I love road-trips to observe and interview people doing ministry among young adults and twenty-somethings. It’s exciting to see the creativity and passion that God has given people as they connect with younger generations. Benson Hines “recently returned from a yearlong road trip researching Christian college ministry around the U.S. After 181 campuses, 44 states, and hundreds of interviews.” I stumbled upon Benson’s Facebook Group a while back and excitedly joined it. Today, he announced through his Facebook Group that his site was live and his free eBook, Reaching the Campus Tribes (An Opening Inquiry), is ready for downloading. If you’re excited about what God’s doing on college campuses, you will want to check it out.

A lot of cultural myths about God surround us and many people believe them. At times these myths cause people to stumble in their faith–often blaming God and hurting other in the process. In 10 Dumb Things Smart Christian Believe, Larry Osbourne takes on ten popular myths about God. This book contains clear, simple answers to the myths and spiritual legends that many people believe about God and will challenge you to think about faith myths you might believe–or help you explain them to others. A study-guide is included in the appendix making it easy to use as a small group study.

Book Summary:
Just Because “Everyone Believes It” Doesn’t Make It True!
People don’t set out to build their faith upon myths and spiritual urban legends. But somehow such falsehoods keep showing up in the way that many Christians think about life and God. These goofy ideas and beliefs are assumed by millions to be rock-solid truth . . . until life proves they’re not. The sad result is often a spiritual disaster—confusion, feelings of betrayal, a distrust of Scripture, loss of faith, anger toward both the church and God.

But it doesn’t have to be so. In this delightfully personal and practical book, respected Bible teacher Larry Osborne confronts ten widely held beliefs that are both dumb and dangerous. Beliefs like these:

• Faith can fix anything
• Christians shouldn’t judge
• Forgiving means forgetting
• Everything happens for a reason
• A godly home guarantees good kids
…and more.

The author contends that healthy small groups must maintain a harmony of three patterns–connecting, changing and cultivating. (Connecting=forming deep relationships. Changing=becoming more Christ-like. And cultivating=living missionally.) Maintaining harmony between these three patterns will help groups remain healthy and be more likely to continue. Each section contains some good questions for group leaders to ask about their groups. This would be a good book to recommend to a small group leader or coach of small group leaders.

Personally, I am looking at how to structure training for group leaders in my church. Since our church uses the words connect, grow, serve and share to describe a balanced life of following Christ, I have been thinking of structuring the training around these concepts. In many ways, serve and share can be combined to form what the author intends for the word cultivate–living missionally. Although I love the word cultivate, it might be easier for our purposes here to retain the previously mentioned four words.

Of all that we discussed, two questions stood out to me:

How do you measure success in small group ministry?

To be frank, it’s hard to get away from measuring attendance and number of small groups. While number measurements don’t necessarily capture the quality of community or life change, quality community often goes hand in hand with numerical growth. Rather than the number of groups, maybe a better indicator would be the percentage of people involved in groups.

If you could magically change one thing about your small groups ministry, what would it be?

One word: Training! I’ve been to too many “leadership training” events that are fun and encouraging, but send me home no more prepared to lead than when I came. Since I find myself spearheading the small groups leadership training at my church, I want to provide training that really helps leaders lead people into community and life change.

As we discussed the second question above, we talked about resources that might be valuable in designing a leadership development program. Good resources make all the difference in the word. Here are a few to check out:

Leading Life Changing Small Groups, by Bill Donahue
Excellent small group leadership translates into more life-change in community from some of the leaders in small group ministry–Willow Creek.

Coaching Life Changing Leaders, by Bill Donahue
Ideally, small group pastors/directors are responsible for coaching leaders to lead and this book teaches leaders to do that.

Creating Community, by Andy Stanley and Bill Willits
A look at how North Point is creating a culture of community and helping people develop meaningful relationships.

I’m currently surveying small groups pastors that I know about which resources they find most helpful in training leaders. My hope is to build a leadership training system that will equip leaders to lead groups effectively–and equip other leaders to come alongside those leaders and coach them to greater success. This small group leadership pipeline will likley consume most of my reading time in the coming months. So, hopefully this list will be more extensive in the near future…

I love to read. And my appetite for books usually exceeds my budget for buying them, so I am always on the lookout for free books. I just got this, so I wanted to share it with those of you who study the Church in North America.

Some studies suggest Christians in North America are not qualitatively different in their character and practices than nonbelievers. Could that be true?

In The Shape of Faith to Come, research expert Brad J. Waggoner and his team measure the beliefs and actions of twenty-five hundred active Protestant churchgoers from across the country against seven key standards of biblical spiritual formation. The unpredictable findings reveal the current state and potential forecast of discipleship in the United States.

LIMITED TIME OFFER: download the first 175 pages of The Shape of Faith to Come at no cost here. The first two thousand entries will also gain access to a FREE Online Spiritual Formation Assessment!

I’m sure it’s going to be a great read and am looking forward to getting it in the mail! If you can’t wait, you can download a free copy here.

Product Description
Why do so many young adults (18 to 22) leave the church, and what will it take to bring them back? This important question is examined and duly answered in Essential Church? with his son, research expert Sam Rainer.

The book is based on a study of one-thousand so-called “church dropouts” who were interviewed about why they left. Their answers are quite surprising, having less to do with “losing their religion” and more about the desire for a community that isn’t made stale by simply maintaining the status quo.

In turn, the Rainers offer churches four concrete solutions toward making their worship community an essential part these young people’s lives again:

Simplify – develop a clear structure and process for making disciples.
Deepen – provide strong biblical teaching and preaching.
Expect - let members know the need for commitment to the congregation.
Multiply - emphasize evangelism, outward focus, and starting new churches.

About the Authors
Thom S. Rainer is president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources, one of the largest Christian resource companies worldwide, and the best-selling coauthor of Simple Church. Rainer and his wife, Nellie Jo, have three grown sons and live in Nashville, Tennessee.

Sam S. Rainer is a senior pastor, writer, and the president and CEO of Rainer Research. He also blogs and writes a column for Outreach magazine and lives with his wife, Erin, in Floyds Knobs, Indiana.