Through the years, there have been a handful of churches that I’ve really admired for the unique contribution they’ve made to advancing innovation in the church to reach more people for Jesus. One of those churches is North Coast Church in Vista, California. Their use of multiple venues on their campus provided a new vision for multi-site strategy that churches across the country have embraced. Larry Osborne, North Coast’s senior pastor, has recently released a new book called Sticky Church. I caught up with him to ask him about that project and the ministry of North Coast.

TONY: For those that are unfamiliar with your ministry, would you mind sharing a little bit of North Coast’s unique story.

LARRY: We started as a Bible Study then grew into a church. Our mission is to “make disciples in a healthy church environment.” We’re a so-called mega church. But our emphasis on doing ministry in a “healthy church environment” has a huge impact upon almost everything we do.

It’s been a key to our word-of-mouth growth and it’s enabled us to stay focused on both sides of the great commission: The evangelistic side, which tells us to go out and reach the lost AND the discipleship side, which tells us to teach people to obey everything that Jesus taught us.

TONY: People may be surprised to know that your church has grown to more than 7,000 in attendance without marketing campaigns and outreach events. How did that happen?

LARRY: Think of any great restaurant. It doesn’t have to tell you to come back or bring a friend. You do it naturally. In essence, that’s the formula we’ve tried to follow as a church.

We work hard to minister to the people we have. We want to serve their spiritual needs incredibly well and do it in a way that their non-Christian friends can easily understand. As a result, they tend to spontaneously invite their friends and co-workers. We’ve never had to ask or persuade them to do so. They just do it.

We’ve also learned to slam the back door shut by providing opportunities for people to develop deep and long-term spiritual relationships. Rather than trying to pretend that everyone can care for everyone, we’ve created lots of relational pods where people are velcroed together by the kind of authentic friendships that can only be found in smaller and more stable settings. And these kinds of relationships have proven to be incredibly sticky.

TONY: One of the biggest frustrations in churches like ours is small groups. It seems like every church is trying to crack the code to improve their small group ministry. How are the groups you describe in Sticky Church different than what you’ve seen at other churches?

LARRY: Our sermon-based small groups are different than most because our focus is unashamedly on building significant spiritual relationships. The curriculum is based on the content of the previous weekend’s message. But the focus is on filling the huge relational void that most people experience in our fast-paced and highly mobile society.

It seems to me that most small group ministries talk about building relationships but quickly morph into something else altogether – a tool for church growth, evangelism or church administration. Just look at what we ask people in the groups to do. Fill an empty chair, divide, assimilate newcomers, and a host of other things that are far more about growing a bigger church than shepherding the flock.

I have a chapter in Sticky Church entitled, “Why Dividing Groups Is A Dumb Idea.” Perhaps that more than anything illustrates the different focus that we have. But it also helps to explain the phenomenal success we’ve had. For over 20 years our participation rate has equaled or exceeded 80 percent of our adult weekend attendance. We’ve kept the people we had while easily assimilating new people and new Christians. In many of the other models I’ve seen, small groups are designed to be transitory and so task specific that enduring relationships have no real chance to develop.

Let’s be honest, people hate to be used. They aren’t tools. They’re people created in the image of God. When we serve them with the servant leadership Jesus talked about, it’s amazing how willing they are to step forward and help the cause. But when they feel used, they resist – both passively and aggressively.

TONY: What advice do you have for small churches that are trying to implement the principles you share?

LARRY: If you want to close your back door, start measuring retention rates – and measure it accurately. Measure it with new believers, attenders, volunteers, small group leaders and small group members. Measure it everywhere. It will tell you how sticky you really are – and just as importantly, the very process of measuring will realign your thinking. We always get what we measure. It’s human nature.

I’d also regularly take a gut check to make sure that I haven’t fallen into the trap of viewing the people I have as tools to reach the people I want to reach. If we aren’t caring for the ones we already have, why should God send any more our way?

TONY: What, if anything, does the church need to consider with online social networking? Is that something that a truly “sticky church” needs to embrace?

LARRY: No doubt, the social networking phenomena is important – but it’s yet to be determined how radically it will realign our relational neighborhoods over the long haul, or even if it will. But in the meantime, we need to remember that social networking is just that, social networking. It can augment and broaden the quantity and quality of our relationships. But digital relationship can’t fulfill most of the biblical one anothers. That can only happen within the proximity and vulnerability of face-to-face relationships.