Quotes from Larry Osborne

He chose to be with them in their trials rather than delivering them from their trials.

Leadership boards and staff members who fill executive roles tend to make two mistakes when it comes to policy: (1) they have too many policies, and (2) they treat every policy as if it were a law from God himself.

Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil;

The only exception I've found to this principle is in the recovery movement, where small groups seem to be an effective evangelistic side door into the church all across the nation. I think it's because, having hit bottom, these folks have an openness to try anything, including a small group. The concerns that give pause to the average American are overcome by their desperation and desire for sobriety. And once they find sobriety, they often end up finding the Lord as well.

But there is something worse than settling for mediocrity. It's exclusivity. It's the temptation to up the ante and to raise the bar of discipleship so high that it disqualifies all but the most committed, and thus thins the herd that Jesus came to expand.

We're supposed to weep with those who weep. We're not supposed to smother them with banal truisms, out-of-context Bible verses, shallow advice, and links to our favorite podcasts.3 The

To be structured for spiritual growth, a church (whether front-door or back-door focused) must have some sort of method in place to consistently connect people to both significant relationships and the Bible.

Once people get a taste of frontline ministry, they don't let it go easily. Once the church has been let loose, it's hard to put it back in the box.

A big part of the problem is that many of us were taught that one of the greatest signs of spiritual maturity is the self-discipline to do God's will even when we don't want to.

Empowerment without a platform is like responsibility without authority. In too many of our churches, we offer discipleship training and leadership training without providing any significant platform for people to do the things they've been trained to do.

There was no getting around it. Whether it was a chronic deceiver like Jacob, a horn-dog like Samson, a never-believe-God-the-first-time warrior like Gideon, or a zealous persecutor like the apostle Paul, God had a way of blessing and using the wrong people.

Let's be honest. Chad is not an exception. Our churches have long been filled with people who claim to be Christ followers but who live like pagans. Our lives have not been all that different when it comes to things such as divorce, sexual purity, forgiving those who wrong us, loving our enemies, slander, gossip, and the harder things of discipleship.

He could clearly see what was happening right in front of him. But he couldn't see what God was doing off in the distance. As

When we offer forgiveness to those who have no excuse—and for things most of the world would consider unforgivable—we become most like Jesus. Remember, he died for sins he never committed to forgive people who had no right to be forgiven.

Jesus was making it clear that the most important thing in pleasing God is not a particular approach to spirituality or style of ministry; it's the fruit that matters, the end results produced by our life and ministry.

Serial innovators don't fall into the tinkering trap. They don't try to fix everything that's broken or improve things that aren't running perfectly. Instead, they focus on fixing the things that will make the biggest difference.

Then there's Daniel. He's the poster child for hanging tough and doing the right thing no matter what. All he had to do to avoid the horrifying prospect of being eaten alive by lions was to stop publicly praying to God for thirty days. Thirty days. Not forever. Just thirty days.13 But he wouldn't go there. He knew that a path called disobedience was far worse than a valley called death. So he kept praying and ended up in a lion's den. Suppose he'd looked

Inner peace and a clear conscience can't always be trusted.

If the back door of a church is left wide open, it doesn't matter how many people are coaxed to come in the front door—or the side door, for that matter.

The third kind of soil was weed infested, resulting in a crop that once again looked good for a while but eventually was choked off by what Jesus called the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things.

First, it strongly emphasizes evangelism. Every group is required to have an empty chair that is supposed to be filled with a new Christian before the year is out. Second, it's based on the idea that the most effective way to bring new Christians into the larger church is to first reach them through a small group.

Third, it promises the potential of unlimited evangelism and church growth, because groups can grow and divide indefinitely—thus providing care and connectedness no matter how large the church gets.

I grew up in a church where we studied one passage or topic in the Sunday sermon, another in Sunday school, still another on Sunday night, and something entirely different on Wednesday night. Frankly, I never had much of a clue as to what we were studying—something related to the Bible, I suppose. The teaching was far too disjointed to create any sense of focus, and for most of us it was more of a data overload than anything else.

In particular we'll look in depth at sermon-based small groups, a lecture-lab model for studying the weekend sermon in-depth during the week. We'll see how they work. We'll explain why they have the power to make your church especially sticky. And we'll discover why so many of the traditional small group models we've tried in the past sound great but don't work all that well in real life.