Ultimately, small group leaders build relationships. While teachers communicate, group leaders create the kind of environment where relationships happen. These principles are core to a small group leader’s responsibilities:
- Building relationships with kids, with their parents, and encouraging kids to build relationships with each other and with their parents.
- Facilitating dialogue about faith and life.
- Answering questions or helping the group to answer their own questions.
- Helping children and students apply the bottom lines to their lives.
- Tracking with kids beyond Sunday through social networking, text messages, phone calls, and group gatherings that happen at other times during the week. The older the group, the more important this becomes.
- Praying for the group, for the families in the group, and encouraging the group to pray for one another.
- Encouraging and challenging kids to connect with God on their own at home.