a part of groups, which that’s fine. And even with that number, because like some churches are gonna say, hey, we don’t have kids as members. You know, there’s all these different nuances of it. Generally, the the principle that I’m trying to communicate here on this with this one, the principle is, Hey, who are the people that God has entrusted to you to steward their souls? Go off that number because it’s always almost always gonna be higher than what your average week in attendance was. Take however many people in group compared to that. And that percentage, it’s gonna be lower. I mean, you might say, yeah, we have 50% of people in groups, but then you take it from average worship attendance to total members or people who are active participants there. It could go down to 25% and that hurts a little bit, but here’s the other thing, Scott, you know, you’re like, Hey, the active, are they keeping the role clean and act? Well, if those numbers are lower, they’re a lot more motivated to clean up their roles.
Scott Ball [00:15:23]:
Yeah. That’s a good point.
Adam Erlichman [00:15:25]:
a lot they’re a lot more motivated to clean up their data and and scrub that stuff from the management software system.
A.J. Mathieu [00:15:32]:
So is the is the big gain to be found in sort of reactivating or increasing engagement by less active attenders or or by increasing the ones that are more more commonly attending more than 1.2 times a month?
Adam Erlichman [00:15:51]:
So I’d say I’ll I’ll kinda give you a picture here. It’s it’s kinda like, AJ, you fly a lot. I I fly. Scott, you fly a lot. I’m gonna fly on eight flights in the next two weeks. And I still have no clue. Even though I go there, like, four times a month, I have no clue how to get to the DFW International Airport from my house. I still I don’t know why.
Adam Erlichman [00:16:13]:
It just Dallas Roads
Scott Ball [00:16:14]:
You know, there is there is a north and a South Entrance, you know, to be fair.
Adam Erlichman [00:16:19]:
Okay. Yeah. I could not get there. If you were like, don’t use your GPS, Adam, no way I could get there. It would be I’d be lost. I will now
Scott Ball [00:16:28]:
God love you, Adam.
A.J. Mathieu [00:16:29]:
We’re gonna have to talk after the episode, Adam.
Adam Erlichman [00:16:31]:
Full confession, I put it into my GPS at, like, 5AM one morning, and I ended up at the American Airlines Center instead of the the airport. And I was like, this is so embarrassing. I’m never gonna tell anyone, and here I am. Right?
Scott Ball [00:16:44]:
Now you’ve just mentioned it on this podcast. Now to be fair to you, you you just recently, not to out you, but you just recently switched from being a Southwest guy or maybe you still are occasionally a Southwest guy.
Adam Erlichman [00:16:54]:
I mean, every now and then everyone’s mad at Southwest the last
Speaker E [00:16:57]:
two weeks.
Scott Ball [00:16:57]:
With the recent announcements, there is no benefit to being a Southwest guy. You should just just go all in on American Airlines.
Adam Erlichman [00:17:03]:
Right. But the American Airlines Center is where the Mavericks and the Dallas Stars play. It had nothing to do with it. Yeah.
Scott Ball [00:17:07]:
Nothing to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Erlichman [00:17:09]:
I just typed in American Airline, and bam, I went to there. And I was like, oh, woah. It’s a good thing I left there like and still gets to the airport on time. So, you know, even guys, even me who is this silly and unintelligent at times, like, if I can do these data points and metrics for groups, you guys can do them probably way better than me. But it’s kinda like this, AJ. Like, the reason that I would encourage a church to do their data like this and to use this metric instead is because with my GPS on my phone, if I don’t have my location finder turned on, like, if I don’t know where I am, it cannot help me get to where I need to go. Mhmm. And so for a church too, like, this opens up so many great possibilities if they have a better vision and view assessment of, hey, this is where we are actually with people in groups.
Speaker E [00:17:57]:
Mhmm.
Adam Erlichman [00:17:58]:
Because I’m gonna take it a little bit deeper here. Like, not just, hey, how many people are in a group who aren’t a member? That gives you your list of people who are unconnected if you are looking at the overall totality of it. Right? Of all the members, not just, you know and and you can run those reports in your church management software system very easy, almost any of them. And it’ll tell you, hey, here’s a list of all the people who are not in a group that are unconnected. So that gives you a great data point to help communicate and go to those people and invite them into a group, be more intentional to think through, hey, what demographics do we see as a trend of certain, you know, maybe stages of life that aren’t in a group? When I was in one church, it was parents of teens. Like we had a ton of young families and a ton of empty nesters and senior adults, but we had a big gap in parents of teens. And then we go and we look at our groups and we go, well, that’s because we don’t have a group that’s led by a parent of teens. And so it helps inform you to go about like, hey, how we build this and make options available to different, you know, maybe stages of life and different people.
