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Writing a Good Welcome Email
When newcomers join a small group, a positive first impression is critical in helping them to feel welcome and included. One of the ways we can help this be a positive process is by sending a welcome email. While it is very important for you to clearly communicate...
Small Groups With Missionaries
As Hope Community Church small group leaders we see our group members experience many major life events and changes. This document contains helpful tips for leading someone called to overseas missions. Please note a few things before reading this document. First,...
G.U.P.A – A Model for Gospel Transformation
Small Group Open Chair Model
Whenever possible and healthy for the group, we encourage groups to maintain an “open chair.” This means that the group fosters an attitude of openness to newcomers and maintains an environment that would make a newcomer feel welcome. The group does not need to be...
Shepherd Leadership
What is a Shepherd Leader? At Hope Community Church we place a high value on spiritual leadership. As we consider who would make an excellent small group leader we think less about conventional leadership skills and more about ‘shepherd leadership’. The following...
Michael Atella
Transcript Growing up overseas as a missionary kid who was adopted actually that answer is complicated. My, my culture, I would say, never really aligned with any, and it's just kind of amalgamation and meshing of different cultures that I've experienced along the...
Swagata Bergquist
Transcript One practice that I was exposed to growing up was, regardless of what was happening in people's life, they would drop whatever they were doing to be fully present with someone else. Like our neighbors attending to our needs when my dad spent months out of...
Jairus Justus
Transcript I'd say one significant piece of my cultural background is probably how I grew up. In an Indian family, we always treat everyone as family. So whether that was one of my parents friends, one of their friend's children, whether that was actual relations. To...
Samantha Isomura
Transcript Growing up, my parents really emphasized the importance of language in our home. They signed my sisters and I up for Chinese school on Saturdays, and always tried to nurture the growth of the language in our home. We certainly resisted this as we were going...
What is Joy?
What is joy? In a sentence, joy is self-forgetful delight based on Reality. In this video, we unpack this definition and see how joy is ultimately not earned but given to us in Jesus.
The Gospel Turn in Small Groups
We can find ourselves hearing things and believing those things which can change our behaviors or habits. These are what we often talk about in our small groups. "I wish I could stop doing this" "I want to be more like this" "I think God is asking me to take this...
Gospel Accountability
Last fall our small group leaders zero’d in on how the gospel is the center of how we think about accountability. This is true for us as a church, but particularly within our small groups. For those unfamiliar, our small groups are built on three ideals –...