The Relational Mission

Does a common mission produce community? I don't think that we can make this a universal claim. Nor can we toss the claim aside as if it has no relevance. See my previous post . Then must we conclude that community produces mission? Many make this claim and it has some very important biblical texts to support it. Jesus prayed in John 17 that his followers would live in unity so that the world might know him. After washing the feet of the disciples, Jesus told them that the way that the world would know that they were his disciples was by their love for one another. Our love for one another is one of the greatest, unused evangelistic tools. And I have seen many small groups communities that have grown in love and the natural overflow of that has been mission, evangelism and even group growth. We have 40 years worth of small group experience around the world to support this. So we cannot say that community does not lead a group into a life of blessing those outside the group. A...

A common statement I hear bouncing around in the discussion about developing missional community is this: If you start with community, you rarely get mission, but if you start with mission, you almost always get community. I've heard this stated in many forms over the years. We used to proclaim something like that in cell church circles when I was doing training for cell groups in the 1990s. In my previous pastoral position, I had a colleague who would fight for this supposed axiom. She said to me once "Groups that have a common mission will grow in love. It's like an army platoon that grows together while fighting a common enemy." On the surface, this sounds right. And there are enough church situations where the church culture lines up with this statement.  Therefore, it's not hard to list examples that seem to support this claim. However, I can also list plenty of stories of groups that tried this approach and it actually made matters worse. Today, I am goi...

Even though David and I come from different parts of the country, we share the same tribe. We both belong to the tribe that would carry the label "evangelical." For the last ten to fifteen years there have been quite a few thinkers who have wrestled with what evangelical theology is, what it is becoming and why there should even be such a thing as evangelical theology. This books takes things to a deeper and more challenging level. He moves from the level of how we think as evangelicals to the level of how we practice evangelicalism by looking at it through the lens of politics. (Not in the sense of national politics, as the word is commonly used, but in the sense of politic as an order of our life in the midst of the world at large. Fitch defines "politic" as "what people assume about the way things are and how those assumptions are maintained in order to live together.") To do this, he employs the work of Slavoj Zizek as a dialogue partner. Admittedly,...

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post asking if your small groups are theologically sound. Now it is time to pose and address some more questions along this line. Let me lead by stating that I am not asking whether or not the topics discussed in our groups fit within the bounds of orthodoxy. There is a place for that, but I want to invite us to think about a theology of community and therefore a theology of small groups, not just about what is doctrinally correct to discuss in our groups. Nor am I trying to establish a theological or biblical foundation for doing small groups. That argument has been made many times over from many different angles. At this point, you might be wondering what need there might be for a theology beyond these two concerns. And let me say that there is are a tone of theological questions we should be asking about small groups, cell groups, house churches, missional communities—whatever you want to call them. We need to move beyond labels and brands and actua...

What are you reading? If you are leading the small groups in your church, what is informing your leadership? I know that you have the normal stock of books on group leadership, training manuals and plenty of stuff on small group strategies. And of course everyone has Life Together by Bonhoeffer. Let me also encourage you to add these to your shelf or electronic devise. These are not the normal how-to books. Instead these are books meant to equip your soul and challenge the way you see groups and community. Admittedly, these authors are not writing about Christian small groups. In fact, only one of them would be labeled as a "Christian" author. But these books can point us in some new and prophetic directions. A Different Drum by M. Scott Peck Community by Peter Block A Hidden Wholeness by Palmer Parker Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson Community by Zygmunt Bauman These are books that have influenced my writing in Missional Small Groups and...

American culture, broadly speaking, is a consumeristic one. We are shaped, without any work on our part, to be consumers. History tells us that when production capacity began to outgrow consumption patterns during the industrial revolution companies sought ways to increase the level of consumption of the average person. They did not produce to meet needs. They produced to sell products. Now this is just the air we breathe. We don't question it. And those who tend to challenge this pattern are viewed as trouble-makers and radicals by those who accept the status quo. Consumption defines us more than we want to think about. My point here is not to confront this pattern of our culture, but to point out how this view of life seeps into our life as Christians. We don't turn off this mentality toward life when we enter into church life or join a small group. The fact is that too often I meet people who have been so defined by consumerism that they consume God, consume church and co...

This weekend I've been leading a retreat in Minneapolis for The Table. This is a picture from my walk this morning. We don't get colors like this in Houston. My walk this morning reminded me of the beauty of autumn. It also speaks to transitions. As a family, we've been in a time of transition. It's been exciting. It's been tearful. It's been a lot of work. On my walk beneath these autumn colors I realized how we've had to let go of many good things about life and ministry in Minnesota in order to take next the steps in our calling. We would like for the goodness of Spring and Summer to continue perpetually but life does not happen that way. There are seasons to natural life. There are seasons to our personal life. And there are seasons to life in a small group. There are ups and downs. There are growth spurts followed by times of transition. No small group experiences perpetual summer growth, although we wish we could. If we are seeking God's life i...

There are lots of different ways that an outside voice can help church leaders be effective. One option that leaders don't often consider is called "Ministry Coaching." With coaching, an outside voice walks with a church leader or leaders on a reoccurring and consistent basis as the ministry develops over time. Two years ago, I helped a friend write a book on ministry coaching, and I thought, "I think I would really enjoy doing that." However, I was a full-time pastor at that point. Now, since we have moved to Houston, I am only a part-time pastor and now I have the space in my life to coach churches in a regular way. If you are interested in this, I'd love to talk with you. Here is a description of how the coaching works. Or click here to download this information . Coaching Purpose: To walk with a church leader to help in the establishment of small group communities that make a difference. Coaching Process: Scott will work with the leader to esta...

One of my last tasks as a pastor at the church in Saint Paul, MN before we moved back to Texas was to write curriculum that we called The Journey Together . As I met with the other pastors who gave input into the project, their comment to me was something like this: "We train the leaders in how good groups work, but the people in the groups need that same information. It's not enough to train the leaders." What an idea. Honestly, I had not given it much attention and as I have looked around, neither have many other church leaders. Then last week, I saw where Alan Danielson wrote a blog post last year on this topic. (Check it out here ) After reading his article, I realized that Alan and I shared a similar discovery from totally different circumstances. I realized that most people in American churches are not being set up to be effective group members. As a result, most of us put all of the pressure upon group leaders and set them up with unrealistic expectations. One ...

As I read books, articles and blog posts on small groups, I don't often read much that points to theology. Most of the time, I find information that is highly pragmatic and aims at helping you and I with the practical questions of how we develop effective small groups. And to tell you the truth, I learn a lot from what I've read over the years. I am a better leader for all the pragmatic information I've gathered. However, I've thinking about the disproportionate focus on pragmatic issues when weighed against the almost lack of theological reflection regarding small groups. Now I know that most of us have a basic theology of "why" small groups in our back pockets. We all can give one of the two standard reasons why we do small groups. The first being the Trinity and the second a list of the "house to house" scriptures from Acts. But I'm not talking about a "why" theology for small groups. I'm talking about a "what," ...