Have you ever wondered what it takes to lead a successful reproducing small group?  Joel Comiskey did a study to find the answer to that question.  In his book Home Cell Group Explosion, he studied over 700 small group leaders in eight of the fastest growing small group based churches.  He explored what leads some reproducing small groups to succeed and others not to succeed.  I found this study both encouraging and convicting.  Below are some of his findings.

He found that the following factors had little to do with successful reproducing small group leadership:

• The leader’s gender, social class, age, marital status, or education
• The leader’s personality type: Both introverted and extroverted leaders multiply groups.
• The leader’s spiritual gifting: Those with the gift of teaching, pastoring, mercy, leadership, evangelism equally multiply their group.

Comiskey found that the following factors were found in leaders of successful reproducing small groups:

• The leader’s personal devotional time:  Leaders who spend more time daily in personal devotion time seemed to be more successful leading groups.
• The leader’s time spent praying for their group:  Those who pray daily for group members are most likely to reproduce groups.
• The leader spending time with God to prepare for a group meeting:  Spending time with God preparing the heart for a group meeting is more important than preparing the lesson.
• Setting goals for reproducing: The leader who set goals that the members of the group remember has a significantly greater chance of multiplying his or her group.
• Knowing your group multiplication date: Group leaders who set specific goals for reproducing, multiply their group more often that goal-less leaders.
• Training: Leaders who feel better equipped multiply their group more rapidly.  However, training was shown to be less important as the leader’s prayer life and goal orientation.
• How often the group leader contacts new people: Group leaders who contact more new people per month have a greater chance of multiplying the group.
• Exhortation in groups to invite friends: Leaders who weekly encourage members to invite guests doubles their capacity to multiply their groups.
• Number of visitors to group: There is a direct relationship between the number of visitors in the group and the number of times a leader multiplies the group.
• Outside meetings: Groups that meet more frequently outside of the regular small group gathering—just for fun—were more likely to reproduce than those that didn’t.
• Building a team: Those leaders who build a leadership team double their capacity to multiply a group.