Book Review: “Sticky Church”

“Sticky Church” by Larry Osborne is a practical guide on how to build a church that keeps its members engaged and coming back, emphasizing the importance of small groups. Osborne, a pastor with extensive experience in building teams, shares insights and strategies that have been proven in his own congregation at North Coast Church in San Diego County, to foster a sense of belonging and spiritual growth.

What is stickyness?

Osborne introduces the idea of “stickyness” as the ability of a church to retain its members. He argues that traditional church growth models often focus too much on attracting new members coming into the church rather than keeping the ones already there and slipping out the back door like ditching a bad date. Thus helping people to want to “stick around.”

The strategy

The core of Osborne’s strategy revolves around small groups. He believes that small groups are the key to creating a sense of community and accountability, which provide a space for members to form deeper relationships and grow spiritually together.

The main way of doing this is keeping it simple and focused through sermon-based small groups. This way, people not only go over the previous Sunday sermon more intently but learn how to apply the lesson to their life. Why learn something new when you can deepen what the pastor already laid out a few days ago?

Osborne does agree that it doensn’t matter if the groups were sermon based or not, as long a significant percentage of the congregation begins to meet in small gatherings outside the church building to share life and study the Bible together. Using a sermon bassed approach just helps the leader bounce off of whatever was already done; no need to reinvent the wheel.

Practical and easy to follow

This book is filled with practical tips and real-life examples from Osborne’s experience in implementing this program in his own church. He provides much guidance on starting and maintaining sermon-based small groups, training leaders, and creating church involvement.

The most impressive part of the book is that most of the work and planning is already done for the reader through the 28-page apendix filled with ideas, planning tools, evaluation forms, and what is expected by leaders, hosts, and participants.  Further back is a study guide complete with engaging questions to encourage the process.

Though this book shares insight into small groups and how to start, maintain, and continue, it did allow flexibility for leadership. Not all churches are like this northern California church. Churches of all shapes and sizes filled with people from different backgrounds and cultures can apply this book easily and effectively.

What was refreshing about the book was that Osborne challenges social norms about small groups and paradigms of how they are to function. Some of which are:

• Rasing up leaders and transitioning them to take over the group instead of splitting groups up when they get too big, which is discouraging and emotionally draining after investing so much time and energy into people.
• Making small groups for a season gives people an easy out if they wanted to switch groups or do something new and not feel guilty about it.
• Creating groups based on common interests or shared station in life instead of focusing on their neighborhood.

Osborne’s style of writing is clear, well-written and easy to understand, with a conversational tone that helps complex ideas understandable. He never uses words that are out-or-reach, but focuses his energy on being understood. He shares insight into things that worked, things that didn’t, and the reasons why, maintaining that they were not wrong in and of themselves, but because of other variables like culture that permiated small group life.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and Osborne’s style of writing. I wholeheartedly agreed with many principles in the book and often wondered for years why church  leadership forced groups to split up after investing so much time and energy into people.

When our church was Heartland Christian Fellowship on the north side of Des Moines many years ago, sermon-based small groups worked really well. We enjoyed the fellowship, praying for each other, and going over Pastor Wayne’s previous sermon, digging deeper into the text. Even though the entire group is scattered throughout the country now, I still remember how important those years were for my wife and I in our Christian growth.

“Sticky Church” is a valuable resource for church leaders looking to improve member retention and foster friendships within the congregation. Its practical advice makes this book a worthwhile read for anyone in church leadership. Focusing on those who are coming, not on those who might come, along with the key principles of small groups, can help create a more engaged and committed church community.