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At it’s core every church has unique DNA that defines what it’s going to be like and the impact it’s going to have on it’s community. On today’s episode small group expert, Alan Danielson gives us some really helpful handles to understand our church’s DNA and the impact it has on our small group ministry. Alan challenges us to build a small group ministry that is custom tailored to our DNA rather than just “copy and pasting” from another church. It’s a great episode packed with lots of help for church’s looking to improve their small group ministry.

Alan Danielson // [Website] [twitter]

Interview Highlights

00:52 // Alan describes his role at New Life Bible Church and former role at LifeChurch.tv
02:34 // Alan explains the biggest reason churches have a a hard time getting people into groups.
03:25 // ‘A Cheetah does not hunt like an eagle.’
04:39 // Ways churches can understand their DNA
05:06 // 1. Growth or Control Bias
08:29 // How Newton’s Cradle relates to small group ministry
09:50 // Saddleback leans to the growth side and cleans up messes
12:14 // 2. Understanding the Senior Pastor
13:14 // If the Small Group Pastor is aligned with the Senior Pastor the ministry can explode
14:07 // 3. Understanding the Church’s Traditions
15:47 // Every church has traditions even if it is only a year old – anything you do consistently
17:32 // 4. Picking your Problems
17:55 // Err on the side of Growth Control Bias that has the problems you are best equipped to deal with
22:21 // Do the hard work of discovering your DNA

Lightning Round Highlights

Helpful Tech Tools // churchleaders.com, Basecamp, churchteams.com

Book Worth Reading // David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

Inspiring Ministries // Lifechurch.tv, Seacoast Church, East Lake Church

Inspiring Leader // Rick Warren

What does he do for fun? // Star Wars addiction [info about next Star Wars movie!]

Interview Transcript //

Rich – Well welcome to the unSeminary Podcast everybody. My name’s Rich Birch, the host around these parts. Today we have Alan Danielson on the line. I’m super excited to have him. This is one of those interviews I have been waiting for a while…it’s a privilege to have Alan on the show. Thanks for being here today, Alan.

Alan – Thank very much Rich. I really appreciate it. It’s an honor to be here, man.

Rich – Nice. I’m looking forward to today’s conversation because I’m looking forward to leaning in and learning from you Alan. Why don’t you give us a sense of your background. What church are you at now? A bit about your background. Who is Alan?

Alan – Well, right now I am at New Life Bible Church in Norman Oklahoma, which is smaller church. We are kind of rebooting some things. It’s a church in transition and I’ve been there for about three years. We have more than doubled in size in three years running just over 300 people now. Some exciting things going on in the life of our church. Prior to that I was on staff at LIfeChurch.tv in Edmond, Oklahoma where I was in charge of small groups in all of their campuses and that was an insane ride. When I started at LifeChurch we had about 9000 people on the weekends, 5 campuses. When I left we were running about 28000 people on the weekends, and we had 13 campuses. I learned so much during that time about leadership and small groups and about delegating and working with people over vast geographical areas, about multisite ministry. It was like drinking from a fire hydrant for four years straight. One of the best experiences of my life. Prior to that, I have been in ministry, well, since I graduated high school. About 2 weeks after I graduated high school, I moved out of my parents home and moved to another state to intern at a church and I’ve never looked back. I’ve been working at churches now for 24 years.

Rich – Nice, that’s a great thing. I’m really looking forward to leaning in on the small groups side of things today. I know a lot of small group systems struggle at churches. They have a hard time. I think there are, I’ve heard from more than one church, ‘we can get people to show up on a weekend, but then what do we do with them? We have a hard time getting them plugged in.’ Why is that? Is there some common themes why you think that might be in churches?

Alan – I think one of the biggest problems in small group ministries that I have worked with, and after leaving LifeChurch I did a lot of consulting, and still do with churches, and what I’ve seen at many, many churches across the country, is this tendency to cut and paste their small group models. They’ll say, ‘Hey, we see something that works over here and we’ll try that. And we see something that works over here at this other church and we want to try that.’ So they just kind of cut and paste certain things and they smash them all together. So instead of having this kind of cohesive thing that really makes sense for their church, and their culture and their DNA, they wind up with this kind of mishmash of stuff from all kinds of other cultures, and other DNA’s and then it doesn’t work and sometimes they are stumped as to why it doesn’t work. Well the way I like to say it is, a cheetah does not hunt like an eagle, because they have totally different DNA. And if a cheetah saw the way that an eagle ate, and the way that the eagle took care of itself every day and said, ‘Oh my gosh,I want to do what the eagle does,’ it would starve and die because God didn’t create it to be an eagle. He created it to be a cheetah. And the opposite is also true. And what churches do is well God created them to be, let’s say a cheetah, and then they see an eagle over here, and then they see a spider over here, and they look at other animals of prey and they say ‘I want to hunt like those.’ And then they incorporate a whole bunch of that stuff and none of it works because God made them to be a cheetah. So what I tell people all the time is that you’ve got to find out who you are and really understand your DNA. And when you do that you can see what’s going to work, and what’s not going to work in other areas, and you are better equipped to choose some of those different approaches and models. And probably you are better equipped to create your own approach which is ultimately the best.

Rich – That’s a huge challenge for people…obviously understanding their own church DNA. How does the church do that? How does a church get their arms around what is unique about us, because you obviously have to understand yourself before you can even learn from other churches. What does that look like?

Alan – There are various churches that I have worked with, all sizes, all denominations, I’ve found that basically there are 4 areas that every church needs to look at and talk about and wrestle with before they decide what...