Adam Erlichman [00:19:06]:
All that data starts to open up the possibilities of, well, what could we do? What should we do? And maybe is the Holy Spirit leading us through this data and these metrics of what’s missing for our people to bridge that gap, to help get them building biblical community sooner.
Scott Ball [00:19:21]:
You’ve made two statements that I’d go there. A lot of the churches are gonna be behind the eight ball and have some work to do. One would be they haven’t properly rostered their groups, so they they will report a number of people who are engaged in a group, you know, that numerator, so to speak, and it’s incorrect because they’ve counted the same person more than once. You know, they’ve that that, you know, John Smith is in the men’s bible study, and he’s in a home group, you know, and he goes to a Sunday school class, you know, at least sometimes. And so John Smith got counted three times. Well, that’s not three people. That’s one person. And because they they’re just counting the number of people who are in any given group, they’ve not gotten that numerator correct because they’ve counted John three times and he’s not the only one.
Scott Ball [00:20:11]:
So, you know, I I feel like a lot of the times we’re we’re telling churches, you gotta roster your groups properly so that when you run these reports, you’re getting unique numbers and not the same person twice. The other thing that you mentioned is church management software. Like, we’re we’re making a huge leap assumption that churches are properly using it, which the vast majority of churches that we work with aren’t. I think larger churches are better at using that often because they have an admin to help them. You know, a church under 200, very often, they either don’t have it or they don’t use it or they don’t engage with it or only one person on the staff knows how to use it and even they kinda use it, kinda don’t. And, we’re constantly trying to sell churches on the value of and we have no financial stake. You know, there’s we we’ve got nothing to gain, but we’re like, you you have to use these tools. I don’t you know? I guess, the pushback on that would be churches existed for hundreds of years without this.
Scott Ball [00:21:08]:
I suppose so. But why you know, people didn’t used to have calculators either, but why would you not use one? Like, you you have this powerful tool at your fingertips. Why would you not take advantage of it?
Adam Erlichman [00:21:20]:
Right. So when I talk to churches because, I mean, I’ve been at big churches that they didn’t even take attendance. I’m talking, like, churches of 500 plus that they didn’t even take attendance at all. They’re just like, this is how many people we know are on a roster of a group, which I’m glad they at least knew that. But, like here’s the power in you taking that attendance, not head count. You know, I say head counts for bragging, soul count, individual, this name, this person was there on this date, you know, taking that type of attendance. Soul count is shepherding. Head counts for bragging.
Adam Erlichman [00:21:53]:
And I know that’s not always I’m I’m saying that generally. I’m not accusing anyone in the audience. I love you. Don’t don’t take that the wrong way. But if you have a church that’s over 75 people, like you’re not gonna know the spiritual state of where those people are. And so I would always tell our group leaders, because this comes down to the practical level of the group leaders having emphasized to them how important it is for us to be able to take that soul count individual attendance. We call it shepherding and unity. Guys, we wanna work together.
Adam Erlichman [00:22:23]:
We wanna shepherd together in unity. If someone is not in your group anymore, we wanna be able to chase after them the way Jesus did with that one sheep that left and bring it back into the fold with a 99. And we can’t do that if we don’t have clear communications and understanding of who is in what group and who is not. And I’ll tell you, man, as soon as we did that and we got that clear in our data and using that software and putting that in, man, it just, it changed a lot. Now I’ll tell you this. Every church I’ve been, we still would use paper roll, like paper attendance taking, and that would get turned in. And we had someone who would just plug that into the software system. You can hire someone on upworks.com, and you can pay them 3 to $5 an hour to plug that data in for you.
Adam Erlichman [00:23:12]:
So like if it’s a, you know, labor thing, there’s there’s very inexpensive labor that can do that very effectively for you.
