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Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with Adam Ader, the Groups Director at Parkview Christian Church in Illinois.

Is your church looking to improve how you connect people into life-changing groups? Wondering how to lead a growing group ministry that truly impacts people’s lives? Tune in as Adam shares valuable insights on building a thriving group ministry that focuses on leadership development, group engagement, and real-life transformation.

• Raise up great leaders. // Parkview’s groups strategy uses term-based, free-market small groups to foster community and spiritual growth. Groups run in three 10-week terms per year, allowing participants to engage in short-term commitments while maintaining flexibility. Parkview believes that, at the end of the day, a great leader will outweigh perfect content and they can turn mediocre content into something more engaging. Parkview works hard to raise up great leaders, helping them identify who is the segment of people they are trying to reach with their group.
• Types of groups offered. // Parkview also leverages leaders’ passions to create groups that resonate with people. There are five categories that the groups at Parkview fall into. The first is Rooted, a foundational group for new believers which starts them on their journey. Then there are shared interest groups, general Bible-based small groups, support groups for people going through difficult circumstances, and Alpha groups for skeptics and seekers.
• The ten-week model. // Ten weeks can seem like a short timeframe to really grow and connect with others, however small groups can fizzle out if they stay together too long. Having an open-ended strategy can set a lot of the groups to end in failure. The goal of these ten-week groups is not to take participants from point A to Z but to help them take a meaningful step forward in their faith. By giving groups a well-defined end date, you provide them with the opportunity to end well and either recommit going forward, or explore new groups.
• Great leaders outweigh content. // We can become so focused on finding the perfect content that we miss out on the things that are truly important in small groups. We need to be disciples and help others grow, so focus on identifying and empowering leaders who can guide others effectively.
• Identify what you’re looking for. // Have clarity about what you want in a leader. Parkview encourages potential leaders to see their role as facilitating community rather than delivering lectures.
• Recruiting new small group leaders. // The best recruiters of new leaders are existing leaders. Encourage group leaders to be thinking, from the beginning, about who might be someone that can step up and do what they are doing. Emphasize relational skills and a love for Jesus over theological expertise.
• Offer training and support. // Parkview has a 90-minute initial training for all potential group leaders that covers the church’s mission, vision, values, and group systems. Once a person has committed to becoming a leader, they undergo ten weeks of training while they lead their group. These trainings include a mix of bite-sized video content and in-depth discussions. This modular approach allows leaders to engage with essential topics such as building community, managing conflict, and fostering spiritual growth. In addition, new leaders are paired with a coach—an experienced volunteer leader who provides guidance and encouragement throughout the initial stages of group leadership.

Visit Parkview Christian Church at parkviewchurch.com and download the Parkview Groups Leader Guide here.

EXTRA CREDIT // Get the Ready-to-Edit “When to Refer” Decision Guide for Small Group Leaders

Are your small group leaders equipped to handle sensitive situations effectively? This exclusive resource from unSeminary Extra Credit is a ready-to-edit document to make it easy for you to provide your small group leaders with a training resource on when they should refer people in their group to someone else for assistance. Complete with a customizable decision tree and practical prompts, this tool empowers leaders to confidently care for their groups.

Join unSeminary Extra Credit today to access this valuable resource and more! Download this resource now. 

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Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Well, hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I am super excited for today’s conversation. This is one of those conversations that’s got in the middle of it a common tension that it’s a misnomer that um that lots of people have that we’re going to bust today. We’ve got some myths we’re going to bust. Plus, it’s going to be super helpful for you. Super excited to have ah Adam Ader with us. He is the groups director at Parkview Christian Church. It’s a multi-site church in ah in Illinois and church online. They’re repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country. Super excited to have you on the show today, Adam. Welcome. So glad you’re here.

Adam Ader — Hey, thanks, Rich. Appreciate it.

Rich Birch — This is going to be wonderful. Thanks for your time. Really appreciate that. Give us a sense of Parkview. Kind of tell us the story. If, you know, if people were to arrive this weekend, kind of give us a sense of that and then tell us a little bit about your role.

Adam Ader — Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I had the good fortune to land at Parkview as my first job out of college. Landed as a student ministry intern in 2005, actually.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Adam Ader — Had a little bit more hair growing up top at the time then I do now. But I got lucky. I didn’t know a thing about the church and landed there to find out that they were one of the fastest growing churches in the country. And I was like, Oh, what what have I gotten myself into?

