Go Big: Lead Your Church to Explosive Growth

Our church hired a professional church growth coach to assist us to reach more people for Christ and to improve our ministry. The coach recommended this book to our pastor and we have been reading it as a staff. It has been helpful to present things we have never thought about. Sometimes ministry can be a routine and this book assist in breaking the routine. The chapters are... 1. The Difference is in the Zeroes 2. A Wild and Crazy God 3. Structuring Your Church for Growth 4. It's Time to Lead, Pastor! 5. Double Your Vision 6. Preparing to Break Church Growth Barriers 7. The Growth Barriers 8. Staffing the Church for Explosive Growth 9. Saved to Serve 10. Make a Big "Ask" of Yourself 11. Handling Problem People 12. Positoning Ourselves for Explosive Growth This book will challenge what you do and what you believe. You will be joyful, excited, and sometimes frustrated while reading it.

I love the ideas in this book. As a missionary for many years, I have seen church pastors, leaders, and members with very little Bible training put together wonderful churches. Now that I am a pastor in the US I am amazed at how tenaciously people hold to the ideas that more Biblical training or a deeper devotional life will produce a bigger, stronger church. It isn't always Bible training or deeper devotion that grows a church. Often what is needed is just a new set of ideas to help navigate a paradigm shift or to see perhaps for the first time what is being done poorly. Our church is probably not alone in being able to say, "We have found the enemy, and it is us." This book offers fresh perspectives, and I look forward to implementing as much of it as I can.

All across the U.S. there are 10s of thousands of churches in decline or dying, many of which are in growing population areas. Easum and Cornelius put forth a clear, concise, and unmistakeable call to action, to reach out and bring people to Christ and the Church. This book is worth the price if all it does is shatter the self-imposed limitations that clergy and churches place around themselves in terms of the potential for making disciples in most locations. But there are also many practical suggestions to consider and apply. The book is written in easy to understand language and a no-nonsense approach. It's short enought to read and start putting into practice, rather than try to decipher what it means. I personally appreciate the direct approach. Highly recommended.

This was one of the most practical and challenging books on church leadership that I have read in many years. As a pastor with 36 years of ministry experience, I found it inspiring as it challenged my thinking in so many areas. I bought a number of copies and have been passing them on to friends in ministry. Every church leader and aspiring church leader should digest Go Big. Definitley my top book of 2006.

I just finished reading this book and all I can say is WOW! (I posted this on my blog but I wanted to post it here too.) I first came across Bil Cornelius (Yes, he spells his first name with one "L") at the ChurchPlanters.com conference last year. He taught a break out session on creative service planning that was absolutely filled with great thoughts and ideas. Truthfully, the session was more about how to lead and grow your church than planning a service and I took a lot of notes. I also took note of Bil himself. He seemed down to earth and it was readily apparent that he just wanted to help other church planters. He had his wife with him that day too and you could tell that they have a wonderful relationship. I was truly impressed with this dude. I simply can't stress how great this little book (129 pages) is. I started highlighting important stuff in yellow in chapter one and now almost my entire copy is dripping yellow ink. The book is filled with so much wisdom and direction. The pull quotes alone would be worth the price of the book IMHO. I like practical books and this one is just that. It's written by two men that have obviously seen it all, or at least most of it, and they shoot straight throughout the book. It's like some incredible church growth and leadership conference in a book format. The Bill's don't pull any punches. I found myself convicted and challenged. I felt like those two guys "lovingly" kicked me in the seat of my pants. They inspired me and helped increase my vision for what my church could and should be. Again, two thumbs up for this book. I wish every pastor I knew had a copy. In the last chapter they mention that they plan to release a series of books like this one. They say that the next three are going to cover small groups, children's ministry and worship. I can't wait. I want to pre-order mind today!