"If you really want to experience community in our church join a small group." I've heard those or similar words from well meaning and sincere pastors, church leaders, and small group leaders from around the country. If small groups create community, why have my small-group experiences been rife with menial relationships? I am convinced I'm not alone in failing to find a sense of belonging and community in many of my small-group experiences. Joseph Myers has helped revolutionize my approach and emphasis within small-group ministry.

• The Search to Belong: Rethinking intimacy, community, and small groups, by Joseph R. Myers. Forewords by John Wooden and Leonard Sweet. 181p., Zondervan, $16.99.

Don't get me wrong; I believe small groups are important. However, looking to small groups to create community trivializes the community we experience outside small groups. This book challenged the assumptions I held about small-group ministry, and will probably challenge some of yours as well.

Myers discusses four relational spaces: public, social, personal, and intimate. We live and experience community within these four spaces. Small groups are only one aspect of that. There is no hierarchy in relational spaces, and intimacy isn't our goal. Instead, as Myers points out, maintaining a healthy ratio of relationships in all four spaces creates fertile soil for building community.

Community can't be programmed. Community emerges spontaneously from the environment. Discovering this truth freed me from the guilt of failing to build community through small groups. I began to explore the glorious connections I was already experiencing in public, social, personal, and intimate space. I began to recognize, through the stories of those around me, that our community reaches far beyond our small groups.

I have to admit, I've struggled to help other leaders grasp the significance of relational space in ministry. For some of us these concepts are obvious and make sense. For others these ideas are foreign and inconsequential. I was even told by one ministry leader, "This relationship stuff is fine, but it's not getting them here. What we need to do is market our ministry, and create a dynamic environment." My understanding of scripture seems to indicate otherwise.

Fortunately, Myers helps us understand how to guide our ministry leaders in the shift to healthy community, and how to walk through the process. In the final chapter, Myers shares a conversation with one church processing the shift to healthy community. Understanding and creating opportunities for harmony in the relational spaces of your ministry will give you the health those connected to your ministry seek. Allow this book to help you open the opportunities to help others in their search to belong.

Tony Clyde is a veteran youth minister, instructional designer, and ministry consultant with more than 15 years experience in ministry.  He's a REAL Ambassador and Life Tree Ambassador for Group.  Tony and his wife Danta have been married for 15 years, and are surviving two teenage daughters. Visit Tony at www.tonyclyde.com.