Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book For Small Groups
Review: Many churches in the world and begining to start small group ministries in there churches. There are many many books on the subject that churches can choose from on how to run small groups. A must book for church leaders to read before starting, or have an already estabilshed small group ministry is Randy Frazee's book "The Connecting Church". Frazee does an excellent job in telling the reader that really biblical community need to be happening in the small groups. When real biblical community happens, then the real change beings in the lives of the people. Frazee does an excellent job in showing how a chruch can make sure biblical community is happening. The great things also is Frazee is a pastor doin ministry, and knows what it means to have a church connect. A great book, easy to read and understand!
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Thesis Explored and Implemented
Review: Many will be attracted by the premise of this book: the loss of community and its recovery.Frazee and his church have made significant research and effort into exploring the topic and beginning its recovery. The main culprits that have allowed community to be eroded out of the American scene are individualism, consumerism and isolationism/independence. The solution they discovered from among "community" doers exhibited a given set of characteristics (fifteen in all) which can be organized into three central foci: common purpose, common possessions and common place. The stickler here is that this necessitates being countercultural. Frazee outlines one way how this idea of Christian community could be played out in a congregational setting. He must be credited with not being dogmatic about his ideas or thoughts on implementation, e.g. "I openly confess that this is not an all-or-nothing proposition. ... In my estimation, the application of any of the characteristics of community will dynamically enhance the life of your congregation." This is exceedingly well said and is the premium reading this book provides. A Biblical study of NT fellowship and unity, i.e. koinonia will garner much more emphasis around the God given means of grace, Word and Sacraments. As this is where the Lord is to call, nourish and lead His people, this should be far more the emphasis than programmatic organizational schemes. For this to happen as the Good Shepherd proclaims, He gives the church "the called and ordained servants of the Word" which Frazee downplays severly (pg. 233). Christ's body should rejoice as this reader for this fine work which addresses many of the inherent faults with church growth up till now. His diagnosis of the need for more common creed, etc. are commendable. Get's one truly thinking about what should be at the core of "church," i.e. community.
Rating: 
Summary: Making small groups cohesive
Review: Pastor Frazee relates his experience of building a stronger church by creating a more authentic community (through small groups). I found the dicussion interesting in the way it also could relate outside of a religious setting.
Rating:
Summary: Good Thoughts and Diagnosis, Questionable Remedy
Review: Randy Frazee gives us something to think about in this work. His diagnosis is solid: many people do not connect within the church, and attempts to connect are often, "contrived and forced..."; these words, "contrived and forced" are, in a sense, the heart of the book's agenda. Frazee wants to replace contrived attempts with genuine connectedness, and for that he is to be respected. How can people learn to be social creatures again? Our society has lost its ability to connect socially, and many look to the church to provide the answer. When people do look, they are often disappointed. Frazee shows how modern behavior patterns and mindsets sabotage the possibility of building deep relationships. His book is divided into three sections. The first, "Connecting to A Common Purpose" explores the problem of individualism and how discovering and agreeing upon Biblical purpose can (theroretically) address it. He offers practical suggestions, like limiting kids to only one sport, etc., so that families have time to get together with other families. The second section, "Connecting to A Common Place" talks about the need for stability: staying put in a church, in a job, and in a neighborhood. The third section, "Connecting to Common Possessions" is a very moderate approach toward helping and sharing with one another. Do not be afraid of this section: it is balanced and reasonable. There are many quotables in this book. Here is my favorite from page 142, "Most pastors have come to realize that they can plan for new members to be a part of the church for only two to five years before these members move again. So prevalent is this mobility phenomenon that most people assume a new relationship isn't going to last long before one or the other of them (or both) moves away--so why bother getting started in the first place, the thinking goes." Although I shouted a few "Amens" while reading this work, I disagree with Frazee's solution. The problem with this volume-- and others like it-- is that people who follow such approaches do not get comfortable with their humanity and that of others. Or, to put it another way, engineering relationships does not work. Even Frazee's program, if followed by people with this common "connecting deficit" defect, will still be contrived. People who are social and value relationships will tend to stay put and build life-long friendships. The others can rarely be convinced. There is something dysfunctional about a person who cannot connect: the problem is not usually lack of structure. Though perhaps the majority of modern Americans do not connect well, the first step is to face the reality that they have the defect. Tense people who long to connect often defeat connecting by their tense desire to do so. Connecting people are at ease with and enjoy people. And until a person is at ease with humanity and imperfection, he cannot be a connector. For example, one of Frazee's suggested social activity is watching videos together. People who connect (not because they are part of some contrived program) enjoy people so much, they'd probably rather play cards. Additionally, better than connecting is becoming a connector. Since churches generally accept anybody, people with poor social skills get away with murder in a church context. We reward them.
