The Relational Mission

Over the last 25 years as a writer, editor, trainer and consultant about all things small groups, and I’ve come across many different motivations for doing small groups. Some of the primary reasons provided for doing small groups include: Church Growth. Small group ministry is a key ingredient to growing a church. All of the largest churches in the world have some form of small group structure.   Closing the "Back Door" of the Church. Small groups are used as a way to connect people who attend on Sundays. This seems to be the prominent goal of most small group resources that are on the market. Evangelism. Statistics have proven over and over again that most people are led to the Lord through relationships with either a friend or a family member. Small group evangelism is dependent upon friendship connections with the lost. Church Health. Research on church health factors has revealed that small groups have the most impact on church quality. In fact, all of the healthiest ...

I'm reading a mind-blowing book entitled Relational Being by the psychologist Kenneth Gergen. He is confronting the paradigm through which we understanding ourselves, which he calls "bounded" identity. That is, we have grown up in a world where we view ourselves as individuals first, as if there is a core identity that we possess that is independent and distinct from our relationships to other people or to our world. In other words, we tend to think about self in one category and our community in another. He lays out the falsehood of this view of the self by demonstrating how we cannot even understand our identity apart from our relationships. The most basic illustration of this is found in the way we are born into a family. We learn how to talk, how to think, and even how to reflect about our own identity from those who care for us as children. Our identity is wrapped up in social interaction. This takes us beyond typical ways of talking about individualism and ...

About a year ago I was in the middle of writing a blog series entitled "Is Both/And Possible?" In these posts, I was proposing the idea that most churches need to think in terms of two kinds of groups, both connecting small groups and missional communities, primarily because most people are not ready to jump immediately into the missional experience; they need preparation. Most resources available speak to these two experiences in exclusive terms. For a quick look at the previous posts in this series, click here . I needed to take a break from writing this series because I needed to do further research and test out my convictions. Now, I'm more convinced than ever that most Western churches need to think in terms of both/and not either/or. Because various writers have defined the terms "small groups" and "missional communities" to refer to specific structures, I need adopt some new language. For instance, the small group experience is most often...

This is Part 3 of the series entitled "Is Both/And Possible?: Click here to see other entries in this series. If you are going to think in terms of BOTH connecting small groups AND missional communities then you need to develop a connecting strategy that fits your church. When you read a book that speaks to a specific connecting strategy, you often find them writing as if their strategy is THE VERY BEST strategy ever found and that it will work in any and every church. Well, we all know that that is simply not the case. I have never found one connecting small group strategy that works in every church. When I work with churches and help them develop a connecting group strategy, I think in terms of options. Then I try to understand the church culture, the culture where the church is located, the history, and the already present systems to help create a connecting strategy that fits the local church. In most cases, what develops is an adaptation of one or two of these approaches: ...

This is part 2 of a series entitled "Is Both/And Possible." ( Click here for part 1 ) If you are leading an established church, no matter the tradition, it has been shaped according to an attractional church pattern. The point of the church has been to get people to attend a weekly service and then set up systems so that they will continue to attend that service. I make this point not as ya critique of that fact. I'm just stating the obvious. But let's take it a bit further. The people in your church have been shaped by this attractional pattern. They attend if they find the church experience beneficial--even if they only attend to appease a sense of guilt. If they don't find it so, they attend elsewhere or quit going altogether. Connecting small group programs, used to keep this from happening. Again this is not a critique. It's just a clarification of terms. Now let's imagine that you have developed a vision for developing communities that are miss...

When you survey the literature about small groups and community, something becomes quite clear. There seems to be two distinct camps. On one side you find those who write and speak about how to develop "connecting" small groups. On the other side there are those talking about missional communities and missional small groups. In most cases, each side talks about their approach in exclusion to the other experience. Let me be clear: writers about connecting small group structures focus on how to develop systems and curriculum that focuses on things like closing the back door, making the church 'sticky' and getting 100% of the church involved in groups. Of course there is a kind of life that they want those groups to experience, usually identified as "healthy" but the system is set up to connect people who attend the weekend services. Writers about missional community focus things like creating a way of life that is in contrast to the dominant culture, em...