Your 1st group meeting

Hey Guys I
can't wait to see what God is going to do through you guys this year. D groups are the backbone of our student ministry b/c this is were life change happens and accountability.



Here is a run down of what a typical D group should look like.

Arriving and Greeting

Spend the first 30 minutes lettingeveryone get there and catch up on the week. Spend this time letting eachstudent know how glad you are that they are here. Ask how important events went for your students during the week and helping any students thatneed help connect to one another and find some common ground.

Transition to Group Time

At this time you, or you can put a student in charge of this, instruct the group that it is time to start and everyone should head to an area where you can all sit facing one another. Make the start time consistent and specific. At this point, all side conversations should end and you or the students are talking one at a time with everyone actively listening. A helpful way to make this transition is to
establish a tradition for your group that symbolizes the start of your group time. Maybe you light a candle and put it in the middle of your group to symbolize the Holy Spirit’s presence with your group or you have one student open the night in prayer.

Announcements

Share Announcements with the group at the start of group time. This is an important way for you to raise the value of your student’s being involved in not just their d group, but in what is happening as a whole in our High School Ministry as well. Take the time to explain the “whys” behind the event you are announcing. If you need more info about an event, don’t hesitate to ask the staff team.

Group Sharing/Prayer Requests

Start the group time by having each student go around and share what this past week has been like for them and what they would like prayer for You can think of this time as each student “opening a window” to what is going on. Here again you can establish traditions like, everyone writes down the others needs to remember to pray for them. To keep things moving and a bit structured you could have everyone share the highlight and lowlight of the week or at least one need and one praise. If necessary, it is important as the leader that you shut down any side conversations and keep instructing the students on the importance of respecting the person that is talking by listening.

Some other ways to run the prayer time is to have each student write on an index card their prayer requests and then put their name on them. You can have each student share their request and then at the end collect the cards and hand them to different people. Have the students pray for the person whose card they have and then take the card home to pray for them that week. You can encourage the student to call or email the person on the card and see how their week is
going.

Study Time

After everyone has shared, head into the prepared study portion of the time. Allow plenty of time for
this and encourage the students to take to really think about and talk about the questions the study asks, especially the application part when students are thinking about how what was talked about tonight will change their own thoughts or actions.

Closing

Often the curriculum will have suggestions on a closing, but if not make sure to summarize anything that is necessary about what was talked about and to end in prayer.

Journal

Something that may be possible to incorporate for your group is to encourage everyone to bring a notebook where you give them a few minutes at the end of the night to write down some thoughts
from the study and to write down any action they want to take. This is just simply providing for them a few minutes to solidify what they learned during the night. A step we don’t always do on our own.

Ice Breaker for your First Meeting

GIMME FIVE Great icebreaker…

¨ Gimme five items that people have on their key chains.

¨ Gimme five things parents say that make teenagers groan.

¨ Gimme five activities that people with a fear of heights are not likely to do.

¨ Gimme me five things teenagers’ parents worry about.

¨ Gimme five cars you’d like to drive for a day.

¨ Gimme five excuses you use to get off the phone

¨ Gimme five things you do when you’re sick

¨ Gimme five items people throw away every day.

¨ Gimme five jobs that require special shoes

¨ Gimme five car parts

¨ Gimme give foods that taste good with melted cheese

¨ Gimme five household chores you dread

¨ Gimme five objects in a classroom

¨ Gimme five objects you open

¨ Gimme five sports in which people toss something

¨ Gimme five foods you’d love to eat every day

¨ Gimme five places parents say babies come from

¨ Gimme five things that come in threes

It’s amazing how often kids respond to icebreakers in ways we never would have predicated. Part of the enjoyment of the icebreakers is discovering the journeys they take to come up with their responses.

What’s A Meeting Look Like?

D-group meetings should consistently include such areas as:

§ Accountability:

Be accountable to individual time with God, application of the Word,
scripture memory. Example: What scripture have you been applying in
your life in the last week?

§ Teaching:

Teaching God’s Word, and/or principles based on God’s Word.

§ Sharing:

Share life situations and look for answers to problems in God’s Word.

§ Prayer:

Prayers of confession, adoration, thanksgiving, supplication. Example: What
specific answers to prayer have you seen in the last week?

§ Equipping

By role-modeling this, you are equipping students to eventually become
disciplers. Our future leadership is sitting in your D-group today.

§ Service:

Teach your students to be servants by having service projects that
they can be a part of either through the entire ministry or as D-groups.

§ Evangelism:

Strategy and accountability for them to be genuinely building relationships
with those who don’t know Christ, and to equip them to be able to effectively
communicate their faith. Example: How in the last week have you been
reaching out to someone who does not know Christ?

Fellowship: Taking the first few minutes to just ‘hang’, have fun and share are importantto being a group. There are also times when the purpose of gettingtogether is purely ‘social fellowship’. This must be balanced with the

teaching, accountability, and prayer or you are a “fellowship group”’ not a
“D-group”.

A Week in the Life of a Leader

§ Be in an accountable relationship for yourself. (Attend to your personal spiritual
growth - every leader involved in personal spiritual accountability.)

§ Pray for your group members specifically.

§ Initiate the groups meeting together- set time and place for your meeting.

§ Lead your group meeting and initiate activities your group can do together.

§ Establish and maintain Frat or Become Group Covenant.

click the link to download covenant http://www.box.net/shared/4igxgo0v1r

§Make regular contacts with each student (phone calls and notes - one phone call a week and a personal contact every other week.)

§ Meet the students one-on-one to encourage them in life issues and spiritual growth.

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