Roles in a Life Group
When the Apostle Paul was talking to a church about Spiritual gifts, he used the illustration of a human body to describe the way that parts work together to create a greater whole. That’s exactly how Life Groups can work!
We tend to think of “Leading a Life Group” as “If I’m leading, I’m responsible to make everything work for everyone all the time, so I’m going to need to do everything… and I hope I get it right!”
That’s actually not how it should work. In your group, there are all kinds of people with all kinds of gifts and natural, God-given abilities that can work together to make your group work!
Here are some of the roles that go into making a Life Group happen— have a discussion about it with your Life Group one day and see if there’s some things you can delegate to help spread out the load and create space for people to do what they’re good at!
Host: This person/family loves hospitality and opens their home each week to host meetings. It does not have to be the same home every week, but this is usually the case just to keep things simple.
Logistics: This person is good at figuring out how to make things run smoothly by lining up and delegating tasks, communicating effectively, and thinking through the details.
Food: This person loves to cook, bake, and broil! They love to see people enjoying their creations, and most everyone loves to eat them!
Prayer: This person is consistently calling the group to prayer, and intuitively brings things to the Lord as life unfolds for themselves and those around them.
Facilitation: This person is gifted at getting the group to discuss things in depth— they ensure everyone gets heard, that no one dominates. They are a listener, and can really keep the discussion going!
Teaching: This person loves the Word of God and is able to take the group deeper into the material in front of them, find connections in other parts of the Scripture, and unpack ideas in a way people can understand.
Music: Many Life Groups start discussion time with a brief time of worship (1-2 songs). It might be a YouTube video of worship played through a home theater or a live guitarist singing… or ukulele…
Creative: This person loves to set up a party for a birthday or holiday event the Life group is celebrating— leave them to it and let them go… you’ll be amazed at what ‘creative chaos’ becomes when they’re done!
You likely have other roles that you can think of, which is great! The point to be made here is to intentionally create space for the members of your group to “play the instrument you have” in the chorus of what God is doing in and through your Life Group!