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Creating Community, Revised & Updated Edition: Five Keys to Building a Thriving Small Group Culture Kindle Edition

by Andy Stanley (Author), Bill Willits (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 228 ratings

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Five keys to building a small group culture that fosters meaningful, lasting connections within your church community.

Small groups are the key to impacting lives in your church. But a healthy small-group environment doesn’t just happen. So pull up a chair. Let’s talk about how to make it happen.

Bill Willits and bestselling author Andy Stanley share their successful approach, which has resulted in nearly eight thousand adults becoming involved in small groups at North Point Community Church in Atlanta. Simply put, the five principles have passed the test. This is not just another book about community; this is a book about strategy—strategy that builds a small group culture. Creating Community shares clear and simple principles to help people connect into meaningful relationships. The kind that God desires for each of us and that He uses to change our lives. Put this proven method to work in your ministry and enjoy the tangible results—God’s people doing life TOGETHER.

“The small-group program at North Point Community Church is not an appendage; it is not a program we tacked on to an existing structure. It is part of our lifestyle. We think groups. We organize groups. We are driven by groups. Creating Community contains our blueprint for success. And I believe it has the potential power to revolutionize your own small-group ministry!” — Andy Stanley

Print length

257 pages
Language

English
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On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Multnomah
Publication date

March 25, 2009
File size

5470 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Andy Stanley is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary and the founding pastor of North Point Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia, with a youthful congregation of more than 12,000. Stanley is the author of the 1998 Foreword Book of the Year finalist Visioneering, the bestsellers Like a Rock and The Next Generation Leader, and How Good Is Good Enough? He and his wife, Sandra, have two sons and a daughter.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

It’s hard to believe it’s been sixteen years since we wrote the original manuscript for Creating Community. Much happened for us during that time. I bet much happened for you. Organizationally and culturally, life has definitely changed.

At North Point, our good God has opened many hearts and unlocked many doors since 2004. Back then, we were meeting in two locations and were one year away from celebrating our tenth anniversary. Today we are about to celebrate twenty-six years of ministry with eight campuses in the Atlanta area; scores of partner churches throughout the US; and partner networks in Latin America, the Republic of Ireland and the UK, and Australia. Group life at North Point Ministries has grown immensely as well. In 2004, we had 7,200 adults involved in groups through our two Atlanta campuses. Last year, by God’s grace and through the efforts of many amazing people, we had over 31,000 involved in groups through our Atlanta campuses and thousands more
through our partner churches.

But without a doubt, some of the biggest changes that have occurred over the past sixteen years have been cultural. Here’s a sampling of some of the differences between 2004 and today:

GIG ECONOMY: Since the launch of companies like Airbnb, Etsy, and Fiverr, temporary employment, freelancing, and single-contract gigs have all grown immensely. Today, 36 percent of US workers do some kind of gig work.

EATING OUT: With quick-service options like food trucks, carryout, and delivery, Americans now spend less on groceries than on eating out. And when we want to eat at home, let’s not forget that grocery delivery services like Instacart and Amazon Fresh and food-prep companies like Blue Apron, HelloFresh, and Sunbasket have made eating in even easier.

WORKING FROM HOME: Working from home became the new normal with over 80 percent of US workplaces either currently offering flexible options or planning to offer them, according to one study. And that was before the pandemic of 2020.

MUSIC INDUSTRY: Music subscription services like Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, and Amazon Music have taken over the music landscape with physical CD sales disappearing.

MENTAL ILLNESS: According to a study published by the American Psychological Association, teens and young adults have experienced a dramatic increase in mental health disorders. Teen depression grew by 52 percent, and young adult depression grew by a staggering 63 percent.

ONLINE EDUCATION: The pre-pandemic years found online education already growing significantly. That trend will certainly continue because of online education’s greater flexibility, lower financial cost, and customizable course.

DE-SHARING SERVICES: Companies like Lyft and Uber changed the way Americans commute.

SMARTPHONES: Sixteen years ago, almost no one had a smartphone. Today, over 80 percent of Americans have one. And not only have smartphones changed the way people work; they have also changed the way people play by providing access to video games and replacing traditional cameras.

AMAZON PRIME: Amazon Prime was introduced in 2005 to little fanfare even with two-day shipping. Today, much to the dismay of many retailers, Amazon and shopping have become synonymous. And what was already becoming true became indisputable during the pandemic.

SOCIAL MEDIA: In 2004, Facebook was being launched at Harvard. Today it boasts 2.8 billion monthly users, and it is only one of many social media sites. A recent report suggests that adult Americans spend over two hours a day on social media. And that number is climbing.

