Thoughts by Larry Osbourne, Interviewed by Tony Morgan
TONY: People may be surprised to know that your church has grown to more than 7,000 in attendance without marketing campaigns and outreach events. How did that happen?
LARRY: Think of any great restaurant. It doesn't have to tell you to come back or bring a friend. You do it naturally. In essence, that's the formula we've tried to follow as a church.
We work hard to minister to the people we have. We want to serve their spiritual needs incredibly well and do it in a way that their non-Christian friends can easily understand. As a result, they tend to spontaneously invite their friends and co-workers. We've never had to ask or persuade them to do so. They just do it.
We've also learned to slam the back door shut by providing opportunities for people to develop deep and long-term spiritual relationships. Rather than trying to pretend that everyone can care for everyone, we've created lots of relational pods where people are velcroed together by the kind of authentic friendships that can only be found in smaller and more stable settings. And these kinds of relationships have proven to be incredibly sticky.
TONY: One of the biggest frustrations in churches like ours is small groups. It seems like every church is trying to crack the code to improve their small group ministry. How are the groups you describe in Sticky Church different than what you've seen at other churches?
LARRY: It seems to me that most small group ministries talk about building relationships but quickly morph into something else altogether - a tool for church growth, evangelism or church administration. Just look at what we ask people in the groups to do. Fill an empty chair, divide, assimilate newcomers, and a host of other things that are far more about growing a bigger church than shepherding the flock.
I have a chapter in Sticky Church entitled, "Why Dividing Groups Is A Dumb Idea." Perhaps that more than anything illustrates the different focus that we have. But it also helps to explain the phenomenal success we've had. For over 20 years our participation rate has equaled or exceeded 80 percent of our adult weekend attendance. We've kept the people we had while easily assimilating new people and new Christians. In many of the other models I've seen, small groups are designed to be transitory and so task specific that enduring relationships have no real chance to develop.
Let's be honest, people hate to be used. They aren't tools. They're people created in the image of God. When we serve them with the servant leadership Jesus talked about, it's amazing how willing they are to step forward and help the cause. But when they feel used, they resist - both passively and aggressively.
