Every church, regardless of size, is a tribal church, and church leaders must know who those tribes are and how to relate to them, according to Steve Stroope and Kurt Bruner in their book Tribal Church: Lead Small. Impact Big. The book goes on to discuss many different types of tribes including family tribes, life group tribes, leadership tribes, elder tribes, generation tribes, campus tribes and the unreached tribe.
Woven amongst the discussion of tribes are glimpses of the remarkable story of the growth and ministries of Lake Pointe Church since its start in 1979. Lake Pointe has grown to be a very big church, but the book is not about aspiring to be big; it is about being faithful to your present opportunities to minister to the tribe or tribes that make up your church. Lake Pointe has multiple campuses, but all are reasonably close, with the purpose of encouraging those who were already coming to Lake Pointe to be salt and light in their local community.
The family tribe is an important focus of the book, both with regard to the church leader’s own family and the families in the church. The family is regarded as God’s primary vehicle for spiritual formation, and Lake Pointe provides a number of family resources and runs frequent church-wide campaigns encouraging families to take responsibility for their children’s spiritual formation such as by praying together at least 5 times per week.
There is always something to be learned from looking at how another church approaches ministry. Lake Pointe has clearly been influenced by others such as Saddleback and Willow Creek, but it has its own distinctive culture and practices. Most large churches experience some difficulties in trying to give attenders the “small church” experience as well as the “big church”, and it seems to me that there is much to learn from the tribal approach advocated by the authors.