Creating Community | Andy Stanley & Bill Willits

Andy Stanley & Bill Willits. Creating Community: Five Keys to Building a Small Group Culture. Multnomah, 2004. 192 pp.

Five Keys to Building a Small Group Culture

1. People Need Community
2. Leaders Need Clarity
3. Churches Need Strategy
4. Connection Needs Simplicity
5. Processes Need Reality

In Genesis 2:18, God says something isn’t right. He says, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” For years, many of us have heard this passage quoted in the context of marriage, and rightly so. But I believe the implications go beyond an affirmation of the marriage relationship. At its core, this is a statement about the importance of our connecting well with others, the marriage relationship being the most profound illustration of that reality.

Living life without meaningful connection is not good because it’s not what God intended for us. Isolation tends to bring with it devastating relational sicknesses. But it’s also not good because we were created for relationship. Living life alone does not accurately reflect the One whose image we bear.

The truth is, we were all created in the likeness of our Father. Our heavenly Father. And God is a relational being. As God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, He is three persons in one. In Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let us make man in our image” (emphasis mine). The God who desires to have a relationship with all humankind has always known meaningful relationship. Always. And don’t miss out on what the passage goes on to say: “So God created man in his own image” (v. 27). Just as He exists in meaningful relationship, so are we to exist in this quality of relationship as well. The need for it is part of our genetic makeup. God is a relational being and He created His prized creations, you and me, with the needfor significant relationship as well.

The Divine Community

The kind of connections we need are more than casual. Casual connections aren’t life-giving. . . . They can’t provide the kind of oneness with God or oneness with each other that makes the world take notice. The kind that God uses in the hearts of people. The kind that transforms lives. Only the church in community can display that kind of relational oneness. Only God’s Spirit unleashed through His Body can make that kind of difference.

That is what God has called the church to be about: creating environments where authentic community can take place. Building relational, transforming communities where people are experiencing oneness with God and oneness with one another. Communities that are so satisfying, so unique, and so compelling that they create thirst in a watching world.

Clarifying the Goal
What do we want people to become?

• Our mission is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.

What do we want people to do?

• We want them to grow in their intimacy with God, community with insiders, and influence with outsiders.

Where do we want people to go?

• We’re unanimous about where we want people to go: to a small group.

So what do we want people to become? People growing in their relationship with Jesus Christ. What do we want people to do? Pursue three vital relationships. Where do we want people to go? Into a small group.

Choose Your Strategy

Why groups at North Point?

1. Groups support our evangelism strategy.
2. Groups decentralize church leadership and care.
3. Groups enable more people to serve.
4. Groups help develop authentic community.
5. Groups offer maximum flexibility.
6. Groups allow us to be better stewards.
7. Groups remove the primary limits to growth.

Close the Door

A distinctive of our small-group strategy is that we close the door. That is, we have closed groups. Purposefully so. We have given it a lot of thought, weighed the pros and cons, and have chosen to keep the participants in our groups as consistent as possible throughout an eighteen- to twenty-four-month covenant period. That is, unless a significant number of them drop dead or are raptured. If that happens, the dynamics of the group is the least of their problems!

By “closed groups,” I mean that we encourage no new additions to the group unless the entire group signs off on it. Our rationale for having closed groups is simple. If disruptions work against the effectiveness of a meeting, then disruptions work against anymeeting, small groups included. If interruptions compromise momentum by interfering with a person’s focus, then interruptions will likewise compromise a small group–and the fulfillment of the group’s promise.

Excerpted from Creating Community © 2004 North Point Ministries, Inc. Used by permission of Multnomah Publishers, Inc. Excerpt may not be reproduced without the prior written consent of Multnomah Publishers, Inc.

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