Yes, in the past sixteen years, much has changed. All our lives have changed. On top of all the cultural changes, we have gone through a major recession, a major recovery, and a major pandemic that caused another economic downturn in the midst of social unrest. Yet one thing hasn’t changed—people. People like you and me. People like those you work with. People like those you live around. People inside the faith. People outside the faith. Young people. Old people. Everyone in between. All people. Everywhere. People still have the same needs they have always had. And one of those needs has become only more acute.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B002361L3O
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Multnomah (March 25, 2009)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 25, 2009
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5470 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 257 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 073529125X

Best Sellers Rank: #325,349 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #193 in Christian Pastoral Resources (Kindle Store)
- #251 in Christian Church Administration (Books)
- #325 in Christian Ministry

Customer Reviews:
4.5 228 ratings

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Bill Willits
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Andy Stanley
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Communicator, author, and pastor Andy Stanley founded Atlanta-based North Point Ministries (NPM) in 1995. Today, NPM consists of eight churches in the Atlanta area and a network of 180 churches around the globe that collectively serve over 200,000 people weekly.
As host of Your Move with Andy Stanley, which delivers over 10.5 million messages each month through television, digital platforms, and podcasts and author of more than 20 books, including Irresistible; Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets; and Deep & Wide, he is considered one of the most influential pastors in America.
Andy and his wife, Sandra, have three grown children and live near Atlanta.
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ypastorbrad

A terrific foundation for community groups!

Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2014

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About two months ago, I began the adventure of coordinating the small groups ministry at my church. I've been in small groups, I lead a small group with my wife, but outside of student ministries, I had never really coordinating a program like this before. I feel overwhelmed that I simply don't know enough or have enough experience. So I asked all my smarter, more experienced friends to tell me what they've read that can help me lay a good foundation for helping coordinate this really crucial ministry. A few of them mentioned Creating Community, and so I bought it for my e-reader. It was so good, it took me less than 24 hours to read.

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

For a while now, I have had a burden for a more intentional system for our small groups. We've had this system of scattered and dis-unified small groups for a while now, and there isn't a lot of clear direction. I feel just like Andy Stanley did early on in North Point's history. "We all sensed a need to bring a layer of structure and intentionality to our otherwise random and unstructured friendships" (pg. 12).

The book is written primarily by Bill Willits, who is the director of the small groups at North Point Community Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He talks a lot about how they arrived at how they do groups now and how they thought strategically about how to grow it into a system that moves people toward a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ and with each other. This combination of real-life scenario and theoretical practice is extremely insightful and challenging.

Creating Community is orderly, succinct and thorough; a combination you don't find in many "how-to-ministry" books. It has challenged many of my preconceived notions of what community looks like in the church and how to best foster really meaningful relationships in those communities. If your heart is to help create communities that create real life change in people, than Creating Community is simply a must-read.

3 people found this helpful

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George P. Wood

A Highly Useful Book for Small Group Pastors

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2005

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When I first began reading Creating Community by Andy Stanley and Bill Willits, I was not impressed. Subtitled "5 Keys to Building a Small Group Culture," the book makes its points by means of simply structured sentences, personal anecdotes, and common-sense business principles. As an "armchair intellectual" who prefers "idea" books to "application" books, I glided through the pages of Creating Community in about an hour. About half way through, I realized that Stanley and Willits were teaching simple principles that I needed to learn and apply in my own ministry. Although I never set out to become a small groups pastor, I have become one for my church. Unfortunately, to be perfectly honest, I do not consider myself a very good small groups pastor. Why? Because I prefer to sit among abstract ideas - the native environment of armchair intellectuals - rather than to walk beside practical realities. I am good at writing curriculum and at personally leading a small group, but I have a hard time managing people and processes. Stanley and Willits offered several helpful insights about how to do the latter. Let's start with the five keys mentioned in the subtitle. They are (1) people need community, (2) leaders need clarity, (3) churches need strategy, (4) connection needs simplicity, and (5) processes need reality.

People need community - especially Americans, whom George Gallup has described as "among the loneliest people in the world." This is somewhat ironic, given that Americans are around other people all the time. But having company is not the same thing has achieving community. "We live and work in a sea of humanity," the authors write, "but we end up missing out on the benefits of regular, meaningful relationships." God created us to have those kinds of relationships, beginning with our spouses but extending to others as well. "Isolationitis" - the absence of meaningful relationships - leads to "lost perspective," "fear of intimacy," "selfishness," and "poor health." To the extent that we are isolated from others, we are also less like God - a Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. "Just as He exists in meaningful relationship, so are we to exist in this quality of relationship as well," for we are created in God's image (Gen. 1.26-27). And Christ saved us so that we would live in the meaningful relationship called the church. Without authentic community, the world cannot know that God sent Jesus to save it (John 17.21). In the words of Francis Schaeffer, "Christian community is the final apologetic."