Adam Ader — But Parkview has been through like an incredible journey, really over the last 20 plus years of of just explosive growth. And we’re we’re in the south suburbs of Chicago. Our original location is in Orland Park. We’ve we’ve grown to the point where we have three locations, and they’re all kind of within a 15-minute drive with each other in a little sort of Bermuda triangle of Parkview campuses. And, you know, our our lead…

Rich Birch — But in in that Bermuda triangle, good things happen, not bad things happen.

Adam Ader — Yeah, we don’t see too many planes almost, thankfully.

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Adam Ader — But yeah, so the church has just been growing incredibly fast. We’ve seen God breathe incredible life just in people being kind of drawn into the church. We’re in a heavily Catholic and ex-Catholic area. And you know and that brings all kinds of exciting and interesting challenges with it. But um but God has just used what we’re doing and blessed it in incredible ways.

Adam Ader — And you know there have been times where we’ve been white knuckling in it and just trying to hang on for dear life as more and more people showed up. And we’ve tried a lot of different things and and God has seen scene fit to to bless some of them in some really powerful ways. So it’s been an exciting place to kind of cut my teeth doing ministry. I’ll hit my 20-year mark in June of this year, actually.

Rich Birch — Congratulations.

Adam Ader — Thank you much. Thank you much. I’m waiting on that gold watch. I don’t think I’m going to get it.

Rich Birch — Nice.

Adam Ader — But yeah, I met my wife my third day at Parkview. And I had my kids here, and I couldn’t imagine a better place to get to do ministry and just feel incredibly blessed every time every day, I get to do this.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s so great. So fun to hear. You know, we often talk with leaders in fast growing churches, and that’s definitely kind of a substrate of, you know, kind of under all the different people that we talk to. And one of the things I want to kind of pick apart today and understand from your seats, your seat as the what’s multiple seats is you do lots of different things in this area – that’s for sure in groups – is how are you getting people connected to groups at Parkview?

Rich Birch — So maybe let’s start with kind of an overview, kind of talk us through, let’s say you’re talking to an executive pastor or maybe another groups pastor, you’re at a conference and they’re like, tell me about groups at Parkview. What’s what’s all your short hands, open, closed, seasonal, you know, you know, how long do they stay together? All that kind of stuff. Give us a framework for what they are. And then we’ll dig in a little deeper.

Adam Ader — Yeah, that’s that’s great. I’ll I’ll talk you through kind of our our current strategy.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Adam Ader — And then there’s like some history that’s going to have to go go into this a little bit.

Rich Birch — Sure.

Adam Ader — [inaudible] But where we’re currently at, we we focus largely on term-based free market small groups.

Rich Birch — Okay.

Adam Ader — Um, so we you’ll hear more about this down the road, but we we have leaned heavily into Rooted in the past. And we have a handful of sort of core content pieces that we will offer groups for each of these terms. Three times a year, we’ll offer 10-week groups terms. um And people can kind of opt into the group that seems best to them through a group finder tool that’s kind of housed on our website. Kind of a common thing, in a lot of churches do that. We’re not reinventing the wheel by any means in any of those areas.

Rich Birch — Right.

Adam Ader — But but really, we lean hard into leveraging like the passions of our leaders. We think that at the end of the day, a great leader is going to outweigh content.

Adam Ader — And really what it comes down to, you know, our belief is a great leader can make average mediocre or even substandard content work really well, but a poor leader can take just to about any content off the tracks.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Adam Ader — So we we lean hard into raising up good leaders and helping them identify who are they trying to reach with their group? What kind of people along the road of faith do they want to invite in the community and help them just take at least one step forward?

Rich Birch — Wow. Okay.

Adam Ader — So, um you know, we do we do have long-term groups that run and, you know, they kind of do their thing and we love them, but most of them are closed groups. We’re leaning really hard into these term-based semesters, 10 weeks usually. And again, that’s kind of a rhythm that we picked up from Rooted along the way, that 10-week piece. Seems like a sweet spot…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Adam Ader — …for us to help people get in the good community. So give them an off ramp before it gets weird. You know what I mean?

Rich Birch — Okay. That’s good. Well, tell us about, give us a sense of when you say free market, you talk about, it and I definitely want to drill in on that. I think it’s a huge insight, great leaders, outweigh content. We’re going to definitely come back to that, but give us a sense of what some of those kind of free market groups. What we, some of the passions, if, you know, if I was attending Parkview will be some of the things I would see on that tool to pick for the kinds of groups.

