The Main Thing
by Larry Osborne
Senior Pastor
North Coast Church, Vista, CA
I find that “sticky church” principles are important for lots of reasons. But one stands out above all others. I don’t see any way we can bring people to full maturity and fulfill the back half of the great commission without first producing the kind of significant long-term relationships that velcro people to one another and our local churches long enough to get the task done.
What do you think?
Some of my friends in ministry seem to devalue and even dismiss long-term, deep friendships as if they get in the way of real ministry. A small group that stays together for years isn’t applauded for its community. Instead it’s labeled as ingrown, self-indulgent, and a death-knell for evangelism.
Perhaps the problem resides in our American and Western European paradigm of Christianity as primarily a one-on-one personal relationship with God. We’ve created a spirituality that only needs a Bible and the Holy Spirit to be right with God; as if all the New Testament “one anothers” were optional rather than the core of what it means to live out our faith.
Few Christians are even aware that almost all the commands, promises, and exhortations in the Bible are plural. The you of Scripture is seldom addressed to us as individuals. It’s addressed to all of us as a group. It’s a southern y’all.
The result of our emphasis on individual piety is that the person who enjoys (or endures) hours of prayer, lots of alone time with God, maybe even a monthly couple of days of spiritual reflection at a local monastery is classified as being spiritual and tight with God. But interestingly, Jesus spoke more about simple obedience and our relationships with others than he did about personal prayer, time alone with God, or even reading and reflecting upon Scripture. (For more on this, see my book A CONTRARIAN’S GUIDE TO KNOWING GOD: Spirituality For The Rest of Us.)
But for now, that’s the reason we here at North Coast Church work so hard to make it difficult for people to attend without getting involved in a small group; and why we try to keep those groups together for the long haul. We want to make significant long-term relationships available to everyone. I’m not satisfied with a ministry that motivates and educates – but lacks the close and sticky long-term relationships needed to bring people to full maturity.
What do you think? Am I right, wrong, idealistic, or realistic?
12/05/08 11:09 AM
I wholeheartedly agree.
Ultimately, if people cannot even share Christ's love to their fellow believers, I am not sure how effective they can be at evangelism.
Ideally Christians, by experiencing the fullness of Christ's love within small groups (its much easier loving 10 people than an entire church), can be better equipped to share that love with the lost.
What I have come to realize is that good teaching isn't enough. We teach on Sundays and we teach at Bible Study and we do survival kit and all sorts of other material with new believers. I feel like we're overwhelming them with teaching, but at the same time, I don't think we're any closer to showing them how to live out the word of God in their life.
I've been really blessed by "Sticky Church." It's biblical and it focuses on practical Christianity. I am now reading "Contrarian's Guide" and have been similarly blessed. Thank you for your ministry Pastor Osborne and for encouraging us folk who are in the trenches and struggling to follow Jesus' command to love God and to love one another.
09/04/08 09:24 PM
Susan - Your concerns are very legitimate. But I think you're making a common, but erroneous, assumption about small groups that stick together. Our groups aren't literaly closed (we don’t even use that term). Our groups are simply allowed to stick together and form long-term healthy relationships. The difference is significant.
Fact is, our new leaders almost always come out of existing groups. But they do so because the Lord has laid it on their heart – not because we’ve insisted that all our groups constantly break up and start over.
Allowing groups to stick together doesn’t mean there’s no room for a new Christian or searching non-Christian to join an existing group. In reality, they almost always join the same group as the person who brought them to the Lord. I can’t think of one time where an existing group decided not to let a new Christian in. We don't make evangelism the puprose of the group - but we do evangelize.
I don’t think any of us at North Coast believe that personal relationships are more important than the Great Commission – but I would make the case that they are essential for actually fulfilling the second half of the Great Commission (teaching people to obey all the things Jesus taught us to do).
Truth is, we have tons of window shoppers – and lots of new Christians – and huge numerical growth over the years. Encouraging people to build stable long-term spiritual friendships hasn’t hurt our ability to fulfill the great commission. It’s helped us do so and then keep the people we see come to the Lord long enough to grow them to maturity.
At least that’s how I would reconcile the two competing needs that you speak of.
Of course there’s much more to this question that I try to answer in STICKY CHURCH – both the book and our upcoming conference. Would love to see you there.
09/04/08 11:31 AM
How DO you grow the church if all the small groups stay closed to new members? Where do you get the new leaders to lead the new believers? How do you get new people into the church if people won't reach out and invite them into their home groups? How do you win the city to Christ if believers think that their personal stable relationships are more important than the Great Commission? I could be very open to the teaching because I agree with all the things said about how people feel about small groups. It's just that I also know what Jesus says about reaching the lost. How do we reconcile those two competing needs?
09/03/08 03:04 PM
Thanks for the article. Very stimulating. I have asked myself, 'Did New Testament churches multiply by dividing?' If not, how did they multiply (Acts 16:5) and how should ours?
Also, as noted by Dan above, leaders need to be trained to deal with the gradual changes just as much as with a wholesale carve-up.
08/31/08 12:00 AM
Thanks...that's gret observation. It helps me a lot to reflect my current ministry. God bless you!