Foreword by Dan Dean
Wired to
Connect
You Were Never Meant to Do Life Alone
You can be surrounded by people and still be alone. This is the book about closing that gap.
You can have 500 followers, a full inbox, and a group chat that never stops buzzing, and still not have one person who knows the real version of how you are doing.
How Connected
Are You, Really?
Twelve questions. About five minutes. You will get a score, a clear picture of where your connections actually stand, and the first step toward closing the gap. No judgment, just a truthful starting point.
🔗
The Connection Assessment
A window into where you actually are — so you know which step to take next.
12
5 min
Free
Questions
To complete
Instant access
What This Book Is About
The Case for a Different Kind
of Relational Life
You can have 500 followers, a full inbox, and a group chat that never stops buzzing, and still not have one person who knows the real version of how you are doing.
That gap is the gap this book is about. Fifteen percent of American men say they have no close friends at all. A generation ago, that number was three percent. The loneliness epidemic is now considered as dangerous to your health as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, and adding more contacts to your phone does not solve it. We have built a connected world that delivers everything except connection.
Chip Bailey grew up around a Saturday-night table in Louisiana where the door was unlocked, the gumbo was on the stove, and Rook cards came out after dinner. Years later, sitting across from coaching clients who could not name five people doing real life with them, he started to understand what he had inherited and what most people no longer have.
"We have built a connected world that delivers everything except connection."
Wired to Connect is the case for a different kind of relational life. It moves through the cultural forces that have eroded community, the cost the body and the soul pay for isolation, and the people who modeled connection well enough to leave a template behind: Chip's father, the Cracker Man whose ordinary presence shaped a town; the friendships in the world's Blue Zones where people regularly live past a hundred; the table Walt Disney saw from a hospital bed five years before anyone else could see it.
Twenty-one chapters lay out the cost of disconnection and the work of building real community. How to build what is missing if you do not have it yet. How to repair what you broke if you were the one who let a relationship drop. How to stay open after community has hurt you.
"You were made for a table. This book is the case for going back and setting yours."
"You can't build what you can't see," Andy Stanley says. Most of us have never let ourselves picture the relational life we actually want. Wired to Connect helps you see it, then hands you the first step.
The book ends in a chair — the one Chip's father sat in at 4:30 in the morning before the world woke up. Connection gets built first in the stillness, and then it gets carried into the room.
Praise for Wired to Connect
What Readers Are Saying
What you hold in your hands is more than a book about connection. It's a pastor walking you back to something you already know in your bones, a coach handing you the next step, and a friend telling you the truth most of us are too busy or too proud to say to ourselves. You are wired for this. The table is not too far gone.
— Dan Dean, Phillips, Craig and Dean; Legacy Pastor, Heartland Church (from the Foreword)
About the Author
About the Author
About Chip Bailey
Chip Bailey is an author, speaker, pastor, and life and leadership coach based in Magnolia, Texas. Through New Beginnings Texas, he helps leaders, couples, coaches, and people who have been doing it all alone find the right people and the right question at the right table. He is a Ramsey Preferred Coach, a certified John Maxwell Team member, and a number-one Amazon bestselling author.
Wired to Connect is his seventh book. Chip knows the territory he writes about. He has started over more times than he can count, rebuilding a career, a calling, and a life more than once, and somewhere in the middle of all that rebuilding he discovered the thing that had been missing all along: the right people at the right table.
Chip and his wife, Elizabeth, make their home in Magnolia, Texas. The credential that matters most is the one he names first with every client: he has been where you are, and he didn't get through it alone. Neither should you.
Start Rebuilding Your Table
Wired to Connect is available now. Pick your format and start reading today.
Free Resources
Tools to Take With You
Reading the book is the start. These free resources help you do something with what you read. Take what you need.
01
The Connection Assessment
Twelve questions to show you where your connections actually stand, with a score and a clear next step. Five minutes, and a truthful starting point.
02
The 30-Day Connection Guide
You do not need thirty new friendships. You need one relationship to go deeper. This four-week, day-by-day guide walks you through it, one person at a time.
03
The Discussion Guide
Six sessions built for small groups, men's groups, women's groups, couples' studies, and book clubs. Four questions per session, plus one practical step before you gather again.
04
The Three-Circle Exercise
A printable worksheet that maps your relationships across three circles, shows you the gap between what is and what could be, and points you to your next move.
For Group Leaders
Reading It Together Makes It Go Deeper
Wired to Connect was written to be read, and it was written to be talked about. The Discussion Guide turns the book into a six-session study built for small groups, men's groups, women's groups, couples' studies, and book clubs.
Bulk Orders for Your Church or Group
Ordering for a small group, church, conference, or leadership team? Contact us for bulk pricing and group resources. We'll make it easy to get books in everyone's hands.
What's Coming
More Resources On the Way
More tools to help you build the relational life you actually want. Sign up to be the first to know.
Coming Soon
The Workbook
A companion workbook to go chapter by chapter through the book with exercises, reflection prompts, and space to write.
Coming Soon
The Group Resource
An expanded group study kit with leader's guide, session videos, and everything your group needs to go deep together.
Coming Soon
The Course
A self-paced online course walking you through the principles of Wired to Connect with Chip guiding you every step.
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Get notified when new resources launch. No spam, ever.
For Group Leaders
You were made for a table.
Go set yours.
"The table is not too far gone. The people you need are closer than you think." — Dan Dean