Sticky Church
Written by Larry Osborne
Narrated by Maurice England
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
Why closing the back door of your church is even more important than opening the front door wider.
In Sticky Church, author and pastor Larry Osborne offers a time-tested strategy for doing so: sermon-based small groups that dig deeper into the weekend message and tightly velcro members to the ministry. It's a strategy that enabled Osborne's congregation to grow from a handful of people to one of the larger churches in the nation—without any marketing or special programming. Sticky Church tells the inspiring story of North Coast Church's phenomenal growth and offers practical tips for launching your own sermon-based small group ministry.
Topics include:
- Why stickiness is so important
- Why most of our discipleship models don’t work very well
- Why small groups always make a church more honest and transparent
- What makes groups grow deeper and sticker over time
Sticky Church is an ideal book for church leaders who want to start or retool their small group ministry—and velcro their congregation to the Bible and each other.
Larry Osborne
Larry Osborne is a teaching pastor at North Coast Church in northern San Diego County. North Coast is widely recognized as one of the most influential and innovative churches in America. Osborne speaks extensively on the subjects of leadership and spiritual formation. His books include Sticky Teams, Sticky Church, 10 Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe, and Spirituality for the Rest of Us. He and his wife, Nancy, live in Oceanside, California.
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Reviews for Sticky Church
70 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A refreshing, paradigm-shifting book on small group ministry. I enjoyed it and highly recommend it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a great book. I plan to implement some of the great concepts outlined in it. The reader for the audio book has a very pleasant voice and cadence. This book is written very conversationally and kept my interests. I was done in two sittings. Awesome. I want more.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another way to do small groups.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In this simple introduction to the philosophy and practice of sermon-based small groups, Osborne wants to help churches "close the back door" - as churches often fail to integrate visitors and new members into the life and ministry of the church. The Sticky Church (via sermon-based small groups) attempts to bond believers to what they need most: scripture and one another. Osborne presents a compelling vision. A-
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book! Practical insights on how small groups can integrate with congregational life. It offered great concepts that clarified my thinking on Christian small groups - people "Velcroed" to the Bible and to friends (42-46), like legos people having limited space for connecting (80), the funnel of what a group can do (152).
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A fantastic book describing the sermon-based small group method for maintaining and encouraging church members. The author uses his experiences at his church to provide lessons he has learned in developing such groups, training leaders, and avoiding various pitfalls. The sermon-based small group concept allows for greater interest and relevancy of the sermon in the life of the believer along with the ability for the believer to be plugged into a group of fellow believers for maximum encouragement.The book is worth examination by anyone who is interested in closing the proverbial back door of the church.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I don't believe I've ever read a book on Church growth that I agreed with more. The basic premise of the book is that church grow best by retaining people through small groups rather than by attracting lots of new people. Growth best happens through small groups done well (closing the back door) rather than fancy marketing and programs (opening wide the front door). Osborne does a good job of telling how to do small groups well using his church's example. I recommend this book to pastors and church leaders concerned about the future and direction of their churches.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I knew I wanted to read Larry Osborne's new book Sticky Church as soon as I read the title. I would guess that that every pastor and every church has wrestled with the question about how to get people who visit their church to not only stay but how to get them connected. As Osborne points out we've tried just about everything but we still see too many of our people leaving through the back door.The solution for Osborne and the folks at North Coast Church was to help people "stick" by getting them to be a part of their small group ministry. But the small groups at NCC were not your typical Bible study group or multiplying cell group. Osborne details the process that led him and his ministry team to focus on Sermon based small groups. As a result, those involved in small groups at NCC were given an opportunity to make application from what they heard the previous Sunday in the context of encouraging, accountable relationships.I found Osborne's book to be extremely helpful in developing my own vision and strategy for ministry but probably not in the way Osborne would have imagined when writing this book. I pastor a rural church where we don't have small groups--we are a small group. I found many of Osborne's comments and principles to be very relevant to our situation and the ministry we are trusting God to develop. Osborne covers everything from preaching, to church health, to relationships, and leadership training. I imagine the principles I gleaned will be most beneficial to the way I give leadership to the local church.My copy of Sticky Church is now marked up and well worn. My goal now is to go back through the book so I can process again the principles Osborne has shared. Let me share one principle that I found worth the price of the book (although thanks to the good folks at Zondervan I was given this copy to review for free!)Just recently my kids have discover the joy of Legos, a toy that was a favorite of mine growing up as well. On pages 79-81 Osborne explains why we see such difficulty among people to "jell" with others when forming new relationship. The answer: people are like Legos. Like the little plastic bricks, there are only so many connectors to go around. When those connectors get filled up we find it difficult to make any new connections. When I read this and Osborne’s further application (you’ll just have to buy the book) I felt that both a light bulb went on and a weight was lifted at the same time. It’s not so much that the church is full of cliques; it’s that many of us already have our connectors filled (p.80). Brilliant!Even if yours is not a church of small groups, or small groups are not yet on your ministry horizon this book is well worth reading. It will stay on my shelf and deserves a second read. Here’s hoping that the Lord uses this book to help our churches become even “stickier”.