Customer Reviews

Leading Life-Changing Small Groups-paperback

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(1)
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Written by the director of adult education and leadership training at Willow Creek Community Church, this book is the result of experience rather than theory. Although the Willow Creek small group model is more structured than many leaders will feel comfortable with, the issues raised and the resources supplied will be helpful to anyone involved with small group leadership. The very title stresses the underlying principle: changing lives

Whether you have led small groups for years or you are just starting out, you will find practical advice in this great resource. The text is easy to follow and can easily be used by small group leaders as they "group" together to learn to lead.

Most of the Church is now focussed on relational evangelism. What better way to cultivate a personal relationship than in the small group. The group offers the opportunity to really know each other. Once strong relationships are in place, people begin to grow, multiplication takes place, and lives are changed.

If this is what you want to accomplish you will find easy to understand technique in Leading a Life Changing Small Group.

Our congregation has used Bill Donahue's Leading Life-Changing Small Groups as our primary reference manual for training small group leaders for over 5 years. It gets right to the heart of the organization and leadership issues needed for successful ministry. It is also an excellent reference for avoiding and resolving problems that may occur as people get to know one another.

The thrust of the book is to help you organize a small group ministry in your church, as in almost reorganizing how your church works to include everyone in a small group and pastor them in a small group setting. There is a substantial section on how to conduct different types of small groups, which is what I bought it for, and that part is very good. I've been leading small groups for a few years - some of the insights are things you would learn over time, others I hadn't quite gotten to yet. I would highly recommend this to anyone leading a small group. I disagree with his belief in women leading small groups of mixed gender, but that's a minor disagreement, the content is still great.

Our 350 member church has studied 'small groups' intentionally for 18 months. We just launched 18 groups with 150 participants. Things appear to be going very well. This manual has grown continually in our esteem and confidence. It is thorough, Biblically rich, helpful in the extreme, organized, & educationally sound. A small group leader can take this resource, and with study and effort, learn how to start immediately as an effective leader and then how to continually enrich the group's life together. A church program can choose it as a foundation and better the odds for success greatly and instantly. Highest recommendation. Thank you, Willow.

I sent this book back. While it has some good information in it, it is two tied to the author's religious beliefs.