How do we - "we" meaning pastors and lay leaders - move from theology to practice, from vision to reality? Stanley and Willits' second key is this: Leaders need clarity. North Point Church in Atlanta, where the authors minister, answered that question by means of three others. The first question is "What do you want people to become?" This question provides "clarity of mission." The mission of North Point is "to relationally connect with people in such a way that it encourages them to follow Christ." The second question - "What do you want people to do?" - clarified North Point's "understanding of spiritual maturity." Focusing on the Great Commandment to love God and to love neighbor as self (Matt. 22.37-40), North Point answered this question by focusing on "intimacy with God"; "influence with insiders," i.e., Christians, members of the church; and "influence with outsiders," i.e., the unconverted. The third question is "Where do you want people to go?" This question clarified North Point's strategy, which is to get people "into a small group." Stanley and Willits explain the rationale for this strategy: "We have found that the best place for sustained life change to occur is within intentional relationships. And like many church leaders, we fell that the best place for encouraging intentional relationships is a small group. While we believe that other approaches can work, we think the small-group model works best."

That leads us to the third key: Churches need strategy. The founding members of North Point, which included the Stanley and Willits families, decided that they wanted their church to be characterized by one word: relational. This word not only captured their church's overall mission but also its daily operating strategy. "We want to do ministry in the context of relationship in communities, not on committees," the authors write. Why? Because groups: (1) "support our evangelism strategy," (2) "enable more people to serve," (3) "help develop authentic community," (4) "offer maximum flexibility," (5) "allow us to be better stewards," and (6) "remove the primary limits to growth." Not just any kind of group provides these benefits, however; only certain kinds do. Stanley and Willits call them "closed groups," which are groups that form and meet "throughout an eighteen- to twenty-four-month covenant period" without adding new members, "unless the entire group signs off on it." North Point has found that closing their groups contributes to the development of the "ABC's of group life": accountability, belonging, and care. Because the groups are closed only for a season, however, they do not become permanent cliques that are hostile to newcomers.

How do you get people into such groups? The fourth key answers this question: Connection needs simplicity. The chapter titles of this section of the book are particularly helpful: "create steps," "make them easy," and "try before you buy." The authors describe the steps under using the "'Foyer to Kitchen' strategy" of North Point. "Foyers" - such as the Sunday morning worship service - are designed to "change people's minds about church." "Living rooms" are "medium-sized environments designed to change people's minds about connecting." And" kitchens," i.e., small groups, are designed to "change people's minds about their priorities." Stanley and Willits write that "90 percent [!]" of the people who join small groups at North Point do so after attending GroupLink, "a two-hour event where people connect with others in their geographic area and stage of life to start a community group." And North Point is firmly committed to a short, initial small group experience of no more than eight weeks' length. If the group gels after this initial experience, it can commit to meet regularly over a longer period of time.

How do small group pastors and lay leaders manage the overall process of a small group ministry. Stanley and Willits' fifth key states, Processes need reality. For the authors, this means setting "realistic expectations" for small group leaders, coaches, and directors. It also means "train[ing] more for less." North Point leaders are routinely trained in six essential practices: (1) "Think life-change," (2) "cultivate relationships," (3) "promote participation," (4) "replace yourself," (5) "provide care," and "multiply influence." In the penultimate chapter, Stanley and Willits urge churches to keep their strategy "simple," "visible," "valued," "resourced," and "modeled" (by leadership).

As I noted at the outset, I wasn't impressed when I began reading Creating Community. "Armchair intellectuals" such as me prefer big, complex ideas to simple, usable ones. But as I continued to read the book, I realized that a lot of serious thinking underlay what Stanley and Willits had written. Moreover, I realized that if I paid attention, I might improve my own ministry by using their "keys" to diagnose and fix what is wrong with the small groups ministry I myself lead. So, in the end, thank you, Andy and Bill, for writing such a highly useful book for me and other small groups pastors.

138 people found this helpful

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Taleah McGuire

Learning to come together in small groups to grow in God's word and build life-long friendships. This book is GREAT!

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2016

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This is a wonderful book about creating a community, and not necessarily in church. It's so easy to just go to church and follow the motions without ever REALLY becoming connected. Creating a community inside the church is what God intended for us to do. In order to work together effectively, you need to know that you can rely on your church family and be able to trust and confide in them. It takes work; it's not something that just happens. This book leads you deeper on how to allow that to happen. My husband purchased this book when we were hosting small groups at our house and we had the best session that we'd ever had (and we hosted groups for SEVERAL sessions prior to this). People opened up and told their testimonies and it was because there are tips on how to break the ice and make it easier to open up. No one wants to open up and become vulnerable in a group of people they don't really know, but it's almost necessary. We highly recommend this book if you currently lead, are thinking about leading or are starting to put small groups together. It's not something that you will regret and it will help you grow in your faith and friendships more than you could ever imagine!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1590523962/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_2

4 people found this helpful

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Kimberly U

Great Book

Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2023

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Well written book

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