Adam Ader — Yeah, great question. We kind of dropped them into a five sort of buckets, but there’s some flexibility with them. The first one would be that Rooted. We’d offer Rooted groups, and we see those as being kind of like a foundation point. People who are, you know, early in their journey can step in, really starting to gain a foundational understanding of who we are, what we believe, how we practice faith.

Adam Ader — We offer shared interest groups. This one is kind of our newest deal. And this is, if we have a leader that has a passion that’s not even a Bible study based content, but they want to get people in the community around that hobby, we allow them to launch a group through our finder with some tools and support from us. And, you know, we see that happen. And we’ve seen some really great fruit from it, especially around a phenomenon that I don’t even understand yet, but it’s pickleball, man.

Rich Birch — I was going to ask, are there pickleball groups?

Adam Ader — Yes, there are.

Rich Birch — Love it. So good.

Adam Ader — The first pickleball group we launched, man, we had to close that 40 registrations.

Rich Birch — Oh, sure. That’s great.

Adam Ader — Yeah, just people love the pickleball. They love it.

Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s fun. That’s fun.

Adam Ader — Yeah, so so we had those available and and we’ve seen some great stuff there and we set we try to set the understanding that you know this is about community. But we want to help every person even in those groups take some step towards Jesus, right? And that’s where [inaudible]. We offer what we would just call a general small group type, which is for leaders that are choosing their own content, but it’s still a discussion-based, Bible study-based group type.

Adam Ader — Support groups are an important leg for us as well. Groups that are just available for people who are going through difficult circumstances or common times in life. And then we also have Alpha groups available. And alpha is, ah you know, Nicky Gumbel and England’s content. And this is stuff that is, ah exists for skeptics, people with big questions about faith. It’s a great content to invite people who maybe aren’t all the way on the bus, maybe have one foot on, one foot off. And we’ve done some some creative things in the past with launching Alpha and bars and restaurants and things like that.

Rich Birch — Right.

Adam Ader — And we have those groups now available as well through our finder tool.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.

Adam Ader — So those are kind of the broad buckets. Yeah.

Rich Birch — That’s really cool. I love that. So, so we’ve got Rooted, shared interests, small, small, typical kind of small, not typical, but small group kind of content, support groups, and then Alpha – love those five.

Rich Birch — So talk to me about 10 weeks. I’m going to pretend to be the devil’s advocate. Don’t know that I should say that on a church podcast, but there I just did. 10 weeks. Like I, you, I, you, I understand the like, okay, where it can opt out before it gets weird. But what about on the other end, is 10 weeks long enough to actually accomplish the kind of, you know, community goals, faith goals. Talk talk us through that.

Adam Ader — Yeah, that’s great. And I And I do think that it’s easy to look at this and say, how can we really how can we really get into it and grow together in such a short timeframe? I was one of those people who was skeptical of that model for a while, if I’m being totally honest.

Rich Birch — Sure. Yep.

Adam Ader — I’m like ah But you know what we’ve seen is that under the right circumstances, people open up really quickly.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s true.

Adam Ader — And this is something we learned [inaudible] immediately. And I think coming out of out of COVID, out of lockdown, out of having to learn to use tools like Zoom and and Teams meetings to do school and all these things, um man, I don’t think people take as long to break walls down because there’s just a sense of maybe an unspoken desperation for a real community and real relationships out there. And we don’t think that 10 weeks is the thing that’s going to take person from A to Z…

Rich Birch — Right.

Adam Ader — …but we do believe that 10 weeks is enough time for a person to take one solid step forward in their faith.

Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.

Adam Ader — And so we feel like if we get people through 10 weeks and we can point to that and say, here’s the way that God has shaped or changed you in this time period. Oh man, that’s a win worth celebrating. And there’s something that happens, I think, when when small groups stick together too long, right? And I’m sure we’ve all seen it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true. Yep.

Adam Ader — You know, where where you end up in this awkward sort of like a double dutch routine where everybody feels like they kind of want out and they’re no longer putting the effort into it but nobody wants to be the one to say that the marriage is over, sort of. You know?

Rich Birch — Sure. Sure.

Adam Ader — And and what we see, you we were seeing a lot of these groups that would they would fizzle after a certain amount of time. And then they wouldn’t be able to make eye contact with each other in church. Right?

Rich Birch — Right. Right. Okay.

Adam Ader — And it becomes weird.

Rich Birch — Yes.

