The Story Never Told: Small Group Strategies

By Floyd Archuleta

Are you ready to discover how you can have a thriving Small Group Ministry?

The Story Never Told is a must for every small group ministry library, along with the key principles that explain the practical steps that will make your small group ministry thrive.

This book is not based on conjecture but on real-life accounts, ap

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Apr 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647739645

Book preview

The Story

Never

Told

(Small Group Strategies)

Finally, a book on Small Groups

made easy and simple.

Copyright © 2021 by Floyd Archuleta

Small Group Strategies: A Book on Small Groups Made Easy and Simple

Trilogy Christian Publishers A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive Tustin, CA 92780

All scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New King James Version. Public domain.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without written permission from the author. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

Rights Department, 2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, CA 92780.

Trilogy Christian Publishing/TBN and colophon are trademarks of Trinity Broadcasting Network.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Trilogy Christian Publishing.

Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-64773-963-8

E-ISBN: 978-1-64773-964-5

DEDICATION

This story (Book) is dedicated to the Untold Stories of The Faithful men and women who served in "The Story Never Told." They represent thousands of untold stories impacted by the gospel through a small group ministry called Family Fellowship.

None of these men and women carried recognized positions or titles in the church before their involvement in Family Fellowship. They all began as hosts, assistants, or leaders and became mighty men and women in the Kingdom and their churches, where they still serve today. You will read capsules of their stories about how both they were impacted upon and impacted others, which counted them faithful to propel them to where they are today.

Lastly, I want to dedicate this to one of those faithful women who became my wife and life partner. Her strength and encouragement exemplified by her steadfast walk with our Lord and Savior and her unending words of belief in me have been my perseverance.

FOREWORD

I remember well my discussion back in the mid-eighties with Pastor Floyd. He challenged my thinking and, as a result, my paradigm, which changed our church’s direction and destiny. What changed? We decided we would not be building centricity, but people centricity, and thank God we chose to be people-centered.

Because of Floyd’s efforts, strategies, implementations, and unwavering dedication, our church became one of the pioneers in small groups. With over 300 groups and thousands attending them, we saw our members becoming engaged, excited, dedicated, discipled, and helping to pastor the church through relationships while evangelizing the lost!

As a result, the late Dr. Ed Cole¹, author of Maximized Manhood, saw what we were doing and dedicated a full chapter to us in his book called Real Man², the chapter entitled Employed for Life.

I highly recommend every pastor to take advantage of the services that Floyd can bring to your church. As an expert in small groups, Floyd has proven himself a strategist who can evaluate and assist you in developing meaningful small groups that will add to your church’s growth, vision, and evangelism.

The late Dr. Lester Sumrall told me years ago that the higher number of active, involved church members will always correlate to the church’s growth; in short, pastored people will pastor people! And through small groups correctly done, you will see this happen. Don’t hesitate to take advantage of the timeless principles this book brings out and the services that Floyd Archuleta can bring.

Dr. Robert W. Carman. DD

President, Victory World Missions

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1 Dr. Edwin Louis Cole, the founder of the Christian Men’s Network, an American religious organization devoted to helping Christian men and fathers.

2 Real Man, Real manhood and Christlikeness are synonymous. —Edwin Louis Cole. ISBN-13:9781641231275/Publisher:Whitaker House/Publication date:04/02/2019

PREFACE

After years of attending small groups, I would always find myself comparing the groups I attended with what I knew could be. Therefore, I decided to tell this story by writing this book. It is not just another book on small groups, but it’s an actual story of what we lived and experienced with dozens of stories from the faithful men and women who were eyewitnesses to what they both saw and experienced. In this book, you’ll learn key points, principles that are both timeless and universal. Therefore, you can apply these timeless, universal principles to wherever you live and have a successful, vibrant, and thriving small group network.

My initial prayer for this book is to find an opening into every reader’s heart and mind, plant a new perspective on small groups, and follow the story’s narrative. I have attempted to communicate this summary of stories and key points to complete the narrative, but no doubt have left out many details that may prove essential to implementation. That is why we have set up a website with our services, where you may contact us at www.thestorynevertold.org.

UNTOLD STORIES

OF THE FAITHFUL

The Untold Stories of The Faithful are real-life stories of the men and women who served in "The Story Never Told." They represent thousands of untold stories impacted by the gospel through a small group ministry called Family Fellowship.

Many of these people and other leaders that were part of this network started as assistants, hosts, or leaders. None of them carried recognized positions or titles in the church. They were lay leaders, deacons, elders, and pastors at the network church Victory Love Fellowship, which eventually became Legacy Church or other churches. Others went from here to serve in or pastor their churches.

CARL TOTI

Back in the early 1990s, I was privileged to be part of a small group movement in the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was attending a church where Pastor Floyd Archuleta was the small group pastor. Floyd devised a strategy that launched our small groups’ ministry, which raised hundreds of leaders and impacted our community with many salvations. At one point, our small groups’ ministry saw in attendance each week more people than those attending our weekend services, approximately 2300 individuals.

I was one of those leaders who witnessed Floyd’s exemplary and dynamic leadership, whose structure and systems allowed for hundreds of leaders recruited and a successful small group ministry. The lessons I learned and experience I gained during those formidable years in my development as a Christian and young leader have served me well in the last eighteen years of being a senior pastor of a large growing congregation in Lubbock, Texas.

Bio: Carl Toti is the senior pastor of Trinity Church in Lubbock, TX. This several thousand-member church has a private Christian School K-12, a citywide mobile outreach program called Love Lubbock, and a women’s clinic called Heartline that provides free ultrasounds and compassionate advice to women who find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy. Every Heartline sees up to thirty life decisions.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Over thirty years ago, when we started our first small group ministry, there were not too many of us doing them successfully. There was a big craze for cell groups that became almost faddish. Dr. Paul Yonggi Cho³ from Seoul, South Korea, pastor of the world’s largest church, had over 80,000 Cell Groups and released his book Successful Home Cell Groups.⁴

Please bear in mind these were not church members but actual home cell groups. So automatically, the American Church was infatuated with cell groups, and many churches were trying to tap into the secret of the world’s largest church. It was not long before the American churches found that creating a successful small group network was more challenging than anticipated. So, most churches gave up and relegated the idea of a small group network in America to a cultural thing that could work in South Korea but not here.

Many other churches were abandoning ship, but we kept working and tweaking, working and tweaking our system until we had a successful model that worked. In those days, we had one of the most successful and largest ongoing small group systems in America, recognized by Cell Group magazine⁵, an internationally recognized magazine. I know it was not long before our ministry; there were small group ministries larger than ours. Two churches in Texas had systems double our size, but they eventually folded because of the wrong foundations and motives. We had a healthy system with hundreds of groups and