Speaker E [00:23:20]:
All
Scott Ball [00:23:20]:
Or if you’re using Planning Center and you’re using the groups app, they can take attendance right on their phone and it automatically sync with that. Like, it’s not
Adam Erlichman [00:23:27]:
Yeah. You can do that. You can, yeah. The groups app with planning center, CCB. I mean, any of the ones out there, even realm. So you can, they can download that app, plug it in and it’s, you know, it’s good. So now here here’s the other thing, Scott, is that what I find is we get under the hood with churches that we work with and and guys who work with churches that are like 50 all the way up to, like, you know, tens of thousands. And a lot of the times the the issues that those churches face, the large and the small ones, are almost the exact same, which is encouraging to the small church and discouraging to the large church because they’re supposed to have it all figured out.
Adam Erlichman [00:24:02]:
Right?
Scott Ball [00:24:03]:
The small churches don’t believe us when we say that, but I’m like, it’s the same problems. They’re they’re just blown up, but it’s it’s just multiplied. But it’s the same problem.
Adam Erlichman [00:24:12]:
Right. Right. It is. And so if you can take that, or so as we get under the hood with some of these groups and we start to look at some of their metrics and their data, you’ll start to see that they’ll say, Hey, there’s maybe 200 people in groups. And then you look at some of that and you go, Actually, only a hundred of those people showed up one time over 16 in the spring. And then they go, Oh, ouch. Like, maybe we’re not doing as good as we thought. And so, you know, or it’s, Hey, we had 200 people show up 80%.
Adam Erlichman [00:24:43]:
That’s insanely good. But what you generally will start to find as you look at some of these metrics and you do start taking that attendance, you know, if you’re at a church again over a hundred, you’re not taking attendance like this, it’s gonna be really hard for you to shepherd people well, to get unconnected people connected into community, for you to empower your leaders, to identify new people, to join into groups with you. And so, you know, I’m a huge proponent of this in the metrics and the data side of it because when you start taking that, I’ve got a whole spreadsheet and worksheet, guys, that I give to churches that they go down, they go, alright, this person attended 15 times, 14 times, 13 times, 12. And then it goes 100%, ninety five %, eighty eight %, you know. And, you know, furthermore, on just down with that. And they get to look at from semester to semester, hey, did our group’s not just quantity increase, but did our group attendance overall quality increase? Because if they’re not showing up to group, guys, you could have 400 people in group. You could have, you know, you could have 200 the semester before, now you got 400, and your groups could be worse because you could have 200 new people that only showed up one time. And last semester you had 200 people that, you know, showed up like 80% of the time.
Adam Erlichman [00:26:00]:
And so there’s a lot of just missing holes in how we look and assess at some of this, and we sell it we falsely celebrate a pseudo wins, if you will. And we just we wanna avoid that.
Scott Ball [00:26:11]:
I’m curious, you know, what qualitative things I know we’ve kind of touched on that. I mean, really, if you can identify who’s not coming and you can begin to shepherd these people well, that is a qualitative thing. That isn’t at that point, you’ve moved beyond the number and gone to the person. But what other kinds of qualitative things are you looking for in, you know, in in terms of measurements and things in groups ministry?
Adam Erlichman [00:26:37]:
Yeah. So there are always qualitative, immeasurable metrics, if you will, or aspects of a group for a healthy one that you you can’t, like, really measure. You can’t put into a number, but you can kinda hear it right in the conversation, or you can hear it from a leader. You can hear it in a story from this happened. This is a moment of life transformation. We wanna celebrate this with all of the rest of our church or all the other groups ministry or all the group leaders, whatever, you know, audience you wanna share that with. And it’s, you know, it’s those life transformational stories where someone shows up broken and the group receives them and they are the hands and feet of Christ. They accept them.
Adam Erlichman [00:27:15]:
They love it’s it’s you know, those are all different kinds of aspects of immeasurable. But one in particular that I would point to as as sort of this immeasurable, you know, qualitative metric that that generally would just kind of give you insight to, hey, are we building a healthy group? Like, are we going past just what’s been scheduled and they just kind of check the box, if you will, which is what most are nervous about with a group or Sunday school class. Like, hey, we don’t just wanna check the box and, hey, I came, I did my due, and now I, you know, maintain my salvation. Hopefully, no one’s theology is that poor. But how often, if you can answer this question, how often do people connect outside of the weekly scheduled group gathering time or group meeting time? If they are, like, texting each other, if they’re calling each other, if they are like, hey, we’re headed Chick fil A or, you know, God’s chicken. If we’re headed that
Introduction [00:28:10]:
you know, does anyone wanna come with us? Or if they go, hey. We’re going to
Adam Erlichman [00:28:14]:
the playground, and, you know, they end up at the playground. And it doesn’t have to be everybody. It just it could be two of the couples from your group. If true community is organically happening outside of the meeting time, then you can go, Hey, this small group has successfully helped build a community that’s going to be lasting beyond just our meeting. It’s not dependent upon the structure of the church. The vine has grown into the trellis. And that’s a good, you know, sort of qualitative measurement I would say you could look for.