Adam Ader — And suddenly they don’t know if they’re welcome to try a new group. They don’t know if it’s you know acceptable for them to try something different or if they’ve failed somehow. Right?

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Adam Ader — So I feel like by having an open-ended long-term strategy, you’re setting a lot of your groups up to end in failure. And I believe that how you end things is almost as important as how you start them.

Rich Birch — right

Adam Ader — And while by giving groups a solid end date, you give them the chance to end well…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Adam Ader — …and also to recommit going forward. We hit the end of the 10 weeks and we’re like, man, this group, we’re we’re going places together. We love each other. like Let’s recommit to each other for the next period of time.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Adam Ader — And I think there’s power in that.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, I can, I’m a huge fan of Alpha. I, at my church, outside of my job, I volunteer as an Alpha host. And so I get, I’ve often said like, it’s amazing in 10 weeks. It’s i actually kind of like the beginning of it because it’s like, these are all people I don’t know. And I’m like, I know by the end of these 10 weeks, we’re not only going to see some great progress happen in people’s lives, but we’re also going to see, you know, they’re going to form some friendships, which is incredible. So love that.

Rich Birch — Well, let’s loop back. Great leaders outweigh content. That’s a huge saying. I think that’s true. Huge learning. So talk to us about that kind of philosophically. And I’d love to get in how do you find leaders, you know, doing these term based? I feel like, man, aren’t you on a treadmill all the time trying to get into leaders training them? Let’s talk through all that.

Adam Ader — Yeah, that’s, that’s great. You know, I, I like like every guy who goes to Bible college, I ended up playing some guitar, right? And, you know, and, ah you know, I went through a period like much to my wife’s horror, where I spent way too much time and money trying to find like the the perfect guitar and the perfect, you know, amp and pedal and all these things. And and a quote from a, from a jazz musician named Philemonius Monk stood out to me at the time he said, um you know he said, he said, gear is important. But he said you got to figure that stuff out early and fast so that you can focus on things that are more important.

Adam Ader — And for me, I think that that holds true with content, especially in group settings…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Adam Ader — …where we can sort of get so focused on finding the perfect content that is going to do you know everything that we want it to do. And that’s going to create these you know these saintly, fully-disciple, fully-on-mission people.

Rich Birch — Right.

Adam Ader — And I think we can get so bogged down in the weeds that we miss out on the stuff that is that is truly important. Because I think that, man, people are the thing that make the engine go, right?

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Adam Ader — And and if we’re if we’re helping people become people who can disciple, who can help others grow, right?

Rich Birch — Right.

Adam Ader — that’s kind of the that’s the money spot. That’s where wherere where we need to be pouring gas on the fire if we want to really make a difference. And I’ve seen it play out time and time again. You know we’ve had you know we we had a long period of being heavily invested in Rooted. And in fact, for years, it was almost our only group offering outside of the corporate…

Rich Birch — Right. Okay. Just kind of pushing everybody through Rooted. Yeah.

Adam Ader — Yeah, everybody all in, and it was that it was a beautiful season of like top-down involvement from our from my church and our leadership that ah that helped a lot of people grow. And I was one of those, again, early naysayers who was like, you you mean to tell me we’re just gonna keep shuffling out the same content over and over again, right? How’s that gonna work? And then you start to see it in action and you see it snowball and gain momentum…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Adam Ader — …and you see people who participate multiple times, and yet come out of it looking a little different each time.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Adam Ader — And then you see the leader step up and come out of it looking a little bit bit better and a little bit stronger, and the fruit is a little bit more visible each time. So that was enough to kind of break me of my my obsession and focus on content, and instead say, you know what, if we can find something that aligns with where we want to go, where we want to see people go, who we want them to become, right? We can…that’s that’s enough, right? Because if we put good leaders that we trust on guiding people through this content, we can feel very confident that good things are going to happen.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Let me challenge a little bit though. Where do you find all these great leaders? Like that that that sounds amazing. I think our, maybe it’s just me, but I’ve leaned on the crutch of content in the past because I literally have thought I probably haven’t articulated like this until you said it but I’m like, yeah, but if we just get some good content, we can kind of take a mediocre leader and make it work. But man, if I’m putting more weight on finding leaders, how are you finding them? What are you doing to to extract these leaders out of you know your community to find them?

Adam Ader — Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s really good. I think um for us, you know I think a big key has been has been clarity about what we want from a leader first and foremost.

Rich Birch — Okay, yep.

