Today on the podcast, Sean talks about small groups and the idea of waiting until week three to start them.
With the start of a new school year for Elevate it means that we separate the preteens into new small groups. This year, thanks to an idea from Jaime Santos, we decided to hold off in making those small groups until week 3. We sent off the kids those first two weeks in groups based on gender and grade with all the leaders that will be leading that age and gender group. With a smaller group of preteens it might work better for you to send them off just by gender.
With the first couple of weeks at schools holding Back to School Nights and people just taking time to settle in to returning to a midweek service it allowed everyone time to get settled down before splitting up. Secondly, it gave the leaders a chance to get to know the preteens that would be in their groups. It allowed or us to visually see potential conflicts between kids or groups that might be a distraction if they were together. We also didn’t put the inconsistent kids together so that groups would be more equal consistently. How do you determine your small groups? Let us know.
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