The Relational Mission

Over the years, there have been a myriad of programs, books, and seminars on small group leadership. Most of them focus on practical techniques for how to do small groups in the “right” way. They address questions like:  How to lead a group discussion. How to facilitate an icebreaker. How to grow your group? How to lead worship in the group?  While understanding these techniques of group leadership is important, I found that doing these techniques well does not make for great groups. At best, you will get good group meetings. Leading a group by following the right techniques is a bit like trying to love your spouse because you follow a set of rules for a good marriage. It will leave you wondering why it's not working when you are doing what all the books tell you to do. The foundation for leading a group well lies in the end that you imagine. If all you want is a good group meeting, then follow the techniques. But if you want a group that “lives in love,” that li...

In my previous post , I offered three different ways that people commonly "imagine" the missional conversation. Our imagination works as a kind of interpretive grid or pre-understanding that we bring to the subject. So when we hear a word like "missional" we see what we expect. Here is a quick summary of the three common interpretive grids that I've observed are: A Redeemed Society-The church possesses truth that outsiders need and the mission is conceived as getting outsiders to become insiders. In some ways this is a bit like an enclave that could be escapist , where insiders have truth and outsiders are welcome, as long as they believe and behave like the insiders. A Redeeming Society-The church on mission is primarily viewed as action, what we do for the sake of the world. This imagination is characterized by energy , expressiveness, and enterprise. It's about getting the mission done and making an impact. A Redemptive Society-The mission is viewed ...

 In a previous post , I wrote about how we our core being is defined relationally. We are socially formed. At the same time, this formation has shaped our personal identity in such a way that we set the self over against others. We are taught to look for our core identity apart from others, as if there is some kind of essential identity that is pure and untainted that can only be found in the individual, isolated soul.   This sets up a problem that often goes unnoticed when we try to establish small groups. We tell people that they need community, that we are created as social beings in the triune image of God, and that the Bible tells us that we are called to love one another. Then we organize people into groups and give them curriculum to talk about each week. Thus far things are heading on a good track. But something happens. The group doesn't move beyond the Bible study experience into community. People say that they want to love one another, but the group struggles t...

Last week, I wrote about five things we can learn from small group house churches from the first three centuries. Actually there is a sixth, but the last one is so significant—and so often overlooked in our day—that it merits its own post. This attribute of the early church is related to how leadership operated in early house churches; it was team based. If we are academically honest about how we understand the history of the early church, we have to admit that we have very little detailed data about how leadership operated. Some have argued therefore that the early church was absolutely flat, that there were no appointed leaders. Then there are others who read the modern approach of singular leadership into the early church. We cannot read the New Testament to find some kind of house church leadership manual. We have to enter into the story and read between the lines. And we must be careful not to read our current experience into theirs. New Testament theologian, Gilbert Bilzeki...

So you have a good small group. The members like attending every week. They enjoy the conversations about the Bible and the ministry to one another is encouraging. But have you ever wondered if there might be more that God wants to do? Is a weekly or bi-weekly group meeting the extent of what God has in mind for you group? Don't get me wrong. Group meetings are a good thing. However, I'm not sure that God is sitting with a checklist to see who shows up at small group meetings and who does not. I think he is much more concerned about things like whether we love one another, how we are sacrificing for each other, if we are forgiving each other, and the like. I think he is looking at how we live our lives and whether our interaction with one another is distinctive from the way typical relationships occur in our world. Is our relational pattern marked by self-sacrificial love? When this occurs our small groups move beyond just connecting in meeting and into an experience of com...

When I think about all of the small groups that I've led or participated in, I've concluded that the thing that matter the least is the stuff that we focus on the most in our small group strategies. Usually we focus on things like what should we study or who should be a part of the group or what will we do in our meetings. But we don't seem to focus much attention on the story that our groups tell in the way that they actually do group life. This is what makes group great. Well it's also what makes a group bleh. Let me suggest four stories that groups tell. This is a basic summary of what I've written in Missional Small Groups (a book for small group leaders) and in MissioRelate (a book for small group champions and pastors). Personal Improvement This is the small group experience where individuals participate because it is personally beneficial. The people involved are either drawn to a topic or to a group of people like themselves, and participation is high...

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...