If you really want to understand connecting, you are better off studying secular groups where people connect because they have relational depth, not because there is an ethic to include anybody and everybody. Books like, "Bowling Along" (Putnam) are most illuminating here. Do you subscribe to and read your daily paper? Do you make the effort to meet a new neighbor? Do you watch the news and vote? Do you belong to clubs or civic organizations? Do you watch only a moderate amount of TV? Do you have people over for a visit at least once a month? Is your church attendance faithful, including dinners and special events? Do you serve in a ministry? Odds are those who said "yes" to most of the above are the real connectors. Frazee is right in this regard: the church should provide opportunities for connection. But connectors will thrive even with few such opportunities, and most non-connectors will not genuinely connect no matter what the structure. Non-connectors, instead, need to realize that they have a defect and learn by imitating connectors how to overcome it. Opportunities to connect will train future generations and help those who are truly teachable and aware of their connecting deficit. And for these teachable people, Frazee's approach will work--if coupled with a desire to connect socially not only in church, but to the community as well.
Rating: 
Summary: NT Church for the 21st Century?
Review: Randy Frazee's "The Connecting Church" is a book not unlike a coin; it has two sides--hope and frustration. Reading it will find you both wistful and pounding the table. Unfortunately, you end the book doing the latter.
Frazee is one of a cadre of author/pastors spearheading a self-proclaimed renaissance within Christianity. Often called "postmodern Christianity" or "The Emerging Church," this trend seeks to recover the spirit of the early New Testament Church. "The Connecting Church" embodies one of the most prominent aspects of Emerging theology: recovering deep human relationships via a "satellite house/neighborhood church" model.
Tested within his own church in TX, the ideas espoused by the author take small groups to the extreme. Instead of traveling by car to a small affinity group of ten or so, the small group is your entire neighborhood. You reach your neighborhood by incorporating the people in it into your group through strong relationships and friendship evangelism. In a variation, a set of Christians moves together into a neighborhood and pursues the same ends.
The part that few people will object to is living out a Mayberry-like ideal of community. You open your homes and lives to your group. You socialize with your group daily, almost to the exclusion of other relationships, pouring yourself relationally into a set of people that will stay together for years. Its an accumulation of social capital now sorely lacking in most people's lives.
The larger church body itself works to enact a consistent discipleship program that supports the neighborhood groups. It has a distinct preaching cycle that repeats yearly. This program has measurable checkoffs for spiritual growth, meaning the church can see how effective it is in this area. The teachings aim to release people from a prison of consumerism, careerism, and isolation into a balanced love of God and love for others. In its purest form, this model moves into a semi-communal living mode that can even include shared possessions.
A superficial reading of this book yields an immediate desire to make it work. I know that I would love to try to make such a community possible. But problems exist. As much as Frazee insists that people stay in one place, the nature of work today means that a family moves nearly every seven years, usually as a result of work situations. With the last recession forcing many families to move just to put food on the table, unless the Church in America is willing to work harder to help Christians keep their jobs, the dream of staying in one place is elusive. Truth is, the small rural communities revered in "The Connecting Church" are progressively becoming ghost towns because the jobs went elsewhere.
There are other issues with idealizing small, tightknit, rural communities; in the book, the very model Frazee encourages cannot be applied to small, rural communities at all! It's inherently a suburban or city-only model. It's odd that Frazee cannot provide a workable modern solution for the very type of community he idolizes. I live in the country, and as much as I'd like to implement Frazee's model here, the basic elements of it do not play well in the countryside.
Lastly, the emphasis on keeping neighbors together creates an unintentional ghetto-ization of the Church. If the residents of a rich neighborhood are encouraged to stay together exclusively, as is the poorer neighborhood, when will they mix? They used to mix on Sundays at the church, but Frazee encourages hanging with your group even at the whole church meetings. And as much as the goal is to create multigenerational, multicultural communities, most neighborhoods are remarkably homogeneous.
In the end, the proof of concept is in the doing. Churches in my area that have adopted the model in "The Connecting Church" have been disappointed in the results, many abandoning it altogether. People are quite set in their ways, and the old small group model that is based mostly on affinity is not that creaky, yet. Like the Israelites who had to entirely die off before their descendants finally entered the promised land, this generation of Christians may some day pass on and allow Frazee's model to assume prominence in an upcoming generation that fully embraces it.
"The Connecting Church" is filled with great ideas and will definitely get you thinking. Hopefully, Frazee will work out the bugs and find an audience willing to give it a try.
