SUMMARY: In this episode, Brian and Rick speak with Daniel Im, the Church Multiplication Specialist for Lifeway and the leader of NewChurches.com, about the model for adopting mid-sized groups of 20-50 people into a church’s group ministry culture. Daniel shares how leadership teams can become cultural architects who create more natural, larger environments for connection, which can help appeal more effectively to both introverts and extroverts who are not already engaged in groups. Formatting these mid-sized group meetings can also lay the groundwork for smaller groups to extend from friendships formed in sub-groups of this community.

In addition, Brian and Rick share a blog post entitled 5 Common Small Group Myths by Steven Lee and discuss how addressing these misconceptions can make small group culture stronger within a church. Rick also shares his list of the week, The Five If’s of Discipleship, a model and a reminder of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

The Groups Matter Podcast is a weekly show designed to resource, train, and encourage small group leaders. Each episode considers current trends and resources as well as timeless truths and methods of discipleship. It is hosted by Brian Daniel, a Bible study expert from the Lifeway Groups Ministry Team, and Rick Howerton, the discipleship and small group specialist at Lifeway and author ofGUEST: Daniel Im leads NewChurches.com and is the Church Multiplication Specialist for Lifeway Christian Resources, working closely with Ed Stetzer and Todd Adkins. He is passionate about the local church and loves to be a part of creating the systems, strategies, tools, and resources to help new churches get planted, campuses get started, and multiplication to happen. Before coming to Lifeway, he served and pastored in church plants and multi-site churches ranging from 100 people to 50,000 people in Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, Korea, and Edmonton. With his experience in both church planting and multi-site churches, he can provide others with insight to help take that next step. Daniel is also a Gallup Strengths Performance Coach and loves to help people discover their strengths to help them move further faster. You can follow Daniel on Twitter (@danielsangi), visit his website (danielim.com), or email him at [email protected].

EPISODE SPONSOR: This episode is sponsored by What Jesus Demands from the World Bible Study, a six-session Bible study based on the book What Jesus Demands from the World by John Piper. This is a great title for group study that immerses readers into Christology and the demands that Jesus made for His followers. Both the book and the Bible study are available to order from lifeway.com.

RESOURCES: If you have a question you’d like discussed on our Groups Matter Podcast, please tweet your question to @BcDaniel or @RickHowerton.