Community

Community
Author: Brad House
Publisher: Crossway
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2011-09-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1433523175

Community within the church today is hemorrhaging. Attention spans are dwindling, noise levels are increasing, and we can't seem to find time for real relationships. The answer to such social fragmentation can be found in small groups, and yet the majority of small groups—at least in the traditional sense—are often not the intentional, transformational community we really want and need. Somehow we need to get our groups off life support and into authentic community. Pastor Brad House helps us to re-imagine what gospel-centered community looks like and shares from his experience leading and reproducing healthy small groups. With wisdom and candor, House challenges us to think carefully about our own groups and to take steps toward cultivating communities that are able to glorify Jesus, bless one another, and participate in the mission of God.

Life-Giving Groups: "how-To" Grow Healthy, Multiplying Community Groups

Life-Giving Groups:
Author: Jeremy Linneman
Publisher: Sojourn Network
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2018-03-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781732055216

After many years of leading small groups and coaching hundreds of small group leaders, pastor and writer Jeremy Linneman has come to a bold conviction: Community groups are the best place for us - as relational beings - to become mature followers of Christ. This short book seeks to answer two questions: How can our community groups cultivate mature disciples of Christ? And how can our groups grow and multiply to sustain a healthy church? Whether you are new to community groups or tired from years of challenging ministry, Life-Giving Groups is a fresh, practical invitation to life together in Christ. JEREMY LINNEMAN is the lead pastor of Trinity Community Church in Columbia, Missouri. Prior to planting Trinity, he spent seven years as a community pastor of Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author of many articles and several short books and coaches leaders around the country. He and his wife, Jessie, have been married for 12 years and have three sons. Connect with him at jslinneman.com.

Leading Small Groups That Thrive

Leading Small Groups That Thrive
Author: Ryan T. Hartwig
Publisher: Zondervan
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2020-08-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0310106710

Nearly every church is trying to help their congregants build relationships with others, grow as disciples, and/or engage in meaningful service through small groups. Many have argued that these small groups are the preferred vehicle for relationship building, disciple making, and membership assimilation in the local church, especially in large, multisite churches. Leading Small Groups That Thrive shows small group leaders, step by step, how to plan for, launch, build, sustain, and multiply highly effective, transformational, healthy small group experiences where people grow spiritually together. Based on a large-scale research study of small group pastors, leaders, and members, Leading Small Groups That Thrive gives church leaders both what they want--practical, straightforward, actual small group member voices and experiences, and compelling guidance on how to build transformational groups complemented with real-life examples and data of successful small groups--and what they need--substantial, challenging insights and a data-driven model grounded in the latest research on church small groups.

Leading Small Groups

Leading Small Groups
Author: Chris Surratt
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2019-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1535934700

Leading a small group can literally change the world. We have been commissioned to make disciples who make disciples, and Jesus showed us that the best way to carry that out is through small groups of believers. Just like the first-century church, small groups form the foundation to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. Chris Surratt, Discipleship and Small Groups Specialist for Lifeway Christian Resources, and author of Small Groups for the Rest of Us, wants to help you get from here to there. Regardless of whether you have never lead a small group or have been leading one for years, all of us want to know how to create environments where spiritual growth takes place and communities are changed. Leading Small Groups walks the reader through the stages of gathering, launching, leading, and multiplying a gospel-centered small group. There are also follow-up questions for discussion and reflection at the end of each section, and practical resources that can be implemented immediately by the small group leader. Jesus left his followers with a task—the Great Commission. This book will help small group leaders and churches in their obedience to this task.

Gospel Community

Gospel Community
Author: Neal Ledbetter
Publisher: WestBow Press
Total Pages: 104
Release: 2023-06-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

Do you long for genuine relationships where you can know others and be known by them? Do you desire more than just gathering in the same space with others without any real connection? Yet, simultaneously, do you find yourself occasionally pushing back when someone gets too close? Why do you think you have that longing, and why do you think deep-abiding relationships are such a struggle to find and maintain? In this book, Pastor Neal Ledbetter makes the case that the gospel of Jesus Christ gives us answers. In the gospel, we are offered the endless treasure of Jesus and the never-ending, overflowing supply of treasures found in him. One of the rare jewels that comes with a new identity in Christ is a new gospel community, kingdom-family, and people to which we belong and in which we can know and be known. Paul calls it our inheritance in the saints (Eph 1:18), our citizenship with the saints, and our membership among the household of God (Eph 2:19–22). This new gospel community and kingdom-family is simply too important and too wonderful a treasure to ignore, avoid, or treat as unnecessary, unimportant, or secondary to our lives. This study will explore the extraordinary gift we have been given in gospel community. We’ll see how the gospel transforms us individually and simultaneously forms us into a new people. We’ll survey how we are intended to live together and the only sustaining motive and power for doing so. And finally, we’ll examine several characteristics necessary to experience the rare jewel of gospel community.

