Pinellas Park Wesleyan Church, Pinellas Park, Florida

4400-70th Ave. N., Pinellas Park, FL 34665, (813) 526–3674

Senior Pastor: Larry Freeman

The Value of Small Groups in Our Church: "One of my philosophies of ministry is that leadership should be in the hands of a few and ministry should be in the hands of many. And one of the best ways I know to get my people involved in ministry with one another is through small groups . . . to help give people ministry ownership. This is something I wish I had learned long ago.

"Furthermore, I believe that the church is not any lager than its small groups. Most people do not get close to more than twenty people. The small group concept literally makes a large church small, personal, and warm. Small groups also give us the opportunity to have a degree of accountability within the body . . . to make sure everyone knows somebody. For the first twelve years of my ministry I didn't understand this, but I'm now convinced that a church cannot be a close, caring community without small groups."

• Sunday worship attendance: 1,200

• Church growth: "I became the pastor here in 1979. The church attendance had been running at about fifty people for thirty-one years. We've been experiencing a growth curve ever since."

• People involved in small groups: Approximately 600

• Small group leadership: "We have divided our city into fifty-four districts, so our goal is to develop and train fifty-four parish [district] pastors. We began with four. Then each of them trained an assistant who eventually began his or her own small group, and so on. We now have twenty-eight active parish pastors. We are not trying to force this to happen. We are simply developing these leaders as God raises them up."

• Names for small groups: "We currently have three different kinds of small groups: The Navigatorss' 2:7 Series, Martha Ministries, and Parish Groups. We are in the process of consolidating our small group ministry under our parish pastors, so that most people will meet with others from their area of the city."

• Study materials used: "Parish groups use a study based on my Sunday sermon. At the bottom of each message outline, I put three applicable questions. I also ask them, ‘How can you apply this message in your daily life? Is there sound scriptural support for this message?' That becomes the study focus."

• Small group evangelism: "Our parish pastors assign outreach and visitation to their group members. They focus primarily on the people who live within their geographic area.

Mistakes We've Made: "First, I regret that I waited so long to begin developing and training our parish pastors. In the early stages of my pastorate here, I knew that I would eventually need around fifty-four parish pastors to cover the geographic sections of our city. But I was thinking that I would wait until our church was large enough to have fifty-four pastors—then we would just start the plan all at once. Looking back, I now realize that I should have started developing parish pastors even when our church had only forty-one people. My advice to others is, don't wait until all the pieces are together to develop and train leaders. Take it one step at a time. Start with what you have and grow from there.

"Second, we used to go out and recruit small group leaders based on what we saw as their ability. We were overlooking people who seemed less capable on the surface, but who really had a heart for the ministry. In fact, I'm finding that the people who are most talented are not making the best leaders. And the worst people we could put into small group leadership are the pastors and Sunday school teachers. Their leadership style tends to stifle the rest of the group, resulting in very little participation or group ownership. The best small group leaders are those who have had a genuine conversion, have been involved in a discipleship class, and who don't think they have all the answers—but are looking for them."