This wraps up the series on 9 Practices of Missional Small Groups (Community) Leaders. I wrote these to build upon my book Missional Small Groups where I introduce a way of understanding Missional Community as a story that a group tells through their life together. As I have written these posts, I have come to see how these practices and the concepts that underlie them show us how to create a missional habitat, a natural environment where the missional community story spontaneously happens. To those who are new to missional life, one might think that missional community "just happens." But life doesn't just happen. Life happens when the environmental factors are right to support that life. I grew up on a farm. My father who loved just about every farm animal imaginable. Chickens, sheep, cows. You name it, he raised at least one of them at some point. We even hatched chicks from eggs we collected from the hen house. Sometimes a hen would “nest” and incubat...

This is the last practice that I've found to be essential for leaders who want to move beyond "normal" community where small groups connect people and into "missional" community where groups experience life together that makes a difference in the world. This practice is about how the leaders of the group work with leaders beyond the group. This is essential if the group really wants to move beyond the normal small group experience. Most groups don't have enough resources—time, energy, gifts, etc—within the group to have the sustaining impact that is needed in the world. There are two kinds of relationships that groups need in order to create synergy 1. The Relationship with an Elder-Like Leader. I hesitate to use the word "elder" (I give an entire chapter to this in my book MissioRelate ), because it is so commonly used today as a label for a church governance role. Here I'm talking about the need for someone to serve as a wise guide, a ...

We live in a violent world. I wonder at times if we are addicted to violence. It seems that we like having enemies and we like winning. This is what happens when our fallen state becomes the accepted norm. We no longer call into question our fighting nature. Fighting happens at all kinds of levels, globally as nations go to war, nationally as politicians tear each other apart, and locally as neighbors let petty differences cloud their judgement. It also happens in the church. Duh! And IT HAPPENS IN SMALL GROUPS! Of course every small group leader training manual or book says as much. Some call it conflict. Others "storming." M. Scott Peck calls it chaos. When people get to know one another, someone is bound to cause offense. Sometimes it's as minor as an innocent comment taken the wrong way. Sometimes it's as big as a yelling match. A few years ago, a small group leader asks to meet with me. He told me that while I had been out of town over the weekend, his co...

What do you think about this video: This video of the imminent Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann is poignant because it gives us an imagination about the kind of people God was calling the Israelites to be as a contrast to life under Pharaoh's rule and the early Christians to be in contrast to life under Caesar's rule. It points us to life in the Kingdom and God's rule. It points us to missional living and it points us toward missional leadership. Three practices are identified. The first two, hospitality and generosity, relate to my post about missional leadership Make Time to Waste Time . The reason we make space in our lives is to create energy, time and emotional space to be hospitable and generous. We need to be shaped by patience so that we can demonstrate hospitality to others. They also relate to my post entitled Be Present in the Neighborhood . Hospitality and generosity shape the way we are present with people in our neighborhood. The third ...

About 15 years ago, our small group pastor challenged all the groups to do at least one outreach event or activity per month. So one month we'd play volleyball at an apartment complex. The next we'd through a cookout for some friends. The next we'd do some kind is service project. While these were good, we failed to be present in any one neighborhood. When I need an imagination about what it means to be present in a neighborhood, I have to break the my pragmatic tendency to immediately develop a list of ways to be missional. As helpful as such lists are, it's too easy to do missional things in a non-present way. In other words we do something but we fail to remain, to reveal God in an ongoing way. By contrast, imagine that you were a part of Paul's entourage in the first century as he began ministering in Ephesus. Pull out a study Bible and look at a map of Ephesus. It was a large city for the time but small in size, only about five miles long. The houses wer...

It might seem counter-intuitive to say that leaders of "missional" community need to practice the art of wasting time. After all being missional usually means being active. However to be on mission means that we are offering people a Kingdom-like way of life, not just a message that will save them from immorality and get them to Heaven one of these days. It means we embody the ways of the Kingdom, which the Apostle Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit. It's what the Old Testament calls shalom , which means peace, wholeness, and communal well-being. Aaron's benediction is helpful here: "The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace ( shalom )" Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann reflects on shalom , connecting it to an experience of God's presence ( see my post on Presence ): "Shalom is perhaps perhaps the quintessential mark of infinity, a counting stat...

Imagine if you were to read the Bible just to read it. You are not preparing for a sermon or a Bible study. You are not trying to figure out the meaning of some difficult theological question. You are not even trying to read it devotionally. You are just reading it like you would a epic novel, where you allow the story to take over and let your imagination be shaped by that story. Then after reading it through—yes all the way through—imagine that you tell a friend about it. Now this person is not a Christian and has only been observed churches from the fringe. But she has read her fair share of novels. She does not ask the normal kinds of questions that we church people might ask. Instead she just simply asks, "What makes the story work?" She's intrigued as to how such a long book could keep anyone's interest. Your immediate response is "God." This answer might even surprise you at first because it's so simple but yet so true. He is the on...

