The Big Idea: Aligning the Ministries of Your Church Through Creative Collaboration

This is a must read for any pastor who wants the synergy of team leadership. It is full of practical suggestions that will focus your team and help you lead in a relevant way to reach today's generation of seekers. Great read!

This highly practical book on not just preaching, but church-wide discipleship, is written by one of the leading, Biblically conservative churches today in the areas of creative communication, team-based ministry, evangelism and leadership development. Community Christian Church in Chicago is also recognized as one of the top five leading multi-site churches. The authors make a clear case that most of our churches send anywhere from 30 to 100 messages a week as to what we want our people to respond to in their growth. Our Sunday services, alone, often send 20-50 messages. In The Big Idea, the authors make a case for focusing the message to one Big Idea throughout the entire worship experience for the week and asking for clear response to that one idea in all areas of our church. They convincingly make the case that, in the long term, better discipleship occurs if we can yield a greater application response to the messages being sent--so people are living what they know rather than knowing far more than they live. Don't be intimidated by the author's success and size of church--they communicate very simply. Along the way they give suggestions for how smaller churches can begin to use some or all of what they share. This is not a book about a program, rather it is a book with lots of practical leadership process steps that can be gleaned from and subsequently contextualize to your own style, leadership and setting. You will quickly note this approach to communicating for discipleship is used by their multi-site mega church as well as church plants. After reading the first two chapters, I thought this book would make it on my top 10 list of must read leadership skills books for pastors. By the end of the book it was still in my top 25 and probably top 20. While the book is well illustrated throughout, I was left longing for just a few more varied examples. I especially was hoping that the authors would deal more with expositional preaching from the perspective of using that style of preaching to demonstrate good personal spiritual disciplines as a way of modeling. They did a very short, excellent bullet point treatment of ways to approach topical preaching--though this was the primary area I wished for more detailed illustrations of each approach (even if the examples were simply web links to sermons that could be listened to so as to learn more about how to effectively construct each kind of approach). If the authors had more extensively illustrated some of these ideas I would be telling you this is the best book on discipleship and preaching I have ever read. As it stands, it is still a great book that is sure to provide you with helpful ideas you can begin to implement quickly.

I had a hunch that this book would be good. Especially from a "practical" standpoint. But I was taken back how the authors were able to weave theology & missionality within the context of The Big Idea. Therefore the book, in my opinion, had an even a deeper impact than I was expecting. I also enjoy the fact that the book was written by men who are actively engaged in the process. It's not a history book about how they built a multi-site mega church and planted multiple churches in some of the least-church cities in America (Boston & NYC) 10 years ago. These boys are living within the mess and complexities of the Jesus mission via the local church. Which I think adds so much power and purpose to the book. I also really like the "adaptability" of the book. It's more fluid than stoic, and every church can take the ideas and principles and tweak them for their local community and environments. This book can also "cross-pollinate" to various "streams" of church and even the business world. Whether your a mega-church, emerging church, church plant, or traditional/contemporary church, at the end of the day if you do a weekly gathering, then this book can quickly help you process that gathering and be more effective. And if the principles are followed, I think a lot of churches will see an overall improvement that will create a healthy local church culture. Good planning will help cause less stress and conflict, and increase the value of the church in their local community as we (church) strive to truly do our very best to communicate the Jesus story. I think this book should be apart of every pastors library. Matter-of-fact, I think all church planting organizations should add this text to their "must reads" for future planters, it's that helpful. I also like the fact the The Big Idea calls churches to be more effective, to become good stewards of our time and resources and to put our best foot forward as we try to serve the world and move the mission of Jesus forward. You can also check out The BIG IDEA Resources & The BIG IDEA Blog

Review: "The Big Idea: Focus The Message, Multiply The Impact" A Leadership Network Innovation Series by Dave Ferguson, Jon Ferguson, and Eric Bramlett A Review by Dr. Henry Judy It has been a long time since there was a book published that has the God ordained ability to impact the church in such a huge way as The Big Idea. For a long time, I have been saying that the people in churches today for the most part are just NOT getting it. We think it is a program problem but it is not. It is a process problem and Dave Ferguson, with Jon Ferguson, and Eric Bramlett have not only brought the problem to the forefront, but provided a process for correction. Hence the concept of "The Big Idea." Now what is paramount is that this process is not hypothetical in nature. It is a proven concept being used with great success by Community Christian Church in Naperville, Ill. So it works and it will work in every single church out there that is serious about the Jesus Mission. How do we know it works? It is measurable. Not only in terms of individual transformations but in terms of fruitful reproduction of other churches. The Big idea is the gasoline that will be the foundation for life change in a new movement of reproducing churches. It is Spirit written, Spirit, conceived, and Spirit applicable and if you are serious about wanting to reach people for Jesus and have their lives transformed, then you will devour this book like Momma's Sweet Potato Pie. Buy This Book and put its principles to work if you want to be a part of people's lives being transformed.

This is in my top 5 books that every pastor or staff pastor should read. Dave does a great job not only of explaining the big idea and its need but gives practical and easy ways to implement. Buy this book to truly impact the people you lead.