• Small Group Leadership: Dramas That Teach, by Willow Creek Community Church. DVD, with free downloadable user/discussion guide. Willow Creek Association, $39.99.

Small Group Leadership: Dramas That Teach is a training-on-demand resource from the Willow Creek Association. The DVD contains six dramas by the Willow Creek Church drama team that are, as expected, highly professional and done with excellence. I found myself eager to click on the next drama, and have been surprised at the mental time I continue to devote to debriefing the episodes. Actors are believable. Issues are relevant. And it's easy to get emotionally engaged.

A downloadable discussion guide is also available at www.willowcreek.com/smallgroups/resources/leadershipDVD. The 19-page user guide provides a synopsis of each segment along with suggestions for how to use the drama in a small-group leader-training context. Most segments have two or three possible teaching points (authenticity, character, etc.) along with very effective discussion questions and/or group activities that unpack the learning for small-group leaders.

Who can disagree with Willow's rationale for producing this product? Everyone knows that "The quality of your small groups depends on the quality of your small group leaders." Just watch the "Small Group Nightmares" segment if you have any doubts! And in our visual culture, the availability of these targeted video clips is a powerful way to "help you plant a vision in your team for the possibilities of group life" and "help people gain new insight into the power of community to impact people’s lives."

However, as engaging as they are, it's still a stretch for me to see some of these segments being used in training sessions for small-group leaders. "Small Group Nightmares" is a humorous look at what small groups should NOT be. "Coming Back" and "Refrigerator Mom" both cast the vision of the powerful influence that groups (not necessarily church groups) can play in our lives. The other three segments could help leaders learn to deal with conflict and grapple with the qualifications for leaders, but the stories are not set in the context of church-sponsored small groups -- so the leap from real life to small-group application would need to be made intentional by the trainer/facilitator.

In short, this may not be what you're looking for if you're the one charged with training your small-group leaders and need a complete training program for your leaders. But if you're looking for an easy way to add some very engaging video segments to your existing training content, this may be just what you're looking for.