Matt Tullos

Whenever your family group mees you are thrust into worship leadership whether you know it or not. But you’ll be gratified and amazed by the ease and simlicity of worship leadership if you’ll take to heart these five tips.


Make it interactive and spontaneous. Worship in a small group isn’t as much about presentation as it is about facilitation. Give people an opportunity to share what God is doing in their lives. Be spontaneous. If someone expresses a burden or a need, be quick lead the group to pray for that specific need at that very moment. Remember that you aren’t restricted by an order of worship.

Don’t get bogged down into meaningless chatter. It’s easy when facilitating interactive, spontaneous worship to simply let a meeting get away from the intended purpose always be ready to refocus the group. You can do this simply by letting people understand what the specific purpose of that time is.

Don’t preach. Some find it hard to separate worship and preaching. Preaching is indeed a part of worship on Sundays and Wednesday night but the genius of the deacons family groups is that people have a chance to be casual and interactive. So give yourself a break, spend the time you’d normally spend preparing a Bible study, sermon or lesson in “prayer-paration”!


Be kid-friendly. This is a chance for kids to see that church isn’t a church-building only operation. Involve kids and make allowances for their attention span and their own spiritual needs. You might also want to divide the family group meeting into two parts: An intergenerational worship time and then a time for the kids to go outside and play together while the adults have time to share. Sometimes your group might include a college or older high school student that would be willing to help supervise the younger kids for 20 minutes or so.

Make it visual. Find a way to illustrate, teach and inspire using something visual. This might be a simple Sunday school teaching picture, an aquarium or an oil funnel. Concrete visual illustrations of spiritual concepts are a proven success. Take it from our master teacher: Jesus who used birds, vines, seeds, and fish!