Better Together: Discover the Power of Community

Had a chance this week to spend some time with Better Together: Discover the Power of Community, a new book from Rusty George, Lead Pastor of Real Life Church in Valencia, California.

I requested a copy of Better Together after I heard about the book in an interview with Rusty on the Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast. I was immediately interested because I’m always looking for resources that might help promote and develop community by senior pastors who understand its essential qualities and power.

Guess what I found. After reading Better Together I get the sense that this is a senior pastor that gets community and is good at explaining its benefits.

Better Together is not theory or a complicated teaching on the theology of community. Instead, it’s a very easy read and delivers over and over with engaging personal stories about experiences (good and bad) with community.

While there are many fresh elements, at its essence, this is a book that does a good job casting a biblical vision for community by taking a 21st century look at many of the one another verses.

One aspect of Better Together puzzled me. Every chapter concludes with a pretty well-written set of discussion questions, but I’m not sure who might read it as a group. While it is certainly an easy to read and very engaging book on community, it strikes me that the people who might benefit from the discussion would be unlikely to be in a group reading it together.

Still, this is the best book I’ve read on the power of community in quite a while. Better Together is packed with good ideas and insights that will help you (or your senior pastor) cast vision for community as an essential ingredient for the life God desires for us.