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SEA Groups

Building Excellence in ChristCare Groups

"Every time I go to a SEA Group meeting, I come back with ideas and renewed energy, renewed focus," said Karen McVay, ChristCare Equipper and Group Leader at Spanish Fort United Methodist Church, Spanish Fort, Alabama. "We help each other. Sometimes I'll feel as if I'm in a rut, that my ChristCare Group has been doing the same things forever, and then all of a sudden after a SEA Group meeting I'll have eight new ideas to try."

A SEA Group¹ is made up of six or so ChristCare Group Leaders who meet for 90 minutes twice monthly to provide support, encouragement, and accountability for one another. A ChristCare Equipper facilitates as group leaders tell about what's been happening in their ChristCare Groups and offer insights and ideas to help their fellow leaders each make his or her group the best it can be. SEA Group meetings also keep ChristCare Groups on track with the congregation's ministry vision and mission.

Keeping ChristCare Groups Focused

For Karen, accountability is one of the SEA Group's most valuable assets.

"Having to fill out that check-in form every few weeks helps me ask myself, 'Are we still working toward our mission? Is Biblical Equipping as good as it can be? How could it be better? How well are we building community?' It's good for us to assess our own groups and then get feedback from other ChristCare Group Leaders as well.

"Our Equippers are always very encouraging and supportive, and they're always available to us anytime we need to call them," Karen said. "They're very good at helping us see when we aren't as focused on ministry goals as we need to be."

Karen's a strong believer in doing SEA Groups by the book. "To have that consistency, that accountability and support for all the group's activities, you need to do SEA Groups the way Stephen Ministries designed them.

"I led a small group at a different church where we didn't have any kind of accountability," Karen said. "My group was wonderful--missional and Christ-centered--for about a year, but eventually it drifted into just a social group. The other groups at the church went astray too. If you don't have SEA Groups, it's easy to lose focus. SEA Groups help you keep all your group's activities focused on Christ."

A Vision for SEA Groups

Effective SEA Groups help ChristCare Groups flourish. SEA Groups remain strong when Equippers help group leaders understand the value of peer feedback, and when they emphasize that SEA Group meetings aren't optional--they expect every ChristCare Group Leader to attend and participate.

"Our SEA Groups have good attendance," Karen said. "From the start our Equippers stressed the importance of participation in SEA Group meetings. If we miss a meeting, we go such a long time without that direction, that focus, that reassessment. Every now and then our Equippers give us a gentle reminder about attendance. One Equipper does something as simple as sending us an e-mail a week before the meeting reminding us to fill out our forms and bring them to the meeting."

The purpose of SEA Groups is to help ChristCare Group Leaders lead the highest-quality, most God-honoring ChristCare Groups possible.

"My SEA Group always provides wonderful feedback," Karen said. "When I hear people tell how a group went awry, I always wonder, 'Where was their SEA Group in all of that?' SEA Groups spot problems early and solve them before they become serious."

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1 The name SEA Group is an acronym that describes what happens in this peer supervision meeting: Support, Encouragement, and Accountability.