All-in question

OK, it’s Friday, and your day/week is wrapping up, and you’re sitting there without a whole lot to do right?

I have a question for you, and I need an “all-in” type of participation here. Your lurkers and RSS readers need to come on over and chime in on this one. This is the beginning of something you might have the opportunity to shape and mold over time. Here’s the deal.

I want to start up a small group in my church, and I’m searching for some best practices. Let me give you a little background first, then tell you what I’m looking for.

Our church is in a rural area that is growing into a suburb of the DFW metro area. Because of this, we have a sometimes weird mix of outlooks and attitudes. Everything from the local farmer to the young upwardly mobile suburbanite.
Our “main” small group structure at this time is the typical Baptist Sunday School program. For lots of reasons, I don’t want anything I do through a small group to detract from Sunday School. If anything, I want it to be something that ultimately benefits not only SS but the entire church body.
There is some resistance to small groups, specifically because of fear of detracting from SS. The thought from some is that small group members might say to themselves “I’ve got my small group Bible study, why should I bother going to SS?” I think that’s a valid question, and am interested on ways to best address the issue.
Small groups have not really been offered as a “non-official” thing before. Meaning, that anytime we’ve had other small group type things going on, they are always a Sunday night/Wednesday night meet at the church building type of affair. Starting a small group that meets in my home on a regular or semi-regular basis would be a brand new animal to most folks here.

So, with that background information, let me give you what I’m thinking about and looking for in terms of input.

Our church body, for the most part, is really not involved in one another’s lives beyond the Sunday AM experience except for close intimate friendships and family members. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but it is the general order of things.
Sunday School attendance and participation, in terms of percentage, gets worse the younger the generation. In the 20 to 25 year old category, SS attendance is abysmal. Small groups MIGHT be the answer to getting more involvement from this age group, but again it needs to be done in conjunction with growing the SS class.
I’ve been a part of different small groups in the past, and have even started some up. I don’t want to just do what’s been done before just because that all I know. Those of you who’ve participated in small groups, especially those who have help form such groups, I need you to chime in with your ideas. Tell me what worked and didn’t work for you and your group. Talk about everything from locations, to bible study, to food choices, to meeting frequency, to prayer, to sharing of burdens and confession. I want to know it all.
How did you start up your group? Was it by general invitation to just see who would show up? Did you invite a target audience? How did you grow your group? How were new people integrated into the group?

I’m starting this thing from the ground up, so I don’t even have any kind of team or core group in place yet. As this begins to form and begin its journey, I’ll be posting regular updates kind of like I do for the worship confessional. I really do want everyone’s insight and thoughts on this as it moves forward. I’m targeting the launch of this group to be just after the New Year.

I really feel that intimate relationships are a real missing element in our local body. There are some relationship atrocities that have hit us lately that would have been less likely to happen if the people involved had been part of a small group that had some voluntary accountability and burden sharing.

Small groups also seem to fill a niche in the lives of the younger generations where the traditional church structure fails. I see so many people in our community who are moving in and don’t have any kind of connection with church. A small group structure might just be the bridge to reaching out to some of those families while building and discipling our core at the same time.

Please don’t leave me hanging here readers. I’m looking forward to your thoughts and insights. Help me build a new ministry from the group up without reinventing it all.

Clarification: Based on some of the comments so far, let me clarify what this endeavor is going to look like. We are not, as a church, launching a church-wide small group effort. It is my hope that this ministry will catch fire across the congregation and become wide spread, but at the moment I’m going it alone on this because of the reasons stated above.

This is part of why I’m being so careful and asking for advice and insight. I don’t want to start up a small cell group within the church that becomes a church all its own in competition with the existing ministries. My goal is to grow those people who will become a part of it so that we will better serve our Lord, our church, and our community. If it detracts from rather than builds the church body, I don’t want to do it.