Adam Ader — And when you when you say, you know hey, I have a stack of mediocre leaders and I’m going to try to let the content be you know be a champion, I think we we have leaned hard instead into saying, what do you actually need to lead a good experience through this season? Right?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Adam Ader — And trying to set the bar for for people help them understand we don’t need you to be a preacher, a theologian, you know?

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Adam Ader — You don’t need [inaudible] certificates to lead a good group. Man, you just got to have some relational chops and care enough to go in on this. And, and then reframing group leaders as as guides, right?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Adam Ader — You know, its sometimes we’ll use the term Sherpa. But now I think according to my daughters, that means that’s a clothing item. And more than it is, they know.

Rich Birch — Nice. That’s funny.

Adam Ader — But, you know, um but if we can reframe what we actually expect from them, and sort of like remove some of the terror, being asked to lead, right?

Rich Birch — Yes. That’s good. That’s good. Yep. For sure.

Adam Ader — You know I mean, that that helps us get people on the bus. And then you know we like to say that, you know, we can take a willing heart with some relational skill and a love for Jesus, and we can we can get them to the place where they can lead a great group. Um, I think we’ve been guilty in the past of kind of saying, you know, Hey, here’s, here’s your stuff, right? Here’s, here’s, here’s your content. Here’s, here’s a, here’s a one hour training…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Adam Ader — …and, uh, good luck. You know, go go forth us and, uh, and change lives. Uh, and I think that, uh, both through the way Rooted the structured and through the lessons we’ve learned around that over the years, we’ve learned that, um, having a, having a robust investment in helping those leaders figure it out, um, walking alongside of them, not just in a and it kind of a vague address sense, but, you know, weekly, we’re connected to these leaders and um helping them troubleshoot issues.

Rich Birch — Right.

Adam Ader — In that sense, right, we are able to get leaders there. The second part of this is, and this is another lesson learned from Rooted for us. I swear, I don’t work for the Rooted network, but you’re going to hear that from me.

Rich Birch — No, it’s good. We’re fans of Rooted. We’ve had, we’ve had the Rooted guys on. We’ve, it comes up for sure. Like it’s, it’s a substrate and particularly, you know, fast growing churches, people across the country, it’s really had a huge impact. We, we love, I love the guys at Mariners and love, you know, their gift to to all of us through Rooted. It’s amazing. It’s great. So yeah, no, that’s good. What’s what’s the other lesson you’ve learned through that?

Adam Ader — Yeah, absolutely, is um that the the best recruiters of leaders are leaders for us.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Adam Ader — So yeah, and that’s that’s a Rooted foundational principle. And we’ve been able to sort of transplant that from Rooted to all of our group types.

Adam Ader — We start with that end in mind, where we’re asking leaders to from week one, be considering who’s who’s the person that can step up and do what you’re doing right now.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Adam Ader — And since most of them have come from this place of, hey, we got shoulder tapped by our leader, right.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Adam Ader — And ah they were crazy. But I took a step out and and I received what I needed to complete a good group experience. So that that has been really helpful for us. And then, you know, our group of pastors on the ground are just, man, they’re really good at casting vision…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Adam Ader — …and making making compelling asks. So that’s kind of a secret sauce for us.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Talk to me about the support and training, just a little bit more, kind of flesh that out. If if I if one of those great groups pastors came to me and said, hey, we you know, you’d be interested, we’d be interested in you leading a group, um how how do you provide some training and support for me for, you know, a term or multiple terms? What’s that look like?

Adam Ader — Yeah, for us, it really comes down to we we do have an initial ah about a 90 minute training that we’re going to take all leaders through. And that’s where they’re going to gain base level understanding of our mission, our vision, our values and our systems in groups.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Love it.

Adam Ader — You know, that’s that’s the starting point. But then from there, once we sort of would get the yes, we seal the deal, you know, we close the sale. We get them connected to do a couple of things. The first one is we get them connected to a coach. And that’s a volunteer leader for us who leads leaders. Not a crazy concept. But that’s just one more voice in their ear, kind of telling them, hey, you can do this. And I got your back, right? I’m praying [inaudible] all that good stuff.

Adam Ader — And then we’re really committed to 10 weeks of ongoing training that happens around the first 10 weeks that their group meets.

Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.

Adam Ader — And that’s been really helpful for us. we’ve We’ve just kind of developed some pieces in-house that can be delivered in anything from a 10-minute bite-size ah video message to an hour-long discussion.

Rich Birch —That’s cool.

