John Ratz

John Ratz has served at several churches for the purpose of setting a small group system. Originally he worked young married cupules and Audio visual aspects of the church services. Since than he has found a gifting for aiding churches that are struggling to run small group programs or trying to start them.

When he first started a small group program he spent a year preparing for it. When

He launched the program he invited anyone who was interested in small groups to attend a meeting. Initially they had 120 people (60% of the church) show up (without even knowing much about what the small groups were going to be all about). They held another meeting the next morning and most of the people came back.

John started off by doing modal small groups that lasted for 6 weeks. One of the biggest hurdles was going to get people to make a weekly commitment so they started of small. After they started no one New was allowed to join in those first groups so that the people in them could grow relationships. Everyone in each small group had a turn to lead their group. Even though many of the participants were nervous, everyone said that they had a good experience.

John found that having just one or two nights a week set aside by the church with no other ministries going on really helped with small groups. It also made it easier for each group to come to gather a few times a year to go over anything that they wanted too.

He Also he found that even with the same training, group leaders would take away different things from their training sessions and he had to continually help them grow and learn.

After 20 plus small groups, John said that he needed help “couches”, to train the small group leaders. He found his couches by putting the leaders into small groups and seeing which ones naturally lead their groups. By using them, a lot of pressure was taken of off John.

John said that one of the most important things is to understand the culture of the church that we are coming into. Also he said that everyone needs a small group, even the guy running the small groups.