I will helping to facilitate a FREE Missional Community Workshop for church planters June 7-8 in Pawley’s Island with 3D Ministries. If you’re a church planter, or thinking about it, you should come. It will be a great time.
Missional Communities
Why Size Matters in Missional Communities
When I’m talking with people about Missional Communities, they often ask me why MCs need to be “mid-sized,” aka consisting of 20-50 adults. Why not just add a “mission focus” to a small group and call it a Missional Community?
I addressed this in my Missional Communities Series, but the short answer is that mid-sized communities hit a “sweet spot” of being small enough and big enough: small enough so everyone can be known and cared for, but big enough to do more substantial mission together. Small enough to care, big enough to dare. But are there other reasons? Sure.
[Read more…] about Why Size Matters in Missional Communities
Launching Missional Communities: A Review
A few weeks ago I read through Launching Missional Communities, a new book by Mike Breen and Alex Absalom. The super short review: it is the single best resource available on Missional Communities (MCs). I absolutely loved it.
The main reason this book is so good is that Breen and Absalom are practioners, not just theorists. Now, as an INTP, I can certainly get excited about a robust and elegant theory! But I shared the frustration of the church planter who wrote the introduction to the book. As he was searching books and podcasts for help on cultivating and implementing MCs, he found
There were a lot of people writing about the social theory and theology of movements and mission, but no clear practices for doing it… It seemed like there were a lot of thinkers who didn’t practice and a lot of practitioners who didn’t think.
The authors of LMC step into this void as practioners who think. Breen practically invented MCs 15 years ago when he was leading St. Thomas’ Church in Sheffield, England. Absalom was there with Breen, and has since planted hundreds of MCs and worked with several established churches at a more strategic level, helping them transition to a MC model. Because of this, this book is dripping with wisdom that comes from the blood and guts experience of actually doing this stuff for many years.
[Read more…] about Launching Missional Communities: A Review
Why I Believe in Mid-Sized Communities, Part 8
Previous posts in this series:
Part 1: What’s the Big Deal?
Part 2: What Does It Look Like?
Part 3: The Early Church
Part 4: Oikos in the Bible
Part 5: Sociological Matters
Part 6: Being the “Right Size”
Part 7: Is Structure a Dirty Word?
In the first seven (!) posts of this series, I’ve discussed why mid-sized communities are important, what they look like, and why they make sense from a theological, biblical, historical, and sociological point of view. Today I just want to talk practically about how we are moving toward this “model” in our little church plant; the process we are implementing to create a culture where these kinds of communities grow and multiply.
Now, these kinds of communities do not come into being by social engineering or the will of a leader or because everyone thinks it sounds like a good idea. Good intentions and wishful thinking don’t result in healthy, multiplying missional communities popping up everywhere. Furthermore, it’s not like a business where you can make something cool happen as long as you have capital, hard work, and some street smarts. This is ultimately a Holy Spirit thing. We don’t cause it or control it, but we do get to participate in it, and our efforts do make a difference. We plant seeds, we water, we fertilize, we weed, but God makes it grow (1 Cor 3:6).
The foundation this kind of network is built on cannot be marketing savvy or magnetic personality or emotional buzz. If you’re going to have all kinds of missional communities incarnating the life of Christ in all kinds of neighborhoods and relational networks, you’re going to need a lot of quality leaders who know how to listen to the Spirit and are having their character transformed steadily and consistently by being in relationship with Jesus. To get a lot of leaders like that, you’re going to have to invest a lot of time in developing them, because they don’t grow on trees.
In short, you’re going to need to make lots of disciples. This is the foundation of a multiplying movement of missional communities (say that five times fast!), and, surprise!, it’s exactly what Jesus told us to do before he ascended: make disciples.
More precisely, it’s making disciples who make disciples who make disciples… This seems obvious, but we find that we have to be very intentional about defining discipleship, because it’s easy to assume we’re making disciples because we’re doing “churchy” things. For example, in the church we have often equated discipleship with church attendance or loyalty to a leader or involvement in church programs or knowledge of the Bible. The assumption is that if we can get them get them to come to church, or get them involved in the worship team, or teach them Bible knowledge, that they’ll grow in maturity and Christlikeness. This is simply not true. All of those things might be important things for people to do, but doing them doesn’t equal discipleship.
So if the foundational key to cultivating a multiplying movement of missional communities is simply making disciples, how do we start? What does that actually look like if it’s not getting people to come to church services or Bible classes or service projects? That’s what I want to discuss in the next post.
Next post –> A Culture of Discipleship
Why I Believe in Mid-Sized Communities, Part 7
Previous posts in this series:
Part 1: What’s the Big Deal?
Part 2: What Does It Look Like?
Part 3: The Early Church
Part 4: Oikos in the Bible
Part 5: Sociological Matters
Part 6: Being the “Right Size”
One of the issues that seems to come up a lot when I talk about mid-sized missional communities is that of organization and structure. Some look at this model and find it way too squishy and “unorganized.” Others really like the organic/decentralized part of it, but cringe a bit when I say the network will have some “structure” or “organization” to it.
A comment from Ed Cyzewski on the first post in this series illustrates the latter point of view:
…organizations create a problem for Christians because at some point the “good” of the organization will demand sacrifices from the people and prompt us to do things we wouldn’t do otherwise.
I have also struggled with this dynamic. It’s easy for leaders, in the name of expediency and elegance, to try to fit people into a pre-determined structure. So I understand the push-back against “organization” and “structure.”
However, from my observation of living systems, including human families and communities, it is apparent to me that as things grow, some form of organization or structure is necessary if we wish to see things continue to grow. In other words, some kind of structure is actually necessary for the ongoing flourishing of life. This is essentially what I believe Adam and Eve were put in the garden of Eden to do: create some kind of structure that would allow the life of the garden to flourish fruitfully instead of aimlessly.
But not just any structure will do. The trick is to put structure in place that serves, submits to, supports, and follows life. A life-filled human body could do very little good in the world without the internal structure of the skeleton. Without that organizational work that the skeleton does, we’d just be unproductive “blobs” of life, like a garden overrun with weeds: lots of life, but not the kind we’re looking for.
It’s also important to note that while organization and structure can support and sustain life when done well, they don’t ever produce life. Skeletons don’t grow into human bodies. A well-designed garden bed doesn’t guarantee delicious produce. A good structure is like a trellis for your cucumber plant: it doesn’t make your cucumbers grow, but it does help the plant produce more cucumbers.
So “organization” and “structure” need not be dirty words for those who seek to cultivate “organic” missional communities. We simply need to prayerfully discern what kind of organization will allow life to flourish in our mission contexts.
Furthermore, the structures we develop need to be relational instead of hierarchical, accountable instead of controlling. This is not about maximizing an institution over its life-cycle or propping up an organization because it makes us feel good about ourselves. It’s not about command and control with a goal of institutional success. It’s about support, challenge, encouragement, and accountability with a goal of seeing the kingdom of God be expressed in our neighborhoods and networks just as it is in heaven.
Next time I’ll talk a bit about how we’re planning to move toward this kind of environment in our church plant.
Next post –> Making Disciples