Life Group Facilitator Committment Letter
Living Hope Church
Belief Statement
Life Group Facilitator Overview
…establishing authentic Christ-centered community
through Bible study, prayer & fellowship!
Facilitator Responsibilities:
Church Connection: All facilitators should be active and committed in Sunday
worship and the life of the church.
Partnership: Work with another couple to organize and lead a life group.
Communicate with co-facilitators about group health and support one another
with encouragement and feedback. Facilitators are encouraged to meet together
every-other-month outside the group.
Community: Build a loving, Christ-centered community of authentic
relationships. Be genuine with one another and seek to move past surface level
issues into the real issues of people’s hearts and lives.
Care: Care for the spiritual needs of the people in the group and encourage their
growth in Christ. Follow-up with people outside of the group as the Spirit leads,
being sensitive to gender and personal boundaries. As appropriate, communicate
important needs to the elders.
Prayer & Worship: Facilitate times to share genuine needs, pray for one
another, and worship together. To keep things fresh, mix up the format: pray for
one another to open the meeting, to close the meeting, in break-out groups, or
pray about what you learned in the Word.
Word Ministry: Oversee the study of God’s Word by directly facilitating
discussion and equipping others to facilitate discussion. Avoid the extremes of
one-way teaching or aimless discussion. Enable the group to process the
concepts in their own words, while being sure to guard doctrinal clarity and
uphold biblical truth according to the LHC Belief Statement. While facilitators are
not expected to hold to every aspect of the Expanded Doctrinal Statement, they
are expected to lead with an understanding and respect for these convictions
which the elders hold. In line with biblical guidelines, male leaders have primary
responsibility here as the spiritual leaders of the group.
Participation: Involve other members in fulfilling the following responsibilities as
a way to utilize their gifts, create ownership in the group, and raise up new
leaders:
o Hosting: Group hosts provide a welcoming location for meetings.
o Logistics: Coordinate the arrangements and rotation for hosting, babysitters,
money collection, and snacks.
o Children Devotions: Gather the kids and open the meeting with a devotion,
song, and/or prayer.
o Break-outs: Regularly (1-2/month), break-out into gender-specific small
groups, and ask someone to facilitate a time for personal application and
prayer.
o Bible Study Discussion: About once a month, equip another member of the
group to prepare questions and facilitate group discussion on the assigned
passage or topic. This is open to both men and women according to their
gifts, under the guidance of the male leaders of the group.
Activities: Arrange opportunities for group activities beyond your regular
meetings such as fellowship activities, community service, and prayer walks
(consider about two a year).
Training & Accountability: Attend Life Group Facilitator Meetings and Ministry
Leaders Training (each typically twice a year, in the fall and spring). Male are
asked to meet every-other month with an elder for Leadership Accountability.
Community Considerations:
Time: Be considerate of people’s attention span and the impact on the host
home (the official meeting should generally last no more than 2 hours).
Hosting: Create realistic expectations for the host family (no one’s house is
perfect!) and share the burden among several homes.
Attendance: Encourage consistent attendance in the group but be sensitive to
people’s individual schedules (give grace when people miss). Groups should
typically meet for about 12 weeks. Groups meet weekly, but feel free to take a
night off if that blesses the group.
Men’s/Women’s Ministry: Provide regular opportunities for men and women to
connect both inside and outside of meetings. Consider forming Accountability
Groups out of Life Groups. Giving your group some time in gender-specific
groups provides an opportunity for increased intimacy, openness with personal
struggles, and depth in prayer.
Children: Include the children in the life of the group through snacks, opening
devotions, prayer, and/or worship.
Childcare: Please see the recommended Childcare Expectations to review with
your babysitters. Cost will be supplemented by the church at $10 a meeting per
childcare worker (up to two, if needed). We’d suggest babysitters receive about
$15-20 per night which hopefully means people need to chip in about $1 per
child. (Please note: we don’t want cost to ever prohibit someone from
participating. If you know babysitting money is a burden for a family, talk with an
elder or deacon so we can assist them.)
Multiplication:
New Leadership: Every year there are Life Group Facilitators that need to take a
break for one reason or another. Some groups become too big and need to
multiply, so that intimacy is not lost. By God’s grace we’ll continue to draw in
new people to the church who will want to connect with groups. The need for
leadership is ongoing, and most future leaders are participants in existing groups.
Intimacy & Expansion: Every group must seek to balance the tension between
the need to build intimate, trusting relationships in the group with the need and
joy of raising up leaders and expanding the ministry to reach more people. We
need to care for our people and cast vision to be stretched.
A Variety of Approaches: There is no one right way that always works when it
comes to growing groups. We can consider a variety of approaches (and some
of these can be combined):
o Birthing: An existing group might send out two couples from the group to
plant a new group and draw in new people that have never been in a group
before. The current facilitators remain with the original group. There could
even remain a connection between the groups with bi-annual gatherings of
the extended family.
o Mentoring: A seasoned leader could be sent out from an existing group with
a couple who has leadership potential to build a new group.
o Multiplication: A large healthy group, with lots of facilitators could multiply
into two groups with some of the same people and some new people coming
in. The new groups could be based on relationships, geography, or night of
the week.
o Consolidation: Two groups that are struggling with leadership and
attendance could combine to form a new healthy group.
o Collaboration: Two or more groups could provide the people for a new
group (Group A and B provide facilitators, Group C provides a host, Group D
provides a stable support family).
o Dispersing: Sometimes groups come to a point where they reach their
healthy lifespan. The leaders may feel that dynamics are unhealthy, or they
have become complacent, or simply that mixing things up would be positive.
In this case, a group could intentionally disperse to spread out and strengthen
other groups.
1- God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – created all things for his glory and humanity for
relationship with him.
2- God’s Word, the Bible, guides people to Himself and is the final standard of Truth.
3- God has a good and sovereign plan encompassing all events, people, and spiritual
beings.
4- God regards all people as disobedient, rebellious, separated from Him, and needing
His forgiveness.
5- God’s Son, Jesus, came to earth, was fully God and fully Man, lived perfectly, died
on a cross, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven.
6- God the Son will come again to bring the end of this world and eternal judgment.
7- God’s Son died to accomplish the forgiveness of sin and rose from the dead to
accomplish the infilling of new life, applied by faith.
8- God rescues people from death into life based on his initiative and grace.
9- God’s Spirit fills all who believe with daily strength, spiritual gifts, and enduring faith.
10- God intends for his Church to gather for worship, maintain purity, and spread the
Gospel.
11- God has given Baptism and the Lord’s Supper to express a believer’s union with
Christ and spiritual transformation.
12- God values the family unit and organizes his Church to reflect this model, both
relationally and structurally.
13- God designs and equips all Christians for ministry and some to lead in the Church as
elders and deacons.
Updated Fall 2022