Adam Ader — But so it’s kind of modular for us. And for groups that meet on our site locations during the short term, those ten-week terms, they’re going to receive from one of our group staff members or coaches weekly guided training through those 10 topics.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Adam Ader — And they’re just around you know basic vital things you need to do to lead a group well. Things like how to you know create community from the start, how to serve together, how to deal with conflict, how to help people grow, all these things. And for our groups that generate that need offsite in homes or locations, we have that content in video format, and it can be sort of administered by their coach or by a staff member. Hey, watch this video. Let’s have a back and forth conversation about it. Let’s see how your group is doing in this area.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. I love that. And you know, both from Alpha and from Rooted, there’s there is some power you can see in the like, hey, we’re leading this together. We’re all together. We’re kind of doing some sort of pre-huddle thing, you know, a little bit of training, a little bit of um even like, hey, I’m having the trouble with this person or I’m not sure how to draw them out. It’s amazing how that kind of on-site in-person feedback really helps leaders grow and step into you know something great. So you can see how taking similar lessons and then applying them to the rest of your group system. Yeah, I can totally see how that is ah is working for sure.

Rich Birch — Pivoting in a slightly different direction I know when you know over the years sitting in the kind of executive pastor seat, the communication seat, trying to kind of you know we got a lot of different things we need to communicate. And I’m thinking three terms a year group stuff like that’s a lot of talking about groups to get people into groups. What does that look like for you guys? How do you actually communicate like how are you you know promoting groups what does that side of it look like? And then um yeah let’s start there that’s the starting point.

Adam Ader — Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s great. And, you know, it can’t it can kind of feel like a let’s just keep shoveling coal on to the same fire…

Rich Birch — Right.

Adam Ader — …you know, over the course of the year thing.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Adam Ader — But ah but what what we found is actually kind of the regularity of it has really helped us kind of create some rhythms throughout the year that have like created a sense of expectancy in our people that have been with us for a while.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Adam Ader — And helps even with things like, hey, when we’re talking speech and calendar, promotional marketing things, the The good thing is we you know we lean hard into celebrating wins of all sizes and we lean hard into gathering stories, right? I mean, if you’ve got the numbers and you’ve got the stories…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Adam Ader — …then you know you can feel strongly like you’re winning. So if we’re if we’re gathering those things and we have a bucket of those stories, those testimonials, it makes marketing a little bit easier, right?

Adam Ader — And you know and then when we have a a marketing and communications team that has bought in with us, and when our upper leadership is also bought into the vision and the approach for groups, those conversations do become quite a bit easier, right?

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Adam Ader — Obviously we all we all have one sandbox to play in, right? And we know that you know the weekend announcement um you know is kind of the thing that we all vie for, and the the sermon topic mention is you know, even oh that whole question…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the holy grail. Yeah, for sure.

Adam Ader — Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it’s but ah thankfully, you know, it doesn’t turn into a game of who can butter up the senior pastor best to to get a toss in. When the vision is there from the top, it makes that stuff a little easier. And so when we can go back and say, hey, this is the thing that that is both moving and growing, right, and we’re seeing life change happen in it for us in our context, it’s not really too hard to get the buy-in for the mention we need.

Adam Ader — The other thing that’s been really helpful for us is that we’ve learned, because we now have multiple group types available on this group finder, that trying to create a sense of FOMO, a fear of missing out for people, is, is a real thing that can lend some, uh, that can give us some kind of heat going into a group season.

Rich Birch — Oh that’s good.

Adam Ader — Because when we can say, well, we can say, Hey, but we’ve got a group for you, no matter where you’re at on your journey, but they fill up fast and there’s not an unlimited set of spots for just the one big thing we’re all doing.

Rich Birch — Right.

Adam Ader — You need to get up, you need to get up on that group finder on January 4th, when those groups go live…

Rich Birch — Right. Yep.

Adam Ader — …if you want your “pick of a litter.” So.

Rich Birch — Right.

Adam Ader — That’s all you know that that thing I think has been able to replace some of that ah, Oh man, we have got to get the main stage announcement every week this month.

Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good.

Adam Ader — You know?

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s good. Well, and you can see the, as somebody who’s mildly interested in marketing stuff, you can see how that kind of open window, hey, enrollments open, jump in, ah you know, a couple times a year, you could build some serious insight, excitement around that. We kind of, we kind of, you know, joked about it, but loop back on a lead pastor think of a lead pastor’s listening in and talk to us, you know, what would you say to a lead pastor about the like, random throwaway comment in their message about groups, something they’re learning in a group, you know, how important is that to the, you know, the the group’s culture at at your church?

