The Mighty Clipboard
A Small Group Leader’s
Best Friend
By David Drury
I
can’t believe it took me this long to figure this out. I’ve gone to small group leader conferences,
read books, been trained and generally thought about small groups daily for
years now. But I only just figured this
out. Perhaps you missed it too. Yes, for sure, lots of other things help out
a small group leader. A good study
series helps. Some training goes a long
way. Experience teaches us some things not to do again. But it seems like no matter what I’ve done
the group always seems to drift one direction: I end up doing everything and
get burned out.
So
I’m kicking myself for not figuring this out sooner. This beautiful life secret
of small group leadership. This moment of delegation revelation. This is my epiphany of community life: The clipboard is my best friend!
There
you have it. Believe
it or not. It’s true. As a small group leader I found out this year
that the mighty clipboard is my lifesaver.
In three small groups I led in the last 6 months I was so burned out
from years of leading groups that instead of doing a bunch of talking about
everyone helping me out I just passed a clipboard around on the first night of
each group and a small group miracle occurred in my life—each group practically
ran itself all year long! Sometimes I
would show up to one of the groups late having not thought more than 2 minutes
about the night and because of the mighty clipboard I passed around two months
prior things would go without a hitch.
Here’s why:
- SIGNING UP FOR ROLES, NOT JUST SNACKS – I always talk about people taking roles and
helping me out with the group but rarely would they actually step up and
take something. This year, I just
put the roles I needed on the clipboard with a little blank next to them
and told the group to sign up for what they wanted to do. All the roles in each of my three groups
were filled!
- GETTING THE CALENDAR IN WRITING — Often times my groups in the past have run
really well for a month or so and then things started to wind down and get
messy two months later. Some weeks
we’d start to wonder who would show up or we felt guilty for not
communicating where the group was till the last minute. I’d feel like a really bad small group
leader. But with the clipboard on
the first night we’d put every date we were meeting for 4 months and a
little blank for people to volunteer to host or do snacks or lead the discussion…
and everything was set. Maybe you
already figured this out—but it’s great to know that you can get all that
stuff nailed down at the first two meetings of the year and then coast on
those decisions for months!
- EMPOWERING PEOPLE TO SERVE – By opening up the roles I often felt I needed
to do but still didn’t enjoy, others got to get involved in doing exactly
what God wired them up to be. I
always did certain jobs really poorly but did them because I thought
“that’s my job as the leader.” But
in reality there are often people that wanted to do those
job and grabbed them once I put them on the clipboard. In one of my groups someone else does
ALL the e-mail communication and reminders for the group. They just keep tabs on getting everyone
there! WOW! I love it! In another group one person coordinated
all our serving efforts in the fall as a group. I didn’t plan a thing! In our couples group we only had to host
the group a few times when before we were having it at our house all the
time—turns out many of the members really wanted to have it at their
place.
It
may seem simple to you if you’re a small group pro. But for me, I’ll never launch a new season
with any small group without bringing a clipboard with a little chart on it,
even if it’s hand-drawn. It’s amazing
how using a simple sign up process in a group can get the crummy details out of
the way and enable a group to get down to brass tacks and do life together.
_________
© 2006 by David Drury
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