Category: community

Community fertilizer

Checking in on one of the groups I’m a part of on Roov.com.

The question was asked :: What WORKS in cultivating community? What’s the fertilizer that causes rapid and healthy growth here?

Thought this was a great response of practical (and actual) things another member was doing ::

-sparking up more conversations with what look like new people at our church
-inviting old and new friends alike over for a dinner or coffee once a week
-saying hello to people *between* Sundays more often

And as for the results…it’s been INCREDIBLE so far!

What have you found that works great for building community (offline)?

Kingdom of God leaders

I’ve been reading Frank Viola’s “Reimagining Church” over the last week or so. It’s been a great companion to go along with Brian’s message series (priests in the hood). The book also seems to apply directly to what I envision for our community groups at encounter (and beyond).

This morning I read Luke 22:25-26:

Within minutes they were bickering over who of them would end up the greatest. But Jesus intervened: “Kings like to throw their weight around and people in authority like to give themselves fancy titles. It’s not going to be that way with you. Let the senior among you become like the junior; let the leader act the part of the servant.

As community group leaders/facilitators/hosts I think Viola makes some great points about what we should avoid striving for and what we should strive for:

  • in the gentile (secular) world, leaders operate on the basis of a political, chain-of-command social structure — a graded hierarchy. in the kingdom of God, leadership flows from childlike meekness and sacrificial service.
  • in the gentile world, authority is based on position and rank. in the kingdom of God, authority is based on godly character. note Christ’s description of a leader: “let him be a servant,” and “let him be as the younger.” in our Lord’s eyes, being precedes doing. and doing flows from being. put differently, function follows character. those who serve do so because they are servants.
  • in the gentile world, greatness is measured in prominence, external power and political influence. in the kingdom of God, greatness is measured by humility and servitude.
  • in the gentile world, leaders exploit their positions to rule over others. in the kingdom of god, leaders deplore special reverence. they rather regard themselves “as the younger.”

I hope and pray that we’re all being leaders/facilitators/hosts that fit in with the kingdom of God model and not the gentile/worldly model that surrounds us everywhere we go. I also pray that each of us are encouraging our group members to do the same. By becoming servants to all, leadership will be a natural extension to them all.

Looking back at the House of Prayer

I was thinking back today after several things were said this morning by folks in my tribe.

I posted this on March 25, 2006 ::

Richard, Phil and I met this morning at the Waxahachie IHOP for coffee, fellowship and discussion on this “new thing” we’ve begun.
I don’t know if any of us are sure on how we should classify it. Is it a house church? Emergent church? House of prayer? It’s so fluid right now and exciting.
I jotted down a few notes and thought this would be a good place to keep track of them and maybe get some feedback.
Here are some ideas/visions we discussed:
No building – the church is not a building, its the people. We want to think out of the box with meetings in homes, not a big spacious auditorium.
A heart of ministry and worship – maybe self explanitory, but we want to have a heart that’s reaching out and ministering to people while we worship God.
Relational – we don’t want anyone to feel like a number, or just a dude sitting in a pew, seat whatever. We want to build relationships and in that fellowship, learn from each other and grow together.
Constant communication – we want to build a community where people feel comfortable sharing ideas, prayer requests, concerns, needs.
Diverse.
Smaller groups – in each house church group we invision smaller groups that meet outside the typical “community meetings.” Such as women’s groups, mens groups etc.
Christ seekers – we don’t claim to know everything. We’re just souls seeking God and a Christ-like life.
Multiplication – we invision the community growing and multiplying. How great would it be to know that every Saturday or Sunday people are getting together in a house in each neighborhood in Waxahachie, or Dallas, or Texas or the US to pray and draw close to God.
Ministry – we need to be involved in doing ministry in our community regularly. Whether we have 3 people or 30 people, we need to be out working in our community and sharing God’s love.
10-15 people ideal – each house group will grow till 10-15 people are gathering weekly. From that, smaller groups will split off and start their own house groups in their neighborhood.
Monthly corporate meetings – each month all the house groups will gather for worship, sharing and testimony to share how God is working in their lives/groups/communities.
Ownership of faith – group members take ownership in their faith and put it to use.
Tithing – each person should be responsible for tithing to the church/community. This brings up a whole other topic of issues that we’re not familiar with. Non-profit organization, bank accounts, etc. Something to study and look into: what is tithing? Is 10 percent scripturally required, or is that “man’s standard?”
So those are some of our thoughts and ideas we discussed this morning. I’d love to hear other ideas and thoughts. Especially from those of you already involved in the emergent/house church movement.

