Living the Five: Participant and Leader Book - Softcover

Cowart, Jim; Cowart, Jennifer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501825097 ISBN 13: 9781501825095

Publisher: Abingdon Press, 2016

Synopsis

An alternative type of small group is emerging in the community with less overhead and more mobility, which allows the congregation to reach into smaller settings. The community group harnesses the potent combination of evangelism and ethics, recalled from Wesley’s class meetings, which fueled the Methodist awakening in the UK and USA. In the 19th-century Methodist movement, Sunday schools often were organized in village settings and eventually became congregations.

Harvest Church (www.harvestchurch4u.org), a young United Methodist congregation twenty miles southwest of Macon, met for seven years
(on Sundays) on the move in a rented theatre. They learned about adaptive systems, digital multimedia tools, and flexible overhead. Since building a multipurpose facility on 43 acres near Warner Robins, Georgia in 2007, Harvest Church applied what they learned about mobility and sustained rapid growth to 2,700 in worship attendance, with seven weekend services. They dispensed with a typical education wing (at significant cost savings) and classrooms in favor of four multipurpose rooms. Over the past two years they adopted a community group strategy. This type of community groups is evolving at several other large churches (e.g., the independant Seacoast Church) by establishing “community groups” primarily in homes. In the first year they have expanded from 72 community groups to over 300 community groups, and more than 100% participation.

Living the Five Participant and Leader Guide and the Living the Five videos are positioned as the initiating resource for every community group. Each community group is oriented to live out five declarative principles:

1. You can’t do life alone.
2. Growing people change.
3. Saved people serve people.
4. Found people find people.
5. Worship is a lifestyle.

About this title

About the Author:

Jim Cowart is the founding pastor of Harvest Church, a United Methodist congregation in Warner Robins, GA, near Macon. Harvest launched in 2001, and has an average attendance of 3,000 each weekend.  The church grows primarily through professions of faith from new Christians. The innovative “community group” strategy is producing more than 350 small groups meeting in homes and workplaces.

Jim serves as a trainer and coach, helping pastors launch and maintain healthy church environments. For more information go to harvestchurch4u.org.

Jennifer Cowart is the executive pastor at Harvest Church, a United Methodist congregation in Warner Robins, Georgia, that she and her husband, Jim, began in 2001. Today Harvest serves about 2,500 people in seven worship services weekly. With degrees in Christian education, counseling, and business, she oversees a wide variety of ministries and enjoys doing life and ministry with others. As a gifted Bible teacher and speaker, Jen brings biblical truth to life through humor, authenticity, and everyday application. She is the author of the Bible study Messy People: Life Lessons from Imperfect Biblical Heroes. In addition, she and her husband, Jim, have co-written several small group studies including Hand Me Downs and Living the Five. They are the proud parents of two children.

About this edition

• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1501825097
• ISBN 13: 9781501825095
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 104