New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

Based on the rec­om­men­da­tion of a friend at our church, I picked up Brad House’s new book, Com­mu­nity: Tak­ing Your Small Group off Life Sup­port. Brad serves as a pas­tor at Mars Hill Church. An engi­neer by train­ing, he was brought on staff at Mars Hill about 8 years ago when they had just 15 small groups serv­ing a church which saw thou­sands of peo­ple in atten­dance each week­end. Mars Hill now has over 500 small groups. No, I didn’t mean 50.

I’m just into the first chap­ter and I already love it. Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite:

“Paul is con­cerned with the legacy of the church in Corinth. He is not sat­is­fied with them merely hear­ing or know­ing the gospel. But it is not  that Paul wants the church to do more. he wants them to be more. I am con­vinced that he is not dis­ap­pointed with the church as much as he desires to see them live abun­dant lives that reflect what Jesus has already done” (17).

“We will not change the pre­con­ceived view of groups by mak­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion a require­ment for mem­ber­ship or by chang­ing the names of our pro­grams from ‘min­istries’ to ‘groups.’ Small groups will thrive when they become the place where we expe­ri­ence life-giving trans­for­ma­tion” (18).

“I endeavor to affirm com­mu­nity as a gift of God’s grace for the pur­pose of exalt­ing the Son and mak­ing him known. In other words, com­mu­nity is not about us; it is about God. Com­mu­nity is an instru­ment of wor­ship, a weapon against sin, and a tool for evan­ge­lism — all for the exal­ta­tion of Jesus” (19).

See what I mean? Great stuff so far! Brad wrote a post for The Resur­gence enti­tled, “The ‘Why’ in Com­mu­nity.” I strongly encour­age you to read the post and then get plugged into one of our Life Groups tonight. If you are in the south Col­lege Sta­tion area, con­sider join­ing Wayne and Kyle McVay for their group; if you live near cam­pus or in Bryan, visit Chris and Dan­nah Pembelton’s group. Both have plenty of room and are eager to meet and serve you! For more infor­ma­tion on our Life Groups, click here.