Small Giants is a secular business book that challenges the “big is best” and “grow or die” assumptions of many business guru’s.

Bo Burlingham (cool name!), uses case studies of fourteen companies that deliberately turned down opportunities to grow big and maximise profits.
Instead of quantity, these “small giants” chose to maximise quality. Quality of their product, quality of their work relationships, quality of life outside work and quality of impact on their communities.

“Cell” has always said that small is beautiful, but we have also tended to see small groups as an efficient tool to achieve mega growth. Truth is, I reckon I’d rather belong to a “small giant” church.

Richard White

Cell UK magazine are looking for stories from cell members of how they have been empowered through cell and have influenced/ included their friends through their journey to faith.

The deadline is 20 September. The number of words: anything between 100 and 400.

Plus a head and shoulders photo of yourself.

Please email both photo and contribution to:
Penny Weighman: penny@weighties.net

At last week’s European Cell Symposium, Phil Potter spoke about the conference title, “A New Kind of Leader”. He drew together five images from recent books, articles and discussions about the need for changing approaches to leadership in a changeing world.

To wet your appetite, we were invited to move from…

1. lighthouses to rafts (attracting to attaching)

2. diving boards to surfboards (restructuring to reimagining)

3. orchestras to jazz bands (orchestrating to improvising)

4. generals to gardeners (controlling to cultivating)

5. spiders to starfish (retaining to releasing)

The full transcript is available todownload by clicking here. It raises lots of questions and issues, so please do add your comments.

(In his later session, Ben Wong, beautifully drew together all five points under the observation that the people of God have always craved a king, and the “senior pastor” tends to be happy to play that role - but God is into theocracy!)