I started this series by nailing my colors to the wall, saying that organizing a church as a network of mid-sized missional communities holds tremendous promise in reaching post-Christian contexts. In response to some of the questions on that first post, today I’ll set the stage a bit and define what I mean by “missional community.” Later posts will get into the biblical, historical, and sociological rationale for missional communities.
It’s helpful to understand some of the seismic shifts we’re experiencing right now in the Western world. Church attendance has been falling steadily over the past few years. The stats are fairly staggering. The weekly church attendance among the Builder generation is around 65%, Boomers are at 35%, Generation X is at 15%, and among Generation Y only 4% attend a church service regularly.
These statistics indicate the kinds of cultural shifts we’re experiencing right now. What was once a fairly important activity (church-going) is now something 96% of the emerging generation doesn’t do! So is this “missional communities” stuff about getting those people “back in church?” Not really. When I talk about “reaching” post-Christian contexts, I’m not talking about getting them to come back to church services. I’m talking about bringing people to experience the “eternal kind of life” that comes through trusting Jesus and walking with him. Missional Communities are a fantastic way to do this for post-Christian contexts.
Some of the questions readers asked revolved around whether or not this talk of “missional communities” was simply a new way to talk about things the church is already doing. What I am talking about is not more of the same with a new name, even though I’ve seen some “missional communities” that are essentially small groups with a mission focus. But the way I’m using the term, there’s a big difference.
Here’s a brief definition, taken from Wikipedia article on Missional Community:
A Missional Community is a group of anything from 20 to 50+ people who are united, through Christian community, around a common service and witness to a particular neighborhood or network of relationships. With a strong value on life together, the group has the expressed intention of seeing those they impact choose to start following Jesus, through this more flexible and locally incarnated expression of the church. The result will often be that the group will grow and ultimately multiply into further missional communities. Missional Communities are most often networked within a larger church community (often times with many other Missional Communities). These mid-sized communities, led by laity, are “lightweight and low maintenance” and most often meet 3-4 times a month in their missional context.
Because missional communities are larger than small groups, they can do some substantive things in their mission context. Because they are smaller than a whole church, everyone can be known and loved and contribute to the community. Check out the whole article for more information and a brief history of their genesis and development.
To put it another way (bullet points!), here’s how Alex Absalom, who has been working with MCs for 15 years, defines them in his upcoming book Missional Communities:
- A group of between 20 and 50+ people
- Can be either a new church plant, or more commonly a sub-set of a larger gathered church
- Centered around Jesus
- The defining focus is on reaching a particular neighborhood or network of relationships
- This takes place in community, with lots of food and fun!
- There is a healthy balance of UP (relationship w/ God), IN (relationship w/ one another) and OUT (relationship with mission context)
- You don’t need to be a professing Christian to belong
- The group is unashamed about following Christ, both in values and in vision
- As disciples of Jesus, worship, prayer and Scripture reading are core practices
- The group looks outwards through a mixture of service and witnessing
- This common mission focus is a key glue for the shared sense of togetherness
- People gather informally throughout the week, not just at formal meetings
- Life together includes a high value on small groups for support and encouragement
- Leaders receive ongoing help, coaching and accountability
- Leaders do not do everything, they facilitate and release others to serve and lead
Any thoughts or questions strike you as you read this?
Next post –> The Early Church
Hey Ben,
How do you cultivate the "core practices"? Do you take time at formal meetings to describe the value and technicalities of these practices or hold supplemental seminars or do this in smaller groups? Are they more caught than taught? What about practices outside these three? What role do they play?
Thinking of a missional community as a "centered-set", I'm interested in establishing a sort of "core community" that functions as the center of the "centered set" and is marked out by a commitment to a set of habits and disciplines. One of our communities is planning on making time in formal gatherings to discuss where they are in their journey with God. This is an opportunity for our "center" to tell stories about how these habits and disciplines are interfacing with their lives and serves as an opportunity for the more peripheral people to be exposed to these habits and practices and to articulate where they are on the journey as well. The leadership is forming a covenant for this "center" so that entrance into it is clear. I am concerned how you keep from making the "center" come across as elitist in the same way a bounded set comes across to "outsiders". It seems that in bounded and centered sets there are thresholds. It's just that one can "belong" or experience a sort of inclusion into the community before deciding to cross the threshold in a "centered set".
Great questions, Michael.
The cultivation of the core practices is a key, and I think your idea of the "core community" is a good answer to this, because if it is to a community where non-believers can belong, it can't be entirely focused on those practices that would make little sense to a non-believer.
One way to do it is kind of how you describe, where there might be a "meeting before the meeting" to simply pray for one another, share communion, read Scripture, etc. briefly.
Another way is to structure weekly gatherings so that some are better for "core" community members and others are good for those further from the center to be involved with. People are invited to gatherings that make sense for where they're at in the their journey.
The bottom line is that every community will need to work out what this looks like in practice for themselves, based on their mission context. We want to make sure to give enough freedom and space to MCs to gather in ways that make sense for them.
Also, regarding the danger of the "core community" appearing elitist, that's really something I'm trying to work through as well. In some ways I think the answer is in providing space where "spiritual" stuff isn't weird or "religious." One of the things I've heard Mike Breen say is that when a discipling culture is established, the "core community" people in the MC really end up creating an atmosphere in MCs that is (to coin a cliche) "spiritual but not religious…" Conversations can drift from World Cup Soccer into relationship with Jesus so easily and non-religiously that even non-Christians find the atmosphere magnetic and inviting. From there it's just further invitation for those who are ready for it, into other kinds of gatherings where this "Jesus talk" is even more intentional, etc.
I admit, though, that I have no experience facilitating or creating this kind of environment. But the knowledge that others have was very inspiring for me. That's what we're aspiring to: the kind of atmosphere Jesus seemed to generate – no hiding the "christian content" but it is expressed in such an easy, natural way that all kinds of people find it inviting.
This is an interesting thought… and one I have wrestled with for a while. Something in me always cringes when I am with a group of people, say, in a bible study or some "christian" context, and we're just shooting the breeze, talking about this and that, and then someone (sometimes me) says something like, "well, I guess we better get down to business here…" meaning, "well, let's quit talking about UNspiritual things and get through our bible study…" That kind of separation never seems right or organic… I think as we become closer to Jesus and more like Him, we will not see a separation, and not only will WE be more comfortable talking about Jesus in any context, but we will make others comfortable with the way we talk about Jesus in any context. Good to chew on.
Hey, you're my brother!
Right on, Aaron. We have to learn how to be disciples of Jesus without being weird and religious. You're my brother, too!
Ben,
I'm very interested to see where you are heading with this idea. We are starting at basically one "house" church but i see us morphing into missional communities throughout the county which we all live but like the previous poster, I'm kind of stuck on how to make that transition. I'm hoping to go through the MCAP with Matt Smay and Hugh Halter, the authors of "Tangible Kingdom". Anyway, I'll definitely be reading in the days/weeks to come.
Hi Troy – thanks for the comment. Your situation is similar to ours, in the sense that our church is essentially one MC right now and we're working toward transitioning to a model that is a network of MCs.
For us right now the big emphases are 1) establishing a discipling culture, where becoming more like Jesus in character and conduct is the norm, and 2) raising up and releasing new leaders all the time. It's a slow process, which is frustrating for me, but there are no shortcuts to making disciples. Jesus, who was better at it than me, took three years to train 12 people!
So, while I don't know your situation very well, I would say that establishing a culture of discipleship and raising up leaders would be two of the things you need to do first.