A.J. Mathieu [00:28:46]:
Yeah. That’s true. We have these kinds of discussions a lot when we are talking to churches about intentional fellowship in the church, you know what I mean? Building in this Acts two fellowship. And, and they’re like, Oh, yeah, we have that on Sunday morning, you know, our worship time. And we’re like, Really? Do you? You know, and you dig into that a little bit. And, you know, one of the things that I often say is, you know, a hug and a handshake on Sunday is nice, but if you don’t think or talk to that person for the next seven days until you see them again in the lobby on the next next Sunday, that wasn’t fellowship. You know, so that’s what you’re saying. Are these relationships actually growing deeper where, you know, you’re like outside of my obligatory time with you? Do I care about you? And that’s a huge impact and a huge step beyond to build that in.
Scott Ball [00:29:36]:
Yeah. That’s really well said. Okay. As we move towards landing the plane on this, episode, I it’s it’s time to kinda make an announcement. We’re excited that we are announcing a new partnership with Build Group. But as part of this new partnership with Build Groups, we are going to be integrating actually brand new content that you all just created specifically for the Healthy Churches toolkit that is training for small group ministry. And in fact, you kinda mentioned this at the top of the episode that there’s just not really good training out there on how to run a good small group ministry. So peek ahead and tell us a little bit about what people can expect in this training that’s coming to the Healthy Churches toolkit.
Adam Erlichman [00:30:16]:
Yeah. Certainly. I’m gonna give you guys just a base level understanding of what we do in our consulting so you can understand what we’re offering in this ministry toolkit. And, actually, we’re pulling it from, like, what we do when we consult with churches. So generally, we’re looking at twelve to sixteen hours with the content of consulting that we’re gonna take a church through. It’s gonna be live. It’s gonna be, you know, me or one of our consultants over virtual video call or in person meeting. And what we’ve done is we’ve taken our framework.
Adam Erlichman [00:30:43]:
We don’t copy and paste. What we offer churches when we work with them is a framework, which is six realities that are true of every ministry. No matter where you are in your context, your culture, part of the world, these are six realities that you have to have an answer for no matter what. The six areas that we have coined in a phrase, if you will, is discover, develop, and deploy new group leaders to connect new people into community, coach those leaders ongoing, and then care for
Speaker E [00:31:09]:
the souls of all of them. So discover, develop, deploy new group leaders, connect them in the community, coach those leaders ongoing, and then care for
Adam Erlichman [00:31:10]:
the souls of all of them. So discover, develop, deploy new group leaders, connect them in the community, coach those leaders discover, develop, deploy. New group leaders, connect them in the community, coach those leaders ongoing, care for the souls of all. And then that whole process starts over one, two, three, four, five, six. And so we have recorded six videos, one for each area that speaks to a bit about what that area is to just give you awareness to start with of, well, what is this and why do I need this? And guys, I’ll tell you, like, not one church that we’ve worked with has had more than three. Three of the areas of the six, like, actually intentionally built out. There’s like three of them that they have completely no process for, no intentional steps to actually answer that reality. And their leaders feel it immensely.
Adam Erlichman [00:31:52]:
Their members feel immensely. It’s it’s tough. And so we talk through all six areas and give you a little bit of coaching through there, kind of a snippet what would normally be, you know, maybe a few thousand dollars of working with us in a consulting relationship. We’re trying to boil that down to make that practical for you to use there. And then we’re gonna have a template for each video that you can use that would complement and you could start to custom build out some of your processes for that area. So that that’s what you’ll have in there from us with with that resource.
Scott Ball [00:32:23]:
I got goosebumps. I’m excited. I kinda can’t. I’m I’m looking forward to going through it myself, to tell you the truth. This is just a huge value add. You know our heart is to serve ministry leaders around the world. I hope you take advantage of the content that we’ve created in in leadership pipeline design and strategic envisioning content, all of that. But I want you to go through this build group some material because I know a lot of you are struggling in your group’s ministry or you’re you feel like, well, the the group leaders we have are you know, we’ve had them for ten years or fifteen years or thirty years, and we can’t there’s no way for us to add more.