Rating:
Summary: Essential Reading for All
Review: Randy Frazee's book, "The Connecting Church", has influenced my thoughts on numerous areas of spirituality, Christian living, and church as much as any book I've read. Frazee's insights into daily life in today's large cities form an essential foundation for understanding so many of our current frustrations, both personal and institutional, both spiritual and emotional. To try to lead a spiritually or emotionally fulfilling life in the city, or to try to lead a church with any relevance to lives of citydwellers, one has to understand the basics of the development of the city. It is worth mentioning here that cities are not generally mentioned in a favorable light in the Bible. The Genesis story, from the fate of Cain to the fate of Babel, indicates serious concerns that God has about the development of cities. We should join Frazee, then, in not presuming that the lifetyle dictated by the modern city provides either an opportunity for personal fulfillment or, for Christian leaders, an opportunity for ministry. Maybe the city is the problem. Maybe the city developed from diverse forces which were oblivious to the spiritual and psychic needs of the self, such that to fulfill those needs, one needs to rebel against that which the city claims is normal daily life. It is striking that the mode of daily life for over 99% of human history - in which one has a single circle of friends that span work, neighborhood, religious life and leisure, all of whom know each other and see each other spontaneously and frequently - has radically ended in the modern city. Now we have numerous circles of friends, who don't know the friends in the other circles, and very few of whom do we run into spontaneously. Rather, our get-togethers with friends are usually highly-scheduled and coordinated events, of necessity, in today's sprawled and fragmented city. To think that one can have personal community, much less a church that ministers to people effectively, when we live this way, is a key source of our frustrations. Frazee's book further develops this thesis, with which I agree, and then advises the reader on creating the conditions for spiritual enrichment within the city.
Rating:
Summary: Essential Reading for All
Review: Randy Frazee's book, "The Connecting Church", has influenced my thoughts on numerous areas of spirituality, Christian living, and church as much as any book I've read. Frazee's insights into daily life in today's large cities form an essential foundation for understanding so many of our current frustrations, both personal and institutional, both spiritual and emotional. To try to lead a spiritually or emotionally fulfilling life in the city, or to try to lead a church with any relevance to lives of citydwellers, one has to understand the basics of the development of the city. It is worth mentioning here that cities are not generally mentioned in a favorable light in the Bible. The Genesis story, from the fate of Cain to the fate of Babel, indicates serious concerns that God has about the development of cities. We should join Frazee, then, in not presuming that the lifetyle dictated by the modern city provides either an opportunity for personal fulfillment or, for Christian leaders, an opportunity for ministry. Maybe the city is the problem. Maybe the city developed from diverse forces which were oblivious to the spiritual and psychic needs of the self, such that to fulfill those needs, one needs to rebel against that which the city claims is normal daily life. It is striking that the mode of daily life for over 99% of human history - in which one has a single circle of friends that span work, neighborhood, religious life and leisure, all of whom know each other and see each other spontaneously and frequently - has radically ended in the modern city. Now we have numerous circles of friends, who don't know the friends in the other circles, and very few of whom do we run into spontaneously. Rather, our get-togethers with friends are usually highly-scheduled and coordinated events, of necessity, in today's sprawled and fragmented city. To think that one can have personal community, much less a church that ministers to people effectively, when we live this way, is a key source of our frustrations. Frazee's book further develops this thesis, with which I agree, and then advises the reader on creating the conditions for spiritual enrichment within the city.
Rating:
Summary: A worth while read
Review: The book is a great step toward community. What Randy Fazee is writing about is not how to start a small group ministry or about church growth, instead he is describing how Pantego Bible Church is intentionally working at authentic Christian community. For that alone, I think the book is worth while reading. There are good examples and well thought out strategy accompanied by a good analysis of American culture. I agree with the overall cultural analysis but it seemed overly nostalgic at times, remembering back to the good old days when the world was a better place to live in. I remember Socrates complaining about a similar situation in Ancient Greece. The book also does not address what different challeges there might be if one tried authentic community in an urban and multiethnic setting. This is to be expected since the Pantego Bible Church is a suburban church. All that said, the book is on the right track.
Rating:
Summary: recaptures the lost art of "community"
Review: The important offering this book makes to the Church in this day, I think, is how it recaptures the idea of Biblical community (which of course, fleshes itself out as sharing a common vision, common values, a common place...etc...). It speaks of "connecting" to each other, connecting to God... I will be intrigued to see how Frazee's vision (no doubt God-inspired) fleshes itself out in other locales, as other leaders begin implementing like ideas. Even if you can't lead your congregation to do the things he suggests (going to a small group structure, etc.) there are still some valuable concepts you can take that will show you how to connect better with those around you at your church, your work, and in your home. Face it, we're lonely people. And we need each other. This book is important in that it takes an honest look at that... the lost art of belonging...
Rating: 
Summary: Pepetuating church not Christ.
Review: There is a huge difference between encouraging people to Christ or encouraging them to become part of an institution. The author seems to strongly encourage people to become a part of Christ - but by that he really means become a part of the church. In this way Christians are taught to lose their individuality (the very thing that makes us human beings) and sell themselves to the church. Isn't this cultish?
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