The future of small groups at College Church is nextStep.  The intent of nextStep is to provide the people of College Church a chance to go deeper, to grow in Christ, to be discipled, shepherded, and loved.

nextStep groups are a place to grow, to learn, to get connected to others.  A place to be cared for, and to see faith put into practice in a way that people are able to receive Christ's love for themselves as well as to share that love with others.  Our desire is to see each person involved with College Church actively participating in a nextStep group which helps to nurture their relationship with Christ in these ways. 

There are several aspects which are common to all nextStep groups.  They are:

• Three-Fold Leadership Structure
  
  Each nextStep group will have a Teacher, a Shepherd, and a Host (see the Role Definitions document for details).  By separating the leadership we enable each leader to concentrate on their role with the goal of allowing each leader to serve well in their area of giftedness without overcomitting their time.
  
  
• Three Element Meeting Time
  
  Each nextStep group will have three parts of their meetings; a shared meal of some kind (may range from a full meal to just a dessert), a time of teaching, and a time for prayer and sharing.  By intentionally incorporating each of these elements into the nextStep meetings we hope to ensure that no one aspect is overemphasized, fellowship, learning, and prayer are all important parts of growing in Christ.
  
  
• Quarterly Common Teachings
  
  Once per quarter there will be teaching, distributed by the pastoral staff, which all nextStep groups will work through for a couple of weeks.  The goal with these teachings is to ensure that everyone within the church is well grounded in critical issues of the faith.  There are 12 topics which will be covered on a 3 year rotational basis (for a list of topics click here).
  
  

For more information about nextStep please take a look at our nextStep documents attached below or contact Pastor Chris.

Attachments:

File	Description	Creator	File size
nextStepLeaderForm.pdf	nextStep Leader Application Form	Chris Slack	73 Kb
nextStepGroupRoles.pdf	nextStep Group Role Definitions	Chris Slack	88 Kb
nextStepGroupCovenant.pdf	nextStep Group Covenant Form	Chris Slack	64 Kb
Small Group Leaders Meeting.pdf	nextStep Leaders Training	Chris Slack	270 Kb
small groups - core topics.pdf	nextStep Groups - Core Topics	Chris Slack	45 Kb