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Books & Training Resources
For individuals, groups and the church as a whole to live missionally, we need resources. Here are the key resources
to get you started: - A resource to help group leaders understand the vision for missional life
in groups. For this I have written Missional Small Groups: Becoming a Community that Makes a Difference in the World.
- A
resource to help pastors, small group champions, small group leadership team members and other strategic leaders develop a
structure and system that facilitates the reality of missional stories lived out in groups. For this I have written MissioRelate:
Becoming a Church of Missional Small Groups.
- A tool to establish the call for missional life in the church. For
this, I partnered with Alan Roxburgh to write Introducing the Missional Church.
- Small group
curriculum that helps an entire group process how they can make a difference. For this I have written the free study guide
that you can download on Free Resources page.
- Basic instructions for small group leaders about how leading a missional group differs from leading a normal
small group. For this I have written a free article to get you started. It can be downloaded at Free Resources. I'm writing a book on this entitled 9 Practices of Missional Small Group Leaders.
To Purchase Books, Visit the Amazon Store
In the book descriptions below, I provide some personal insight behind the development of each of these
projects. Visit the Amazon store for details about purchasing them.
This book
was an accident, if it is possible for a book to be an accident. I had three chapters that I pulled from Missional Small
Groups because they were written for church leaders and MSG was written for group leaders and group members.
I intended to edit The Relational Way and insert those three chapters into it, but technical problems derailed that
idea. So I told my editor that I would write a 120 page book for small group point leaders, senior pastors and key team leaders.
Well, it turned out that I had more than that to say.
| Missional Small Groups |
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I actually started writing this book about 18 years ago. Most of what I wrote has been tossed, deleted or lost on previous
computers. Through all of those drafts I could never find the right way to communicate the difference between normal groups
and groups that really make a difference in the world. Then about two years ago, I had an epiphany and I found a new way to
communicate the difference. When I started to teach this material, I found that people from all kinds of traditions connected
with it, more so than any other training I had used over the last 18 years. This book is written with group leaders in mind,
but it can also be used by an entire group to help them move from normal group life to missional life that makes a difference.
| Introducing the Missional Church |
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I worked with Alan Roxburgh on this project. In the mid-1990s, I work on the staff with Alan while I
was working on my Master's Degree at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C. While we were serving West Vancouver Baptist Church
together, he was a part of the team that wrote The Missional Church. So we collaborated
to develop a book that pastors could use within their churches to help promote the idea of a church that is missional in nature.
Reviewers have told us that this is the best introductory book on the topic. I hope you agree.
Introducing the Missional Church: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How To Become One
| The Relational Way |
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Since I wrote this book, I have realized that this is a book that identifies how to
set up a system that promotes missional small groups. While I did not necessarily use that language, this is what the book
does. In fact, if I were to release the book today I would want to give it the subtitle From Small Group Structures to Small
Groups on Mission. The target reader of this book includes pastoral leadership, the small group champion and key leadership.
See the reviews on Amazon.
The Relational Way: From Small Group Structures to Holistic Life Connections
| How Do We Get There From Here |
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This is the second edition of my first book, which was originally entitled Making Cell Groups Work. I
changed the title because the label "cell groups" had become identified with an exclusive and at times critical
perspective of groups. I wanted people to see this book as being applicable to missional group life, no matter what the groups
were called. The information in this book is based on over three years of case study research on churches that
attempted to transition from traditional patterns of church life to missional life through community in groups.
How Do We Get There From Here: Navigating the Transition to Holistic Small Groups
| Making Cell Groups Work: Navigation Guide |
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During my last year of working at TOUCH Outreach Ministries as an editor and product developer, I pulled together some of the best resources that we had developed over the years and
were simply sitting on our hard drives unused. Most of the various pieces had previously been taught in training seminars
and simply needed updating and organizing under a larger vision. The various chapters are organized around the 8-stage process
of small group change that is laid out in the book How Do We Get There from Here?
Making Cell Groups Work: Navigation Guide
| Cell Group Leader Training: Trainer's Guide |
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This is an eight part introductory training for new small group leaders. This is a comprehensive guide
for trainers which requires little experience for effective use.
Cell Group Leader Training: Trainers Guide
| Cell Group Leader Training: Participant's Guide |
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This simple participant's guide will establish new leaders with the skills to effectively lead a
group.
Cell Group Leader Training: Participant's Guide
| Small Group Ministry in the 21st Century |
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Multiple writer's contributed creative and practical ideas that can be easily implemented to make
a group more effective. I was one of the contributors, but exactly which of the chapters I wrote I find hard to remember.
Am I really that absent minded?
Small Group Ministry in the 21st Century
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