Grab, Gather, Grow

Jim and Jen Cowart, authors of Start This, Stop That, offer a fresh strategy for developing community groups for your whole church and beyond. Harvest Church (www.harvestchurch4u.org), a young United Methodist congregation twenty miles southwest of Macon, met for seven years (on Sundays) on the move in a rented theatre. They learned about adaptive systems, digital tools, and flexible overhead. Since building a multipurpose facility on 43 acres near Warner Robins, Georgia in 2007, Harvest Church applied what they learned about mobility and sustained rapid growth to 2700 in worship attendance, with seven weekend services. They dispensed with a typical education wing (at significant cost savings) and classrooms in favor of four multipurpose rooms. They adapted a community groups strategy, which meets primarily in homes. They have expanded from 72 community groups to more than 300 in one year.

In this leadership book, Jen and Jim offer a five-part method for transforming a congregation through launching community groups. Community groups become a multiplication strategy because they nurture an urgent expectation outside the congregation to share the good news with persons not yet professing faith, while creating a well defined path for growth in discipleship. The book will include the following themes:

• Group Explosion - New Strategy for 100% plus group participation
• Overcoming Obstacles - Structuring for Maximum Growth vs Control - Crowd to Core Group Growth
• The Power of the Pulpit - This system is driven from the stage
• Living the 5 through Group Life - How the CG lives into Fellowship, Discipleship, Ministry, Evangelism, and Worship
• Creating Infrastructure for Facilitators