User Gathering Best Practices: How to Use Growthfinder for Values & Curriculum

Our pastoral staff does a fantastic job of presenting the core values of our church each year in a sermon series.  Worship.  Connect.  Serve.  Invest.  We have them posted on our website.  We have signage for the foyer.  We even go into deep detail during the membership class.  However, we found that when it came to actually putting these core values into practice, some folks were at a loss as to where to start.

If congregants don’t know the core values or the meaning behind them, what do you do to communicate more clearly?  We had the idea, that if we could get the small groups on board, this just may work.  The Small Groups pastor organized Bible studies to align with one of the four core values.  A curriculum guide was created for the leaders.  If the group wanted to study one of them, we had a page of studies ready, available, and recommended by our staff.  But how do you know where each group stands, what they need to learn and where people need to grow?

Churchteams offers a special feature they call Growth Finder, a quick and easy evaluation of personal spiritual growth.  We use the compilation of personal results to evaluate the spiritual health of the group as a whole. Here's how it works:

1. Customize Growthfinder to fit your specific core values.
2. Ask each group member to fill out a 39 question evaluation.  Each question is directly related to a core value.
3. Each individual receives their results.  The results tell you what their strengths are, as well as areas in which they may choose to grow.   
4. The leader of the group gets an anonymous synopsis of the group as a whole.  For instance, 80% of your group is uncomfortable sharing their faith with others.
5. The synopsis also includes curriculum recommendations from the pastors. 
6. The group leader chooses a series on the core value that would help their group grow.

This is still new to us.  Only a few groups have implemented this so far. However, those who have are excited, that as leaders, they know exactly what their group needs and tangible ways to encourage growth.  

Note:  Jennifer attended our Users Gathering in April and shared this best practice.  Thank you Jennifer for catching this part of the vision for Churchteams and passing it along.  Boyd