You want to create a strong fellowship with deep relationships that are transparent and authentic. To make this happen you need to meet regularly. Sometimes people don’t show up to a scheduled small group. When people miss several small groups their relationship isn’t as strong with others in the small group and it can start to make them feel less included leading to transparency and contribution issues. In addition, the other people showing up regularly might start to feel hesitant to share things in front of them because they too don’t feel as safe and trusted around them. You’re going to need to talk to them about their attendance. Are you confident which meetings they missed?

Should you keep small group attendance? Yes, keep attendance so that you can keep people accountable for their commitment. Even though this can at first feel awkward and adversarial, it shows that attendance is important. Having a reference supports your approaching them if need be.

It also helps you as a leader predetermine how many meetings a small group member can miss before you approach them and ask them if everything is alright. It also helps you keep a standard across the group. Without attendance, you risk offending someone by talking to them about their attendance. The worse thing that can happen is talking with someone about them missing small group only to discover there are others in the group that have missed more meeting but have not been talked with.

Leaders push into the uncomfortable

You need to small group members that miss small group regularly. At the beginning of the small group season, you should have prepared and reviewed something called a small ground covenant.

This covenant was an agreement between members on their commitment to this group. Apart of that covenant should have been to make the small group a priority by attending regularly. With the exception of sickness and emergencies, they are expected to show up.

If this covenant, or agreement between members, is being broken you, as a leader, need to push into this and bring up the subject. This is best done in person outside of small group so that you can discuss it privately so that not to embarrass or shame them in front of everyone. Your goal in talking with them is about their attendance has three goals:

1. Discover if there is something wrong with them

Leading an uncomfortable discussion with a small group member about their missing group can quickly be overcome with an attitude of sincerely caring about them. The best way to do this is leading the conversation with, ‘You’ve been missing Small Group lately and I wanted to make sure everything is alright. Is there anything going on you can share with me?” This gentle approach has the ability to disarm the member with defensiveness by allowing them to talk about themselves and their life and situation. Talking about ourselves makes us feel closer to others. They will feel closer to you discussing their life situation and appreciate you gave them the opportunity to share about their own lives, instead of approaching topic as them breaking the rules.

2. Discover if something is wrong with you, or Small Group

An often overlooked issue with people missing small group is that the member has a perceived problem with the group. Nothing is wrong in the members’ personal life, but they are struggling with something inside of small group. This could be a relationship with another person, the material, or your leadership style. Approach this tactically by asking pinpointed questions. General questions will usually not prompt the member to share the issue because they are scared of conflict and it’s much easier to ignore the issue directly and instead skip attendance once in a while. With a humble and prayerful attitude ask them if there anything you’ve done to hurt or offend them. Then be quiet an listen. If this is not the issue move on to the next question, “How do you feel about the material we are reviewing in Small Group?” Again, you’re using an open-ended question that cannot be answered by a yes or no. Hopefully, this will give them the freedom to give you an honest answer. If this is not at the root of the issue move on and ask them if there feel any conflict with any of the other group members.

This can be a very delicate and difficult issue to tackle. Dealing with the conflict between small group members is outside the scope of this article. But if this is the issue, be very careful not to be judgemental of either party or start picking sides. Allow the person to share and try to focus on how the member feels. Try to prevent gossip or slander. Depending on your leadership ability and comfort level you may decide to sit down with both parties and pray and then talk it over with the goal of unity. Or you might escalate something like this to leadership for coaching and support.

3. Emphasize the importance of Small Group

Lastly, no matter what if you’ve identified the root of the issue or not, you should emphasize the importance of attending small group. You want to highlight two main reasons:

1. For them to grow in greater fellowship requires commitment and time. There is a wonderful fruit that comes as a result of attending small group and meeting with fellowship regularly. It will cost you something, whether it be other commitments, priorities, or relaxation, it will cost you. But your trading that in for a group of committed friends to encourage you and keep you accountable.


2. For others to grow in greater fellowship requires they to attend. Without them showing up regularly, people won’t trust them as much. As a consequence people will be more hesitant to share and be transparent about their life, struggles, and what God is doing. One person not attending small group impacts the whole group.

Keep this conversation short and to the point. No one wants to be talked to death about it. Lastly, end the conversation by encouraging them. Tell them something specific you appreciate about them and how they make a difference in small group. They matter, make them know that.


Small Group Attendance Sheet
Here is a template I created that you can download and use for your small group attendance. I like keeping things simple, and this template attempts to do that. With a single sheet, you should be able to keep attendance for the full small group season.

Small Group Attendance Sheet – FREE Download

How to Communicate Missing Small Group

Enable and communicate the best way for members to communicate to you when they can’t make it to the small group. I personally like to ask them to call. Calling is more difficult for most people than texting.

Ways to Improve Small Group Attendance

Besides reinforcing the covenant and the commitment to attend the small group regularly, here are a couple of my favorite ways to improve small group attendance:

1. Hosting Sign-UP
If someone is hosting a small group they are MUCH less likely to cancel.

2. Snack Sign-Up
When someone feels like people are depending on them, they tend to show up more. Having people commit to bringing a snack is one great way of doing that. The great thing about this is the more people that are in your small group, the more snacks you might want to have. In turn, more people need to sign up for bringing a snack. Historically something that’s worked well is someone brings something sweet, and someone brings something salty.

3. Testimony
Asking people to share the testimony not only is a great way to improve attendance, but it is a catalyst in growing closer together. It’s hard not to feel closer to someone after they’ve shared their story of how they realized they were a sinner and came to Christ.

FAQs

Should I keep attendance on individuals, or should I put couples together?

It’s ideal to keep individual attendance so that you can to the person, not the couple, when an issue comes up. Most of the time it’s an individual problem, and you’ll want to treat it as one.

How should I treat people who are just late to small group?

If it happens once in a while, don’t mentoin it. If it becomes an ongoing issue appraoch the peron in private and just ask how they are doing. If everything seems alright, then ask them if it’s hard for them to get to small group on time. Try to come along side them and understand. Tell them you care.

What if someone needs to leave early?

Try to provide them with expectations to tell you ahead of time so that you can communicate to the whole group early on that they will be leaving early. But it’s really not a big deal, things come up. Celebrate they came even though they had a commitment that could have caused them to cancel altogether.