Finding the Flow

Finding the Flow
Author: Tara Miller
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2010-05-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1458755339

This is one of the most practical books available regarding how to develop transformational leaders who can in turn lead transformational groups. What sets their work apart from all the other small group books out there is their focus on the leader of the group. I've seen Jenn and Tara at work firsthand in the church where I pastor, and they've taken the small group ministry to a new level of effectiveness.''

The People of God

The People of God
Author: Trevor Joy
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2014-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1433683717

The most powerful asset a church has is it’s people. People of God is a challenge to the men and women of the church. It is a challenge to believe what God says about his people still applies to the church today. It is a challenge not to settle for church as just a program. It is a challenge to return the ministry of God to the people of God. People of God lays out the theology and practice of community. Authors Spence Shelton and Trevor Joy seek to show why community is central to the Christian life, and how to practice it in the 21st century church. Whether you are a pastor or a volunteer leader, People of God aims to equip and encourage congregations as they build a culture of discipleship in the life of their church. The authors draw on experiences and learnings from their time leading two of the fastest growing congregations in America to give you principles that can apply in a church of 50 or 15,000.

The Unstuck Church

The Unstuck Church
Author: Tony Morgan
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2017-05-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0718094476

Acclaimed church leader, blogger, founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan unpacks the lifecycle of a typical church, identifies characteristics of each phase, and provides practical next steps a church can take to move towards sustained health. Think about your church for a moment. Is it growing? Is it diminishing? Is it somewhere in between? Acclaimed church leader, blogger, and founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan has identified the seven stages of a church's lifecycle that range from the hopeful and optimistic days of launch, to the stagnating last stages of life support. Regardless of the stage in which you find your church, it carries with it the world's greatest mission—to "go and make disciples of all the nations . . ." With eternity at stake the Church should be doing most everything within its power to see lives changed forever. The Church should strive for the pinnacle of the lifecycle, where they are continually making new disciples and experiencing what Morgan refers to as "sustained health." In The Unstuck Church, Morgan unpacks each phase of the church lifecycle, and offers specific and strategic next steps the church leader can take to find it's way to sustained health . . . and finally become unstuck. The Unstuck Church is a call for honest an assessment of where your church sits on the lifecycle, and a challenge to move beyond it.

Why Small Groups?

Why Small Groups?
Author: C. J. Mahaney
Publisher: Sovereign Grace Ministries
Total Pages: 130
Release: 1996
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9781881039068

Do you want to get on the fast track to Christian maturity? Small groups provide the ideal context for working out our salvation together. Whether you attend a small group or lead one, this book will raise your vision and inspire you to excel in the areas of service to which God has called you. And if you don't attend a small group? All the more reason you may want to read Why Small Groups? and let it change your life. The authors are all pastors from various Sovereign Grace Ministries churches.

Biblical Foundations for the Cell-Based Church

Biblical Foundations for the Cell-Based Church
Author: Joel Comiskey
Publisher: Joel Comiskey
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2012-11-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0984311033

Why cell church? Is it because David Cho's church, the largest church in the history of Christianity, is a cell church? Is it because someone said the number twelve will bring blessings and growth? Is it because cell church is the strategy that many "great" churches are using? Ralph Neighbour repeatedly says, "Theology must breed methodology." This book sets forth the biblical theology for cell based ministry. Without biblical truth, we don't have a firm under-pinning upon which we can hang our ministry and philosophy. On the other hand, we can plod through most anything when we know that God is stirring us to behave biblically. Cell church is not the latest, greatest church growth strategy. If it were, it would simply be a passing fad until the next hotter, more relevant strategy comes along. In fact, in many places around the world, cell church transforms the church through a purification process. Church growth is slow but cell church helps Christ's church go deeper. Joel Comiskey has been studying the cell church movement since 1991 and has discovered that the cell church strategy doesn't produce rapid growth in itself. God reserves growth for himself. He wants to receive the glory for all church growth. The first section of this book covers the Trinity, the model for all small group community. The good news is that the Trinity works within believers to mold and shape them into his image. This section explores God's emphasis on the family, starting from Genesis, Christ's formation of a new family, and then the early church's focus on family. Comiskey believes that family is the principal image of the church in Scripture. The last chapter in this section explains Jesus and his kingdom and more specifically how Jesus trained his disciples to evangelism through home-based outreach. Section two reveals how the early church met in homes. It explores what they did in those home meetings, the size of the house churches, and how home evangelism took place through ancient oikos relationships. Comiskey looks at how New Testament leadership developed naturally through the house church structure and how the early church connected the house churches into celebration gatherings (large group meetings). The last section applies all eight chapters to the church today. This last section draws out the New Testament insights that are applicable to the 21st century church.