He Sticky Church Analysis

Marketing gurus and advertisement experts are all ways looking for an edge over the competition. Every business claims that its product whether, clothing, cars, or the housing market has the edge. In the sports world catches, and athletes our looking for an advantage over their opponent. Swimmers have special suits designed hoping for an edge in their race. Sprinter in track and flied are often times caught cheating using a ban substance all because their want an advantage over their challengers. What will you do to gain an advantage over your opponent? Having an advantage and doing it the right way certainly can secure an edge. Larry Osborne has written a book entitle Sticky Church which gives churches an advantage of our opponent Satan. He

writes that too many of our churches focus on the front door by carry out the Great Commission as taught by Jesus. However, unfortunately, we leave the back door open, which creates a revolving door in the church. Osborne writing style is conversational, in fact he invites the reader to hang out with him with a cup of coffee and discuss the issue of ministry (16). And in our discussion we will examine why churches need to be sticky and slam the back door shut using his model of sermon based small groups. Which is the churches advantage over our opponent.

Larry Osborne has served as lead pastor of North Coast Church in San Diego, California since 1980. He is nationally recognized for training leaders, pastors and planting churches. He is a well-known conference speaker. His books include: Accidental Pharisees, Mission Creep, Thriving in Babylon, 10 Dumb Things That Smart Christians Believe, Spirituality for The Rest of Us, Sticky Teams, Sticky Church, Innovations Dirty Little Secrets, Unity Factor, and A Contrarian’s Guide to Knowing God. Larry Osborne holds both a Master of Divinity and Doctorate degrees from Talbot Theological Seminary. North Coast Church has grown from 128 to over 11,000 attending weekend services.

Summary
Sticky Church is written not to persuade the church to forget about evangelism, by contrast it is written to encourage a church to focus on the wave of people who are leaving through the back door.

Larry Osborne offer a strategy which intentionally slam shut the back door. Without marketing Osborne has develop an advantage through sermon- based small groups which make the church sticky. The book is divided into three sections with diagrams and graphs illustrating crucial advantages on stickiness throughout this work. Section one is on the sticky church advantage. The primary argument of the book is sticky churches are healthier churches, because they lead new comers to Christ; they also grow mature disciples in Christ (13). Moreover, most churches are searching for an answer in closing the back door. The idea from this book is sermon-based small groups contributes to a churches edge in closing the back door. The book tells the increasable story of how 80 percent of North Coast Church membership are committed to sermon – based small groups. An advantage of a sticky church is the focus is on developing the people inside the walls, instead attempting to secure a crowd. The value of stickiness was learned as Osborne had to put to death the dream of a big church. He realize the significant to a sticky church was putting the first thing first. Therefore, the decision was made to focus on the people he already had which would help to close the back door

(27).