Being Missional
I had one of those "Ah-hah" moments yesterday morning while I was at church. They had a guest speaker in who was a teacher at a local Baptist bible college and, because I was up pretty late and had to wake up pretty early, I was having a bit of trouble keeping focused at the start.
He preached about small groups and how they are really the heart and soul of any church. I guess you could think of them as the platoons of soldiers that make up an army. He pointed out that the model small group was Jesus' 12 disciples. These were 12 guys from a variety of backgrounds (fishermen, tax collector, political activist) that Jesus used to start the early church. While spending time with them, Jesus demonstrated the four key ingredients of a healthy small group: prayer (Luke 11:1-13), learning/teaching (eg. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:1-7:29), relationships (as demonstrated by the amount of time they spent together, ate together, traveled together, and just pretty much did life together), and missions (Mark 6:6-13 and Luke 9:1-9). [I actually didn't write down all the references so I just put in ones that I thought fit pretty well with the four ingredients]
He used an analogy of a plank bucket to illustrate the effectiveness/fullness of a small group ministry. Picture a bucket that is made up of multiple vertical planks of wood banded together by a couple pieces of metal. Now normally, all of the planks would be of equal length to produce a circular brim all around the edge of the bucket up to which you could fill with water. Now if you had planks of varying lengths, you'd have a pretty ugly looking bucket AND you would only be able to fill the bucket as high as the shortest plank. Similarly, the small groups can only be as strong as the weakest ingredient - to have healthy growth, all aspects must increase together.
Back at my home church in Calgary, my previous senior pastor was trying to get us to understand what it means to be a "missional" church. I remember one exercise we did where we all stood up, held hands, and made a huge circle around the entire church sanctuary. My pastor said that we are united together in this circle but our vision and focus is directed into the center of the circle towards one another. Then he had us all turn around 180ยบ so that we were facing away from the circle and hold hands again. He said that this is a better representation of how we should be as a church. We need to be united as one and yet have our focus and vision directly outward to the world around us. We need to be focusing on people around us and the needs of those around us.
In the sermon on Sunday, he shared about a church that had developed extremely close and tight-knit small groups. People were getting involved, studying God's word together, encouraging one another, helping each other through difficult times, and just really helping each other grow spiritually. However, the groups became so close that it was really hard for anyone else to join as they grew to become almost exclusive. So the church decided to disband all the small groups and instead, told the people to reform "missional groups." They were to get together a small group that still did the same things as before BUT also had an established mission focus. A few people had a passion for working with the elderly and so they formed a small group that had a focus on ministering to the elderly. Another few people really had a heart for children and, in particular, orphans. So they started up a ministry to serve alongside organizations that aimed to help children without families. There were groups that used music for outreach and a group that even started their own bank to provide interest free loans to people who couldn't afford to borrow money from the bank.
I'm not sure why but this is something that I see as a huge challenge within churches and a huge personal challenge as well. I see myself getting way too comfortable with just being part of a fellowship group and interacting with other Christians - receiving and hopefully contributing in various ways to help one another. But often I lose sight of everything else around me because my vision is focused inwardly instead of outwardly. I think the idea of having small groups establish a mission focus that everyone is keen on working towards is a great idea. I think it would be a great idea to do something with music or maybe working with kids in a way like Big Brothers/Big Sisters as volunteer mentors. Time always seems to be the enemy...
"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." - Matt 28:19-20
He preached about small groups and how they are really the heart and soul of any church. I guess you could think of them as the platoons of soldiers that make up an army. He pointed out that the model small group was Jesus' 12 disciples. These were 12 guys from a variety of backgrounds (fishermen, tax collector, political activist) that Jesus used to start the early church. While spending time with them, Jesus demonstrated the four key ingredients of a healthy small group: prayer (Luke 11:1-13), learning/teaching (eg. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:1-7:29), relationships (as demonstrated by the amount of time they spent together, ate together, traveled together, and just pretty much did life together), and missions (Mark 6:6-13 and Luke 9:1-9). [I actually didn't write down all the references so I just put in ones that I thought fit pretty well with the four ingredients]
He used an analogy of a plank bucket to illustrate the effectiveness/fullness of a small group ministry. Picture a bucket that is made up of multiple vertical planks of wood banded together by a couple pieces of metal. Now normally, all of the planks would be of equal length to produce a circular brim all around the edge of the bucket up to which you could fill with water. Now if you had planks of varying lengths, you'd have a pretty ugly looking bucket AND you would only be able to fill the bucket as high as the shortest plank. Similarly, the small groups can only be as strong as the weakest ingredient - to have healthy growth, all aspects must increase together.
Back at my home church in Calgary, my previous senior pastor was trying to get us to understand what it means to be a "missional" church. I remember one exercise we did where we all stood up, held hands, and made a huge circle around the entire church sanctuary. My pastor said that we are united together in this circle but our vision and focus is directed into the center of the circle towards one another. Then he had us all turn around 180ยบ so that we were facing away from the circle and hold hands again. He said that this is a better representation of how we should be as a church. We need to be united as one and yet have our focus and vision directly outward to the world around us. We need to be focusing on people around us and the needs of those around us.
In the sermon on Sunday, he shared about a church that had developed extremely close and tight-knit small groups. People were getting involved, studying God's word together, encouraging one another, helping each other through difficult times, and just really helping each other grow spiritually. However, the groups became so close that it was really hard for anyone else to join as they grew to become almost exclusive. So the church decided to disband all the small groups and instead, told the people to reform "missional groups." They were to get together a small group that still did the same things as before BUT also had an established mission focus. A few people had a passion for working with the elderly and so they formed a small group that had a focus on ministering to the elderly. Another few people really had a heart for children and, in particular, orphans. So they started up a ministry to serve alongside organizations that aimed to help children without families. There were groups that used music for outreach and a group that even started their own bank to provide interest free loans to people who couldn't afford to borrow money from the bank.
I'm not sure why but this is something that I see as a huge challenge within churches and a huge personal challenge as well. I see myself getting way too comfortable with just being part of a fellowship group and interacting with other Christians - receiving and hopefully contributing in various ways to help one another. But often I lose sight of everything else around me because my vision is focused inwardly instead of outwardly. I think the idea of having small groups establish a mission focus that everyone is keen on working towards is a great idea. I think it would be a great idea to do something with music or maybe working with kids in a way like Big Brothers/Big Sisters as volunteer mentors. Time always seems to be the enemy...
"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." - Matt 28:19-20
Labels: God Thoughts
posted by Matt at 1:16 AM
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