Field Guide for Small Group Leaders: Setting the Tone, Accommodating Learning Styles and More

by Samuel O'Neal

There are countless helpful resources available to the small group leader. As managing editor of smallgroups.com, Sam O'Neal has seen the best of them come and go. They tend to deal with the big vision of small groups--how they can revolutionize your church and transform your congregation. Or they consider the big idea of small group ministry, how it reflects God's communal vision for us. But sometimes a small group leader just wants to know how to survive the next meeting --not how to instruct and correct or shock and awe, but simply how to set the table for a life-changing encounter with God. The Field Guide for Small Group Leaders focuses in on the small group gathering as spiritual event. Useful to newly minted leaders and as a ready resource for small group experts, this go-to guide helps leaders prepare themselves to prepare their groups for the adventure of a collective encounter with a great God.

216 pages, Paperback

First published March 8, 2012

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive guide to leading a small group. "Your job is to help your group members grapple with those truths (faith, sin, hope, temptation, love), understand how those truths, intersect with their stories, and then make decisions and take actions based on those truths." O'Neal describes leaders as safari guides. I love the idea of guiding group members to connect the truth of God's Word with their own stories in ways that transform and ultimately benefit the rest of the body of Christ.

Lots of practical information is included: learning styles, crafting the Big Idea, icebreakers, prayer in small groups, curriculum choice and how to adapt the curriculum to your group, trouble-shooting.

This book has been very helpful and provided many ideas I plan to implement in my small group.