Whether serving as a host of a short-term campaign group, a leader of a connecting group or as a part of a leadership team of a missional group, there are some basic small group facilitation skills that apply to them all. In this practice, I'm talking specifically about the meeting. It is my contention—and has been for over 12 years—that missional groups depend upon the meeting much less than those that are simply connecting groups. I estimate that the group meeting contributes about 40% to the group life that is moving in mission, whereas a connecting group might depend upon the meeting for 80%-90% of its life. At any rate, 40% is still significant. If group meetings don't work well and the gatherings don't contribute that 40%, it will steal the momentum from the mission. Here I want to quickly address some of the key basic skills that every leader needs to develop and even refine as a group moves into missional life: Meet weekly: The statistics are conclusive. My...

About ten years ago, we had a group that had grown to the point of multiplying. As I was praying about the future of that group and how we could help it through its growth and transition, I sensed that the Lord was leading us to wait. During that time, we realized that our approach to group leadership put a lot of pressure on ONE person to be all things to the group. Of course, we had leaders in training (Interns, Apprentices) just like we see in all of the small group books. Of course we had a plan for developing new leaders. But when push came to shove, all the pressure fell on one person. And usually, week-after-week, no matter how hard we involved others, the rest of the group looked to that one person to do 80% of the work. As a result, we experimented with co-leaders. I had not seen much at that point about leading groups this way. The common logic was and is that if you have co-leaders you will only have 1/2 as many groups. In fact, pastors often responded to me with this ar...

I've been around a lot of leaders over the last two decades. I've worked with zealots, plodders, rule-followers, and wanna-bees. I've seen those who want to lead a great group but can't though they try with all their might. And I've seen those who seem to lead so easily that it's like a knife cutting through warm butter. In all the lists of habits of great leaders, the focus almost always lies on the actions of the leaders. But most often one is not listed which seems to have a huge impact upon groups that go on mission. The leaders are not just people who do the right things. They are actually the right people. They are the real deal. They are people of character. As I watch leaders and those who lead groups that make a difference, I've found that character is a crucial thing. The inner life of a leader, who they are when no one is looking, the attitude of a leader toward others, the genuine Spirit-directed love has a huge impact. I guess we don't...

The first practice of leaders of missional communities is to hear to the call to go beyond a community that connects people. Connecting groups come in all kinds of forms. Some are short-term. Some are sermon study groups. Some are house churches. Some are even groups of 40. Some are even called "missional communities." What they are called or the form they take is not the point. Connecting community is a kind of story of life together that focuses on helping the people in the group develop good internal relationships. We need to help leaders think in terms of the story that the group tells, not about the strategy, the form or the name of the group. I go into depth about this in my book Missional Small Groups. The call to missional community is the call to a story of life together where the group lives on mission together. It's a call to a way of life that makes a difference in the world. Somebody has to hear this call. Someone in the group has to step up and introdu...

Now I'm about to write nine posts that outline the practices that shape the leadership and life of missional small group (community) leaders.  I'm not the first to try to comprise such a list, but as I've said in previous posts, I'm looking for an alternative imagination for leading. So at the risk of being critical, I've felt I needed to be as concrete as possible. What follows are some key lists that have shaped the conversation about small group leadership over the last ten years. While I agree with them, I also want to ask if we can go further. Might we need to extend the conversation beyond this. If not, then we already have these lists. But if there is something else we need to explore, then lets do it. Henry Cloud and John Townsend speak of these actions as "responsibilities" in their very popular book Making Small Groups Work . These include: Balance grace, truth and time Facilitate process Listen Provide Safety Clarify and Ask Questions C...

In North America, we love our heroes. I challenged this in yesterday's post , but I'd like to pursue this a bit more. We idolize the solitary individual who takes a cause upon his or her back and changes the course of history. When Steve Jobs passed a few weeks ago, watching all of the tweets about him was comical to me. No doubt, Jobs has changed the way we work today. We have five apple devises in our household and I need about three more to do my work well (at least I think I do but my budget says otherwise). But the comments about Jobs impact made it sound like he had built Apple all by himself. It seems that this hero fixation is alive and well in the church. The elevation of the paid minister created spiritual heroes of those called "pastor" and "priest." But this has been taken to an entirely new level with the advent of the mega- and super-mega church. Now the preacher is the hero, even if he has little to do with the day-to-day ministry that occur...