Adam Ader — Yeah, yeah, you know, for us, um what it comes down to is that’s the most trusted voice in our organization for our people, right?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Adam Ader — We know it all. And um sometimes, you know, you get the sermon, right? Okay, we’re going to do the one big, “this is about community” sermon this year.

Rich Birch — Right.

Adam Ader — You know, if it when you get that, you know, that’s gold.

Rich Birch — Right. Yep.

Adam Ader — We know that. But people are listening to that, to the things that are sort of in between the big points, right? So if, if your lead pastor can say, uh, you know, I did Rooted this fall…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Adam Ader — …you know, and in my Rooted group, this is something that happened. In my Rooted group, here’s something I learned. Or here’s a way we connected or in my prayer experience during Rooted, I got, you know, I felt God speak to me in this way. Uh, man, to me, those, those reinforced the importance of the big announcements, and they turned people’s ears. Because we have to battle constantly the idea that all of our ex-Catholics, a lot of them don’t have a strong context for just the things that your mainline denominational churches do, right?

Rich Birch — Yep.

Adam Ader — So the idea that somebody came to us from the maybe the Methodist church down the road that they probably have some idea what a small group is, we can’t assume those things.

Rich Birch — Right.

Adam Ader — We can’t take those things for granted. So to hear personal stories, the impact stories, or have stories shared of life change from those things, those are those are invaluable to us. You know? They’re they’re also not things that we can count on at every moment because, like like you alluded to earlier, and in a church that is growing rapidly and whose decision making is filtered through the lens of how are we going to reach the prodigal. We have to fit in and align with that, or you know we’re just pulling sideways energy away from the mission, and that’s something we never want to do or be.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Um, do you do in any of your, um, types of groups in that maybe it’d be in that kind of small group, the kind of more typical small group content kind of group. Do you do sermon based groups, like groups that follow along and generate questions or maybe do you guys generate questions based on, you know, what you guys are talking about on the weekends? What tell me about that.

Adam Ader — Yeah, great question. We we have a weekly sermon study guide that’s developed in-house.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Adam Ader — And goes out via just an email subscription list that can be accessed through our website.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Adam Ader — Goes out weekly service over the course of the year. And we make that available to any of our long-term group types that want to engage that way. It’s not a primary push for us, but it is available and an option.

Rich Birch — Right. Okay.

Adam Ader — Last data for us was that out of groups that are not meeting ah just in a 10-week window, those long-term groups, about 25 to 30% of them are using that weekly service study guide.

Rich Birch — Okay. Okay. That’s cool. Well, you’ve given us, then and then we’ll link to this in the show notes. You’ve given us the Parkview Group’s leader guide, ah which is a fantastic resource. I would encourage people to, you know, pick this up and, you know, take a look through it. It’s a, it’s a great resource even to inspire you, but tell us a little bit about where does this work in the training process? How are you using this tool? Talk to us a little bit about this.

Adam Ader — Yeah, that’s great. So all of our leaders, regardless of group type that they’re leading, even if it’s a group type like Alpha or Rooted that would have some of its own distinctive training elements, is still going to get walked through this handbook…

Rich Birch — Okay. Yep.

Adam Ader — …by a member of our team as their first step into groups. We feel like it’s really important for them to start with the overall mission, vision, and purposes of of our church, and then how groups fits into that. The last thing we’re trying to do is create offshoots, right…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Adam Ader — …or or little [inaudible] that meet in people’s living rooms…

Rich Birch — Yep, yes. Yes.

Adam Ader — …you know we don’t want that.

Adam Ader — But this handbook tool is meant to just give them grounding of you know what a group leader is, what we expect from them. You know the we have four traits listed in there that would a factor into what we think a successful group leader even is. And then it introduces them to our kind of our systems and processes, which you know are are essential to keep people on track with all that.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Adam Ader — So that’s really the place of the handbook.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s great. i I’d encourage people to take a look what the part what there’s a bunch of it that I loved. I love the clarity of the language is clearly you spend have spent a lot of time to hey, let’s get to something that’s like super practical. Later in the book, there’s a whole or in the booklet, there’s a whole conversation around, hey, you are not alone. And it clearly outlines what a coach is and what a coach isn’t, which I loved. I love that language, particularly. I think it frames that discussion very well. And then also, which I think is so important because I’ve seen too many group members kind of die on the vine on this issue. It’s when to refer.