So many thoughts, dreams, visions, imagining etc. More to come.

Together as One

Great U2, Beatles, Dianah Ross, Mariah Carrey mashup!

wonder if this could become a theme song for community groups in (y)our local churches… hmmm. 🙂 I can see the emails now.

may be worth using for an upcoming podcast at least…… maybe.

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140 characters of prayer

I feel like I’ve been sending a lot of prayer–related txt messages and tweets lately. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. I actually have only heard positive things from folks getting them (however please let me know if you’d rather not receive them).

I’ve found that txt messages, Twitter and e-mail have turned the traditional “prayer chain” into a rapid fire prayer blast. Within seconds/minutes folks all around the world can be updated with the latest prayer needs.

I’ve used txt messaging and e-mail for some time now. And with my new phone I love the ability to assign folks to message groups so I’m not selecting multiple people each and every time I send a message out.

But I have to wonder if there’s still yet a better way to send out rapid-fire prayer needs/requests. If more folks signed up to Twitter it could really become an informational network where folks could chose to receive updates via the web or txt messages. Perhaps an alternative Twitter feed could be setup just for prayer requests/alerts.

I wonder what it would take to build a system for churches or ministries where prayer alerts could be entered into a system and a message would be sent to Twitter, Plurk (get the most responses from Plurk), Jaiku, etc feeds (140 characters max of course), sent to those requesting cell phone updates, and then a longer more detailed message could also go directly to an RSS feed that could be subscribed to via traditional RSS readers and or e-mail.

Ultimately folks could subsubscribe, unsubscribe and also choose how to receive the prayer alerts.

Is this asking too much? Am I over thinking this? Is it already there? I bet with a little planning a system could be built using WordPress and a couple different plugins.

Hmmm…. could lead to some great possibilities.

What do you prefer? How is your church spreading news/announcements/prayer requests? Still using traditional mediums like bulletins, announcements and prayer chains? Are you on the “cutting edge” and using txt messages, or RSS?

Share you thoughts and ideas!

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Tribal Life

I spoke to my tribe yesterday and encouraged them to think about new ways to express & understand Christian community. (You can listen to the message online via the encounter website.)

Got one comment about me turning into Karl Marx – but I think it was in jest and if that’s the worst they can say… it was a good day ;-).

As I think more and more about my tribe, and Christian community other thoughts are crossing my mind.

I keep asking myself this same question, “So what does this tribe, this community, this oneness look like?” As I mentioned yesterday, “I’m not entirely sure — especially in modern America.”

But I do know this ::

Jesus told his disciples, “By this all men will know you are my disciple — if you love one another.” — John 13:34 & 35.

Seems that Christian brotherhood and sisterhood and community and unity were very big on Jesus’ plan/plate.

In the Hebrew Scriptures we read about the “tribes of Israel.”� The 12 tribes whom God called upon to be different in their culture. To be set apart. To be unique.

He calls them to accept the foreigner into their homes.

He calls them to ignore the idol worship of their neighbors.

He calls them to put their trust in Yahweh rather than in a king, or a Pharaoh or a President.

He calls them to honor the Sabbath — a day you set aside all your business of the 24/7 consumerism and focus on God — the creator of it all.

And so the Hebrews get very accustomed to this calling of being “separate” from the world (not that anyone’s ever really figured that out).

And then Jesus shows up on the earth and starts telling everyone that he was forming a new tribe.

A tribe where the Hebrews would join together with the Gentiles. No wonder they got upset and had him killed. That in and of itself could be considered blasphemy.

A tribe for all who were baptized into Christ and have clothed themselves with Christ.

Where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.

It’s a radical idea and I believe it calls for radical changes in our thinking and behavior.

When the tribe succeeds – everyone succeeds!

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