I recently interviewed Mark Batterson, who's lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington D.C. and author of such books as Wild Goose Chase. This is part 3 of that discussion, which will appear in Rev! Magazine’s Smart Ministry e-newsletter on 6/29. You can subscribe to the e-newsletter at no charge at http://www.group.com/profile_mgr/index08.asp.

Brian: One of our key vision passages is Ephesians 4:11-12, the idea that it is the responsibility of the church leadership to equip the people to do the works of ministry. Do you have a designated equipping minister or discipleship leader…whatever language you use?

Mark: We have a pastor of discipleship and a discipleship team. A lot of what they do works through our small groups. We have a “free market” system of small groups, and it really boils down to this: we want people to get a vision from God and go for it! So we train leaders to promote discipleship and small group, but it’s not a real complicated process. We want to get them trained, but we want to quickly get them in the laboratory and learning by doing it. So it’s fairly easy for people to lead our groups and it’s been amazing. It’s a very decentralized approach. It’s not that we don’t have accountability—we do. But we want to tap into the passion and gifts that people have and then allow them to serve and lead in the way they feel called.

One of the things I like about the concept of the free market small group philosophy is that the people are leading a group in an area they really care about personally, so that has to come through to the group.

Yeah, and that frees people up and they own it. And the nice thing too is that some groups die that should die because there’s no demand for them. But for other groups the demand is so strong that we multiply. You know, Alpha is something that we use extensively for those that are seeking. We had four Alpha groups this last semester, and so we continue to multiply that. Whatever works we continue to multiply and continue to grow.

That’s interesting because Alpha strikes me as one of the things that it’s harder to find good leaders for because you have to know how not to give an answer.

That’s true. But those are some of our best people that lead those particular groups. They have a huge heart for it, and honestly a lot of people that we find getting baptized are coming through Alpha. So there’s a lot of visible reward spiritually for the people that are serving in that capacity.

So within the small groups themselves, are they encouraged to have ministries of their own?

Yea, a lot of them do, a lot of them serve in different capacities. Part of the nature of free market is we allow that unique personality of the group to find it’s own shape and form. Some of them serve actively as their own group, others as part of a larger group, and then part of some other ministry. Maybe not connected to something within the church, but still serving.

It sounds like it’s not so much, let’s all go to the new member’s class, take a spiritual gifts assessment, and try to help you figure out from there where you should serve. It’s more where is your heart leading you and maybe that will help you discover your giftedness.

Yep. It can be a little overwhelming when people see 100 groups to chose from but the way we communicate it is, let the Holy Spirit guide you to the right group, to the place where you can grow. And one semester they might want to do Crown Financial, another semester they might want to do an inductive Bible study, or a book study, and maybe a semester to be part of the marathon group and run a marathon together.

You probably get better group participation that way just because people don’t feel like they’re making life-long commitments to something.

I think it’s true, and then having a little break between semesters allows people to exit a group and then re-enter someplace else and not feel bad about it. It also gives our leaders a little break in between semesters, and allows them to lead different things at different times.

Brian Proffit brings experience as senior pastor, discipleship pastor, and small group director to his role as Editor of Group’s Church Volunteer Central.