Rich Birch —So like, if there are things happening in your group that are going sideways, like because these people want to help folks, they just keep taking it. And it’s like, no, there are times where we should you know refer to other people. Let’s let’s escalate this stuff. I thought, again, what ah what a helpful, even just downloading that and ripping it off, sure, give them credit. But you know using that kind of language would be helpful ah you know for you friends that are listening in. It’s a great resource. Thanks for providing that for us.

Adam Ader — Oh yeah, no problem. You know It’s like every every group leader’s worst nightmare, right? That rogue group member that you don’t know what to do with. And man, we we feel like the quicker we can put those fears at ease for people, say it’s not your job to manage people in crisis through these things. You can support, pray and love, but man, send them where they need to go. That’s important.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Great, great, great resource. Thanks for for sharing that for us. As we kind of look to the future, what are, you know, when you think about groups down the road, what are the questions you’re asking, things that are on the horizon, stuff that you’re thinking about, you know, that we’re, you know, you’re wrestling with, or maybe some stuff you’re experimenting with, that kind of thing. What what are you thinking about for the future for groups at Parkview?

Adam Ader — Yeah, you know, I mean, one of the things we’re thinking about is how to help people sort of self-select into the right group for them at any given moment.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Adam Ader — And, you know, we we want to be able to offer with each of these open groups terms, we want to be able to offer something that can catch people no matter where they’re at along their spiritual journey. Right.

Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah, that’s great.

Adam Ader — And that’s where content’s helpful. But it also means when you have more options, you have more ah more potential for confusion, right? More opportunities to sort of lose people in the weeds of what do I do?

Rich Birch — Right.

Adam Ader — And we’ve also, you know, we’ve all seen what happens when somebody gets in the wrong kind of group, right?

Rich Birch — Right, right.

Adam Ader — And but so figuring out ways to help people gain a greater understanding of what’s available. But also um we’re having conversations about what maybe a short assessment tool for people might look like through through our app or our website to help people, you know maybe if they can answer a few questions and we can spit back some group suggestions, maybe even alongside some personal like growth resources and serving suggestions. That’s that’s the kind of tool that really has my ears perked.

Rich Birch — That’s cool.

Adam Ader — Because you know we all know that there’s no one size fits all group type or even personal growth tool that’s going to be exactly what everyone needs along the way. But trying to help people find the right avenue and the right step. We want simplicity, but we also want enough flexibility that we can yeah really help people take sort of a custom-made step forward.

Rich Birch — That’s great. I love that idea of, you know, you could imagine a survey that’s five or six questions that kind of helps get a sense of that. And then it spits out a likeliness score or something like that. Here’s a couple of different types of groups that you could try. um Yeah, I could see that could be really helpful paired within your online group selector. That could be super helpful for sure for helping people self sort.

Rich Birch — Yeah the the the upside of self-sorting on a you know a menu is, wow, there’s lots of options. The downside is, wow, there’s lots of options. You know?

Adam Ader — Right!

Rich Birch — So um you know helping people with that, is you can see where that’d be helpful. Well, this has been incredible, super helpful, Adam. Anything you’d like to say kind of in as we close today’s conversation, I really appreciate you being here today.

Adam Ader — Yeah, no, no, I would just I just like to say that, you know, the the real journey for me has been people, people, people.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Adam Ader — And, you know, through my whole time in student ministry here, where I was kind of running programming and and doing all of your standard student minister stuff. Um, you know, over, over that 13 year stretch, uh, it really became about, man, all these hours spent in front of the computer, uh, planning and writing, um, are they impacting people as much as, as the leaders that we’re pouring into? And the answer came back to me no over and over again.

Adam Ader — So when I had an opportunity to, uh, to jump into groups world, it made, it made perfect sense to me. And, um, man, every, every hour spent pouring into a leader, pouring into people, man, that’s not one wasted.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Adam Ader — And that’s where I want to continue to pour my, my energy and I hope others will too.

Rich Birch — That’s so good. Well, I appreciate you being here, Adam. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?

Adam Ader — Yeah, absolutely, parkviewchurch.com is our church’s website. You can see what we’re doing, see what we’re doing to try to continue reaching people in the south suburbs, in the south side of Chicago. And um you know my contact information is also available on the website.

Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks for being here today, sir. Thank you so much.

Adam Ader — Hey, thanks Rich, appreciate it.