Below is a review of Brad House’s book Community that I wrote a few months back. I have also included a detailed outline of the book’s contents in case you are looking for more substance than my summary provides.

Community: Taking Your Small Group Off Life Support. By Brad House. Good News Publishers. Kindle Edition. 239 p., $8.79.

Brad House, the Community Groups pastor at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, offers the church a helpful manual on how to develop a distinctly Christian understanding of community. House has watched the unprecedented growth of Mars Hill over the years. This growth involved many growing pains, which forced him and the pastoral staff to reevaluate the way they approach “community.” Community: Taking Your Small Group Off Life Support contains the results of Pastor House’s ministry.

House’s desire is that churches will see Community Groups as more than another program. Church leadership must not employ Community Groups in their churches if their only goal is to artificially judge the health of the church by tabulating the number of attendees it attracts. Such an approach will never last. It is short-sighted, and it stands upon a week foundation. Pastor House writes, “I want to bring together theology and ministry philosophy with practical application and strategy that is worked out with effectiveness” (237-8). The book is, accordingly, broken up into three parts.

First, House lays a solid theological foundation for life in community. Without this solid foundation, the church quickly loses sight of the fact that all it does is for the glory of God and for his mission.

Part II moves beyond the theological foundation to assess how the church traditionally implements Community Groups. House suggests that the church must begin anew. Wednesday evening Bible Study wherein the participants hang their heads with shifty eyes trying to not be noticed or engaged will not do. Community Groups must be an expression of Christianity lived together. Each individual will be invested in the mission of God. Conversations with one another will focus on the gospel and how it relates to our day to day live. Hearts will be transformed by the Spirit of God, and will transform the world around them. Community Groups will participate in reaching their neighbors with the gospel through hospitably and through participating in the regular happenings of neighborhood life.

Part III, the final section of the book, provides a look at how to incorporate the concepts presented in the previous two sections into the life of the church. First, pastors, head coaches, coaches, group leaders, and individual believers must all be committed to the gospel that brings confession, repentance, and transformation. Without this element, all else is futile. Second, the pastor(s) must communicate vision and mission to the body at large. This can be accomplished by 7 consecutive 2 hour meetings that focus on truth, repentance, vision, engaging neighborhoods, rhythms as lifestyle, strategy, and implementation.

House’s contributions on Community Groups is invaluable for the church. He has provided churches with a more than adequate theological framework for community. Every believer, especially in an age that is characterized by fragmentation and isolation, must understand that he or she is built for community. The Holy Trinity forever subsists in unbroken fellowship. Each member of the Trinity shares in the being of the other. God created human beings with his image. Relational living, or community, is one expression of that image. Though the image was corrupted in the Fall through the entrance of sin into the world, Jesus Christ has brought reconciliation and restoration to mankind. Men and women can once again enter into a relationship with God and with one another. Solitary living, therefore, is unchristian living.

House also places a premium on “missional” living. Though the terminology might be different, House’s formulation for missional living is strikingly similar with Martin Luther’s understanding of “vocation.” That is to say, each and every believer has a responsibility to live out his or her life in the place where God has called him to the glory of God. This includes imaging Christ in word and deed to our co-workers, neighbors, and fellow believers. The gospel must be central to the life of the believer. If this is true, then the believer cannot help but have a heart for the spiritually dead around him. He will become all things to all people in order that some might be saved.

Though House’s work has much worthy of commendation, there are a number of assumptions that must be questioned. First, House claims that the head pastor must relinquish control of his flock. He cannot be responsible for overseeing everything that takes place in the church. He cannot know the whole body and tend to their needs. He must raise up capable leaders and trust them to succeed. Anything less is arrogance rooted in the attitude, “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” While House offers much sound wisdom here, the structural outworking of his model is liable to fall prey to the cult of personality, hierarchism, and empire building. Consider the following: Mars Hill Church is essentially a conglomerate of churches. Pastor Mark Driscoll is the “Senior Pastor.” Driscoll is the teaching pastor and the vision caster for all campuses under the banner “Mars Hill.” Each “campus” is led by a “Campus Pastor.” The Campus Pastor provides the framework for Sunday morning services. He introduces the service, offers prayers when appropriate, and dismisses the congregation. But he does not share in the role of teaching for the church. Teaching is piped in via video feed from the “main campus.” This structure is the basis for Community Groups. Though the Senior Pastor has “relinquished control” in order to “raise up leaders,” it seems as if he has forsaken his pastoral responsibilities in favor of a larger and more efficiently run organization.[1]

Community Groups, as envisioned by Pastor House, tend towards isolationism. This critique might seem far afield, considering the fact that he exhorts us towards “community.” Yet, when the church is structured around Community Groups, all activities in the church are tailored for Community Groups, and the church expects the Community Groups to be self-sufficient in terms of ministry and fellowship opportunities, then a disconnect is created between the Community Group (a small expression of the church body, as House describes it) and the larger church body. If the Community Group functions as designed, then each individual gets to know 10 other people in the church body well, but has no contact with anyone else within the church. I believe that this tendency can be guarded against, but such measures would require other “opportunities” for participation within the larger church body.