Scott Ball [00:32:53]:
None of that is true. And so please please sign up for the toolkit and access these new materials. I’m very excited about this partnership with with build groups. And inside the toolkit, we’ll also have a portal for you to, one, be able to contact them. So if you want some help from Adam and his team, but also access you mentioned you’ve got other printed resources. So companion type things, you’ll be able to access those and purchase those to be able to use in group trainings and things like that.
Adam Erlichman [00:33:20]:
Yeah. And I’ll tell you guys this audience. We so we have a whole client portal that we’ll take a church through and, you know, all this content. We have not given, released, or produced any content even close to what that is in our consulting. We have not given that to anybody. We have not shared that with anybody. Malphurs Group is going to be the first ministry, maybe the only ministry that we give any of this type of content to that is exclusively only available through our client consulting portal. That again, it’s it’s normally a few thousand dollars.
Adam Erlichman [00:33:57]:
And, so I just wanted to say, we’ve never done anything like this. This is the only time that we’ve done anything like this. And I just really we really believe in what MAFERS group is doing and the churches that y’all are working with and how you’re helping them and the heart behind that here in America and around the world. And so, we believe in it enough that we’re like, Hey, we we wanna open up and let some people into some of what we do at church that we’ve never ever given access to. So, I think that you guys will find it very, very valuable. We have a very, very good track record, and I think you’ll find those materials very, very helpful.
Scott Ball [00:34:30]:
Most churches have their community life ministries just on autopilot. You know, the way it’s been is the way it’s been. So why should churches take the time to refreshing these ministries, and bolstering them with some planning and some training like like they’re gonna be getting in the toolkit?
A.J. Mathieu [00:34:46]:
And I’m not even add to that. At the risk of having to deal with the fallout of change. Yeah. Why is there such value that you’d be willing to open yourself up to change and having to deal with that?
Adam Erlichman [00:35:00]:
Yeah. That’s that’s a great question. So there there’s probably so many ways I could answer this and so many reasons why. So many reasons why we should consider refreshing, replenishing, upgrading, strengthening. You know, I’m very rarely am I the overhaul guy. I’m almost never breaking up a foundation. Most things that churches have are actually really good and biblical, and we just need to build off more of them and make it stronger. But I would say, like, there’s no stagnancy in ministry.
Adam Erlichman [00:35:27]:
I will consult with a church that is exploding with growth, and then I’ll consult another church the same day that just lost 200 people and or a church that just lost their building, and now they had to move into a school or they gotta move into this. Like, I see all that. And so I would say, like, complacency is not a call that I believe God’s put on us. Contentment is. Complacency is not the same as contentment. But but we should be taking ground more and more. We should be helping people step more into building community, experiencing true biblical community that is life transformational, like we see in Acts two forty two through 47, that people on the outside of group, outside of the church in acts two that were like, yeah, the name of Jesus is terribly popular. He was only crucified, you know, whatever, fifty, fifty five days prior.
Adam Erlichman [00:36:17]:
Like, no. Jesus’ name was so unpopular. It would get you persecuted and killed. And the early church was so trans I mean, their community was so transformational, so loving, and so powerful that people on the outside that were looking in there, I don’t even agree with this, but I wanna be a part of it. That’s why you should be doing this.
Scott Ball [00:36:38]:
Man, thank you so much, Adam. This has been really good. We’re we’re excited about this partnership with Build Groups and look forward to it being really fruitful for the churches that take advantage of it. And if you’re listening to this, don’t don’t miss out on this on this opportunity. The Balfour’s group is investing in this partnership. Build groups has invested the time and the energy in creating these exclusive resources for for you all to take advantage of. So, yeah, we just can’t wait for people to to see this, take advantage of it, and see their churches transformed by by the content and the training that’s there.
Adam Erlichman [00:37:09]:
Amen. Amen. I can’t wait. It’s gonna be good.
Scott Ball [00:37:13]:
Awesome. Well, as always, go to a healthychurchestoolkit.com, and that’s where you can sign up for free for seven days.
A.J. Mathieu [00:37:20]:
Today’s show notes will have various links also in there, so you can get down into the description on YouTube or on your favorite podcast app for more information about contacting us or Adam at build groups. And, yeah. As has been said, excited about our partnership. Looking forward to it. We’re, appreciative of you joining us today on the Church Revitalization Podcast. We’ll see you again next week.
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