Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups

Church leaders want to know how to make small groups work for their church communities, yet a quick look around shows that while small groups are popular, much of the time they create more problems than they solve. Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas, founding pastors of The Journey Church in the heart of New York City, suggest that this failure is due to widely held beliefs about small groups that just aren't true--and they aim to debunk the myths and set the record straight! Drawing from the startling success of small groups at The Journey Church, Searcy and Thomas show how church leaders can implement a life-changing small group ministry that gets the maximum number of people involved and solves many of the important problems facing churches of all sizes.

Nelson Searcy is the founding and lead pastor of The Journey Church. Started in 2002 in New York City, this groundbreaking church sees the majority of its growth coming from new believers and currently meets in locations in Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island, as well as additional locations in San Francisco and Boca Raton. Nelson is the recipient of the prestigious 2013 Donald A. McGavran Award for Outstanding Leadership in Great Commission Research. He is the author of more than seventy-five church growth resources and twelve books, including The Generosity Ladder, Maximize, Connect, and Ignite. Nelson is also an experienced church planter, coach, and church-growth strategist. Before to founding The Journey, he served as the director of the Purpose Driven Community at Saddleback Church. He is also the founder of ChurchLeaderInsights.com and the Renegade Pastors Network.

Kerrick Thomas is a teaching pastor at The Journey Church and regularly co-leads training events with Nelson Searcy. Prior to his move to New York to plant The Journey, he received a Masters of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary.