Missional Community: Neighborhood or Network?
When making disciples in community, a common strategy question arises: should we have a Missional Community that is only neighborhood-based, or should we start a Missional Community that’s relationally network-based?
In this episode, Caesar lays out the advantages and disadvantages of both neighborhood and networked-based approaches to community building. And the importance of creating organized and organic rhythms whichever way you go.
In This Episode You’ll Learn:
- Why proximity is gold when living on mission together.
- The importance of understanding your proactive and reactive mission.
- The benefits and challenges that both approaches present.
- Loads of real-world examples on how all of this works.
From this episode:
“If your Missional Community is made up of people that are coming from different parts of town and for whatever reason, have formed a community on mission, you can still succeed. You’re going to have to be a LOT more intentional about how you plan your times and activities together and know that it could start to feel event-based if you’re not careful.”
Each week the Big 3 will give you immediate action steps to get you started.
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Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Free Download of the Big 3 For Episode #328
Coaching with Caesar and Tina in discipleship and missional living.
Free Discipleship and Missional Resources
Transcript
People can feel like they're just a group of lone ranger, vagabond, missionaries, the Christians, they feel that way.
Speaker:Like we're just kind of lone ranger missionaries.
Speaker:We meet together once a week maybe to talk about our individual missions, but we're really not living like an oikos, like a family on mission.
Speaker:We're not on the same mission.
Speaker:We kind of have our lone ranger missions out there.
Speaker:We just kind of come together to talk about, pray about it.
Speaker:That's not a Missional Community and you can't make a mature Disciple alone.
Speaker:You can't Disciple someone just one-to-one to be like Jesus.
Speaker:Cause it takes the body of Christ.
Speaker:No one of us is like Jesus alone.
Speaker:We're part of the body.
Speaker:It takes a Community same way.
Speaker:Jesus did it.
Speaker:Welcome to the Everyday Disciple Podcast where you'll learn how to live with greater intentionality and an integrated faith that naturally fits into every area of life.
Speaker:In other words, discipleship as a lifestyle, this is the stuff your parents, pastors, and seminary professors.
Speaker:Probably forgot to tell you.
Speaker:And now here's your host Caesar.
Speaker:Kalinowski welcome.
Speaker:Welcome to the neighborhood.
Speaker:It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Speaker:I'm getting a little giddy getting to get in and out and out more and get my vitamin D and also, um, I'm stoked because I actually have some.
Speaker:Vacation coming.
Speaker:In fact, depending on when you're hearing this, I'm on vacation, I'm recording this way ahead of time, but it's supposed to release on my vacation and we're going to be up in the mountains in Tennessee, way up in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker:No wifi, uh, no phone signal.
Speaker:That's going to kill me.
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Speaker:I am one of those people though, I live on the wifi and my laptop and phone are always with me pretty much 24 seven, but I'm going to be up in this cabin, six other couples.
Speaker:We're going to do some hiking, fishing, great food, going to be doing the story of God together a little bit each night.
Speaker:That's going to be amazing.
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Speaker:Can't even wait.
Speaker:Well, anyway, a review, an awesome review came in from my drew at early bird farm.
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Speaker:He said Caesar and Heath execute a fantastic, authentic, funny and relevant podcast about discipleship today.
Speaker:Whoa.
Speaker:That's awesome.
Speaker:And he's referencing my buddy Heath, who was part of the life school Podcast before we had switched over to Everyday Disciple.
Speaker:And you still hear him on the opening and closing every day anyway.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:That's amazing.
Speaker:He goes on saying challenging old Christian paradigms, which build barriers to the power of the gospel and embracing the fundamental characteristics of Jesus life on mission, which is to grow a family of missionary servants.
Speaker:Who Disciple one another to love God and love our neighbor one friendship at a time.
Speaker:Well, thanks for that drew.
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Speaker:Well, I got to say, uh, this is a pretty cool topic today.
Speaker:We're going to talk about when starting a Missional Community or leading one, or maybe if you're a church or a set of leaders within a church or small group leaders, wherever you're setting out to maybe do new forms of Community, more outward focused communities, we'll call them Missional communities.
Speaker:You can call them whatever you want, but that's what we call them.
Speaker:But when setting out to do that, are you going to be, uh, Doing a network based Missional Community, or are you going to be doing a neighborhood based, you know, neighborhoods everybody's around you network is out there more.
Speaker:So I want to talk a little about that.
Speaker:And if you are either you've been doing this or you're heading out into some new waters, cause a lot of stuff has changed in the last year here.
Speaker:You've already figured out that getting into new Missional rhythms as an extended family is not without its challenges.
Speaker:It takes great humility and ongoing intentionality to move our own lives and our own families toward this type of a lifestyle.
Speaker:Discipleship is a lifestyle and it's exponentially harder when more and more people come into the circle with us, but don't be discouraged.
Speaker:We all have to begin where we're at, but with some intentionality and some understanding of how these communities come together.
Speaker:You're going to make some better choices and you're going to have a little smoother road.
Speaker:Remember that all of this is a supernatural work of God.
Speaker:It's not like we can just work hard enough and this'll happen.
Speaker:This is all God's work.
Speaker:And he always fills what he commands his people to do.
Speaker:And Jesus said, go and make disciples everywhere, every crack and cranny and crook and cranny or whatever, you know what I'm saying?
Speaker:He's already commanded that.
Speaker:So he will.
Speaker:Provide for that.
Speaker:He will lead you through tough spots, fears, confusion, whatever comes up.
Speaker:And he is always full of grace and he never condemns our shortcomings or something.
Speaker:We try and say, well, that didn't work.
Speaker:I'm gonna try something else.
Speaker:So we don't need to either we don't need to condemn ourselves or anybody else.
Speaker:One of the challenges you will almost certainly begin to run into as you're intentional relational.
Speaker:Network of friends begins to grow is going to be proximity.
Speaker:Should we start a Missional Community?
Speaker:That's only neighborhood-based.
Speaker:With everyone right around us within certain sort of walking, striking distance or whatever, or a few minutes driver, or should we start a Missional Community?
Speaker:That's, network-based made up of lots of different relationships maybe that we have, or us in a couple other couples have relationships spread out throughout town and work and elsewhere.
Speaker:Should we do it that way?
Speaker:Well, I guess that would depend on the situation.
Speaker:Both are completely valid ways of building out Missional Community life.
Speaker:But you need to know which one you're doing.
Speaker:So you don't accidentally stumble or wonder why is this happening or whatever.
Speaker:And you need to know which one you're doing, but also why.
Speaker:Now, like I said, proximity is crucial to truly live in like a family.
Speaker:And that's the goal we really want to a Missional Community is like a family and extended family on mission that were oikos is the word he used for church and these types of extended family and scripture.
Speaker:And that's what we see that Jesus did.
Speaker:He didn't just spend an hour and a half once a week or maybe twice a week with his disciples and then check you later.
Speaker:And that's our goal.
Speaker:So proximity is going to be pretty crucial to live in like a family.
Speaker:Would you agree?
Speaker:Could you imagine if let's say you've got three or four or five kids, some people have none, some have way more than that, but let's just say you do for the sake of this illustration, you've got four or five kids and.
Speaker:Your kids are all living 30 minutes in each direction apart.
Speaker:Not none of them are 15 or 20, whatever.
Speaker:So to get together, you got to drive all over the place or they got to catch rides or wherever just to have a meal.
Speaker:And then, Oh man, forget about lining up all the schedules because between, you know, the teenagers starting to have jobs and there's tons of sports going on a little band camp and all these different things, really, really tough.
Speaker:How the heck could you parent, how could you have a close knit family?
Speaker:How would, you know each other's hearts and be able to have enough sort of invitation banked in each other's life, enough trust built and, you know, warmth and all that.
Speaker:So that you can actually parent and Disciple one another and things like that.
Speaker:You couldn't do that.
Speaker:I mean, it sounds ridiculous just in the hearing, you're going to start bumping up all kinds of scheduling issues, all that distance from one another will seem like, Oh, we could never do what we want.
Speaker:Well, it's the same in a Missional Community distance from one another will seem to prohibit the more organic elements of life together on mission.
Speaker:And I'm often asked if you can start a Missional Community with people who don't live anywhere near each other.
Speaker:Can you have groups that are made up of people who live all over town or even further away?
Speaker:Well, the answer's yes, Nan kind of know the real issue behind these questions is can you live like a close family?
Speaker:If you rarely see each other?
Speaker:Well within a scheduling and determination, you probably can make it work.
Speaker:If you're networked, you're more spread out.
Speaker:It is possible to live out the more organized aspects of family life that way.
Speaker:But are you going to have a hard time bringing in the organic aspect of discipleship and mission in life together?
Speaker:And remember healthy family takes both your family.
Speaker:Let's I'm hoping it's healthy is not just a series of organized activities and you don't see each other have any interaction between those, those things or, or little, it's not just organic either where it's like, well, whatever's going on?
Speaker:We eat whenever.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:People eat.
Speaker:Sometimes the kids go to school.
Speaker:We pay the bills.
Speaker:If we think about no, your family has both organized and organic aspects to it.
Speaker:And that's where the richness comes.
Speaker:That's where the forward momentum comes.
Speaker:Missional Community is going to have to have both.
Speaker:So as you're trying to decide, are we going to do a network or neighborhood you're gonna have to decide, does our network allow for both organized and organic aspects of life together?
Speaker:It's the same if you're neighborhood based, but you can sort of get the pitch already where that's going to be a whole lot easier.
Speaker:If you're living pretty close to each other.
Speaker:In my experience, a Missional Community, that's made up of people who do not live relatively close to one another.
Speaker:We'll have a very hard time making disciples and developing others to do the same, their best intentions from what I've seen, usually dissolve into a weekly meeting that they call their Missional Community.
Speaker:And it's nothing more than an old school, small group at best with new language and maybe some higher hopes.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Cause it's just too hard to get together or we are we're super intentional.
Speaker:But everything's gotta be scheduled and you know, if I can't make it, I'm not gonna make it.
Speaker:So when it comes to building a family on mission or Missional Community from a network or neighborhood, I would suggest that if possible, you want to shoot for those people closest to you and trust God for growth and multiplication as your relational network expands.
Speaker:From there, sort of the, from the rings of where you live and maybe a handful of other people that are on mission with you and you're living close together.
Speaker:Well, just let those rings move outward.
Speaker:Like I said, the goal is to live like a family on mission together, helping people move from unbelief to belief in every area of life.
Speaker:You've heard me say that a lot on the podcast will, in order to do that, you'll need to be able to do all areas of life together.
Speaker:Common sense if you're gonna make disciples and see the Gospel applied and bring transformation to every area of life.
Speaker:Well, eventually, and often you're going to have to do every area of life together, not just a weekly meeting or a book study or the occasional service project, or what have you.
Speaker:Now here's the thing, a little side note.
Speaker:As you go along in life, it'll be normal for you to develop relationships with those outside your neighborhood.
Speaker:It's going to happen.
Speaker:You're going to find people that you really like or who like you, or build relationships, then they don't necessarily all live right in your neighborhood or within five or 10 minutes or whatever, but collectively as a Missional Community.
Speaker:So as your Missional Community is forming, you'll need to identify your proactive mission.
Speaker:In other words, those you can and are discipling while doing your lives together.
Speaker:Who are you making disciples of specifically?
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:See, we're going to have to have a proactive mission.
Speaker:Meaning together as the Christians on mission, we're going to have to decide who are we making disciples of?
Speaker:Is it a scattered network of people or is it People of Peace that live in proximity?
Speaker:Was, is it a specific subset, like the single moms and their kids within our neighborhood?
Speaker:Is it the business owners and their staff and all the businesses that are right up and down this, you know, Avenue here where we live close to.
Speaker:And this is where we hang out and party.
Speaker:That's your proactive mission.
Speaker:You're choosing who's God leading us to make disciples up.
Speaker:Is it youth?
Speaker:Is it the college kids at the campus that you live two blocks from?
Speaker:I don't know, but you're going to need that.
Speaker:That's your proactive mission.
Speaker:Are you a neighborhood group, but all of your People of Peace come from a wide network.
Speaker:Are you networked and working on identifying People of Peace in all of the separate neighborhoods that you come from.
Speaker:And then you're going to try to combine them in one community.
Speaker:You have to be proactive and decide who specifically we're making disciples of, because if you don't, if you don't know, and you're not intentional you, how do you pray towards that?
Speaker:It's just going to be maybe organic at best.
Speaker:You're probably not going to make disciples now on top of that.
Speaker:On top of having a proactive mission, you'll need to learn to trust God with the reactive mission opportunities that come up in the flow of life at work, or with those outside your close, closer relational circle.
Speaker:But I want to stress that since the goal of discipleship is to see every part of our lives come in line with the truth of the gospel being and living more and more like Jesus.
Speaker:We have to be sure that we're actually in the normal stuff of everyday life with the people we're discipling.
Speaker:See, it's one thing to be a witness to someone.
Speaker:So that's a reactive mission opportunity say, Hey, there's this person in my life.
Speaker:They're at work.
Speaker:They live real far away, but I want to be a witness to him, but it's another thing to disciple them in all of life.
Speaker:And ultimately if you're not able to do more and more life with a person, you'll not be able to disciple them.
Speaker:You can still live as a witness and live to glorify God, show them what he's like through your words, your actions, your generosity, but discipleship is life on life, life, and Community like a family and life on mission.
Speaker:You got to keep that in mind.
Speaker:So we're going to have to pick a proactive mission.
Speaker:Who specifically are we making disciples of?
Speaker:And then we also are going to have reactive Missional opportunities and some people try to say, well, all those, that's my mission.
Speaker:You can't Disciple that way.
Speaker:You gotta be able to do life together, life on life, life, and community life on mission.
Speaker:Now, let me give you three advantages to starting a neighborhood-based Missional Community.
Speaker:First it's easier live both the organized and organic rhythms of life.
Speaker:Like I was saying more and more like an extended family.
Speaker:When you live in proximity, that's either within walking distance or pretty darn close, it's easy to kind of run into each other and Hey, pop on over.
Speaker:We're doing this.
Speaker:We're going to have grab some ice cream and you want to do it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's going to be a whole lot easier.
Speaker:Second advantage to starting a neighborhood based Missional Community, the People of Peace.
Speaker:In your life are much more likely to lean in to relationship.
Speaker:When they see you in the neighborhood, they run into you dropping kids off at the school, maybe at the same cafe or grocery store, it's easier to serve one another when someone's sick or they need a meal or, Hey, let me, let me pick the kids up for you or drop them off or Hey, drop them off over here.
Speaker:After school, we, when someone's in a pitch, your kids are playing together.
Speaker:It's so much easier for your People of Peace.
Speaker:Those people were God's bringing into your life are leaning into relationship to actually lean in compared to when they're real far away.
Speaker:And you might see him if you schedule it out far enough, here's the third advantage to starting a neighborhood-based Missional Community, word of mouth in your neighborhood about the fun and the joy and life you're experiencing travels fast in a neighborhood.
Speaker:When you're starting to have open table and you're serving each other, and there's a lot of blessing going out through the normal discipleship rhythms of life.
Speaker:People start to talk about it.
Speaker:People are going to hear about it and growth happens pretty naturally through more and more folks who live near you, kind of hearing about it and wanting a place at the table, that's way less likely to happen when we're all spread out.
Speaker:No one knows each other.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:Now here's a couple challenges to starting a neighborhood-based Missional Community.
Speaker:Cause it's not all perfect.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:There's advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.
Speaker:Here's a couple of challenges to starting a neighborhood based Missional Community.
Speaker:It can be slow at first, since you may be starting off just as one couple alone, or maybe a couple couples, two couples and developing relationships out of a smaller pool of people, because it's just your neighborhood.
Speaker:And you have to calibrate invitation and challenge in their lives.
Speaker:That can be a little slower at first.
Speaker:You're going to go deeper, but now as wide as quick.
Speaker:So that's a challenge.
Speaker:You have to be prepared to take time and bank a lot of invitation trust time with those people so that you can begin to calibrate the relational challenge up the slope.
Speaker:As you move closer and closer to discipling them, to walk with Jesus.
Speaker:Here's another challenge to starting a neighborhood based Missional Community.
Speaker:If you are sort of the life of the party family in your neighborhood events, like an open table that you start having can grow very quickly without having enough mature Christians on mission with you to actually get a lot of Gospel work.
Speaker:And discipleship happening.
Speaker:We always felt like we had to stay on developing of new leaders that could Disciple and start new Missional communities because a lot of times, at least in our life and in our neighborhoods, Those types of open table events and serving and all, they just grew and grew and the healthy things always grow, but it can be hard to kind of keep up with that growth and not just becomes sort of the fun people in the neighborhood who are also Christians, but there's not a lot of discipleship happening that can be a challenge.
Speaker:It's kind of a good problem to have, or a good challenge to have, but it's something to think about now, a quick note about proximity.
Speaker:Proximity is relative, depending on your context, what seems like living in close proximity might be different.
Speaker:When we lived in Tacoma, proximity was, there was so many people we could just walk to and I could walk to two of the top 50 pubs in America.
Speaker:And the restaurant we own was a 10 minute walk away.
Speaker:And literally there was four or five.
Speaker:Missional Community is worth of People, 2030 plus people with within just a five, 10 minute walk of each other.
Speaker:It was, it grew and multiplied and grew and multiplied.
Speaker:That was our proximity.
Speaker:There was no need to whatever driveway across town and say, I'm going to pull that person into Community with me.
Speaker:But like when we lived in New York, in New York city, when Tina and I were living there for a couple of years, not too long ago.
Speaker:Well, it was different people in our neighborhood.
Speaker:It was so dense in New York was so big.
Speaker:They would say, Hey, what's your subway stop?
Speaker:And we'd say, Oh, well it's 72nd.
Speaker:Cause we live on 75th and they'd be like 72nd.
Speaker:Oh man, I get off at one Oh eight.
Speaker:I'm like.
Speaker:I'm only two stops down we're neighbors.
Speaker:Well, that was actually a million people later, but it's only two stops on the subway to them to train.
Speaker:So they felt like that's not, it's a few minutes.
Speaker:I'm already on the train.
Speaker:I'm just gonna hop off at your neighborhood.
Speaker:One minute.
Speaker:Walk to your front door, man.
Speaker:Hello neighbor.
Speaker:Different right.
Speaker:We coached some people in North Dakota.
Speaker:They said, because it's so spread out up there and giant farms.
Speaker:Well, it's not that uncommon to know people pretty deeply and see them pretty regularly.
Speaker:Even though you have to hop in your car and drive 40, 45 minutes to see each other.
Speaker:I'm like what?
Speaker:Like, yeah, there's just not that many people it's really spread out.
Speaker:We've worked with other people who live in a somewhat rural.
Speaker:Setting, but there are some neighbors, but there's also kind of farm nets and all that.
Speaker:And so for them, it's probably people within a five or 10 minute drive or, well, we all have to go to the downtown, to, to bank and go to the one cafe.
Speaker:And that's where the feed store is.
Speaker:And that's where the theater is and the one grocery store.
Speaker:And so as long as everybody's kind of striking distance to that, that's our proximity.
Speaker:So just remember proximity is a bit relative.
Speaker:So if you're incarnating together, you're with a few believers, you're really trying to be Jesus and put the flesh on to the Gospel in a specific part of your city or neighborhood reaching people that are in very tight proximity.
Speaker:I gotta be honest with you.
Speaker:I think that's going to be a great advantage to you.
Speaker:Okay, I'm playing my hand here.
Speaker:I think trying to live incarnationally and on-mission when there's closer proximity and more people is going to be easier.
Speaker:We felt like in New York, even though people said, Oh, it's so hard in the city.
Speaker:No, one's gonna want to live this way.
Speaker:You're not going to be really hard to make disciples and Community all that.
Speaker:We found it to be the opposite.
Speaker:It was so many people.
Speaker:It was so dense.
Speaker:All you had to do is go out the front door, eyes closed, Chuck, a rock.
Speaker:You're going to hit 10 people.
Speaker:It just, it was just so many people to love on and build relationship with.
Speaker:Now, that's sort of the best case scenario because you're going to be running into each other life on life's going to happen much more normatively the display of the Gospel and sort of all the, I think, a best case scenario for a network.
Speaker:Missional Community would ultimately beat stuff of life is happening in the Gospel, soaking into everything.
Speaker:That's what you want if possible.
Speaker:Now lets kind of go to the other model cause there's also advantages and disadvantages there.
Speaker:If you're Missional Community is made up of people that are coming from different parts of town and for whatever reason have formed a community on mission, you can still do it.
Speaker:You're going to have to be a lot more intentional about how you plan your events and activities together and know that it could start to feel event based pretty quickly if you're not careful.
Speaker:So if you've got a network of people, you're going to have to plan things that they can be a part of, but you're also have to let them know that that's not our whole life like this weekly family dinner night thing that we do together.
Speaker:That's on our whole life or when we got together and we studied that, or we went over here and we served.
Speaker:That's just part of it.
Speaker:I mean, we're not a family one night a week, so you gotta kind of let them understand that like really proactively communicate this.
Speaker:This is a blast, but we do all kinds of steps together and you're going to have to be super intentional about also your one-to-one connections, coupled a couple one-to-one all that in between the group times.
Speaker:Cause that organizational stuff's going to be much, much harder.
Speaker:So it takes a lot more intentionality.
Speaker:A lot more consistency that the people who were kind of spread out to believers would ultimately learn how to grow.
Speaker:And be sent back into their own neighborhoods where they could then have more neighborhood proximity and be with people and start their own oikos their own family on mission, their own Missional Community.
Speaker:We found.
Speaker:Oftentimes probably because we were leaders of the church and he, and People see preaching and hear you talking about stuff and they know you're writing books and all that, whatever I want to be in your Missional Community.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But you live across town.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, we really want to be a part of something that's happening and yeah.
Speaker:Can't, we just be a part of your Missional Community where we'd say, well, you can, but only for maybe six months, you're going to have to make everything we're doing.
Speaker:Cause pretty much everybody else lives right here.
Speaker:So you can be a part of it.
Speaker:We're gonna let people know that you're part of the family and you're learning how to live this way and be a blessing in the neighborhoods.
Speaker:So it's not weird to our, not yet believing neighbors and all that.
Speaker:But within six months, we're going to challenge you to either go back into your neighborhood and start the same things that we've been teaching you and showing you, or move into our neighborhood and join this mission.
Speaker:Full-time we're not just going to, we're not going to take our current one that's neighborhood base.
Speaker:And just let it sort of become a peep show and you know, and no one knows anybody because they don't live around here, but except for a few of us.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So even, even if you have one that its sort of networking that way, make the goal to ultimately be sending people back to their own neighborhoods.
Speaker:Now the differences between a neighborhood and network-based Missional Community are not insurmountable and neither is like I said, perfect.
Speaker:They come with.
Speaker:Advantages and challenges.
Speaker:And, and I got to tell you, I I've actually seen that depending on where you start, you might actually spawn or sort of plant out of one type, the other type.
Speaker:Let me tell you what I mean by that, uh, Missional Community that's initially based completely in a neighborhood will eventually, as people are coming to know Christ and becoming disciples, it's gonna eventually grow.
Speaker:They've got friends and relationships and family members that just don't happen to live in your neighborhood.
Speaker:But now, as they're walking with Jesus and being set free, they're on fire a little bit.
Speaker:They want to see their friends and family come to know Christ and begin walking in his ways.
Speaker:With them in this family community.
Speaker:And so they begin to have sort of a networked set of relationships that come to bear.
Speaker:They can start to hang out.
Speaker:Well, we're not going to squash that.
Speaker:So you see how, even though you might've started with great proximity, healthy things grow and they might network out a little bit there again, not a bad opportunity for growth again.
Speaker:Guess what vice-a-versa also happens.
Speaker:You might start out with a network-based Missional Community.
Speaker:And as people are coming to Christ, People of Peace are popping up around them, where they live and we've had that happen.
Speaker:And people come to us and say, Hey, I've got a whole lot of people in my neighborhood that I'm starting to get to know.
Speaker:They're really starting to lean in.
Speaker:I'm going to start my own open table, dinner night, sort of thing, just to get to know and reach out to a handful of people in my own cul de sac here or in this part of my city.
Speaker:I'm hoping it's going to grow into a full blown Missional Community.
Speaker:Pretty cool.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So that's why I say know either can work, but you got to know which one you're doing and where it's heading and you gotta be really intentional about it.
Speaker:So how you start doesn't really matter as much as that you do get started and depending on where the spirit takes it, who knows this is going to be an amazing thing, but you do have to be intentional.
Speaker:And know that there's differences between these two approaches.
Speaker:Now here, let me give you three advantages to starting a network-based Missional Community.
Speaker:One where you're starting out and you're not all living in the same neighborhood.
Speaker:Here's the first one.
Speaker:Your church, small group structure may already be set up this way.
Speaker:And serve as a starting point now is everybody's not living all that close together in my small group, but we love each other.
Speaker:And we've been learning about Missional Community life and making disciples as a lifestyle.
Speaker:And we've been listening to the podcast and we're excited about this.
Speaker:So we are going to start that way.
Speaker:Cause that's who we know.
Speaker:And we're going to start identifying people at Peace and go from there.
Speaker:Now this could present a set of its own problems too, because sometimes our small groups, our traditional church, he stuff has some inertia.
Speaker:heading in the wrong direction.
Speaker:Be careful for that.
Speaker:Here's the second advantage to starting a network-based Missional Community.
Speaker:It can be much easier to begin with a networked group of Christians who have identified one or two of their own People of Peace already.
Speaker:And so you start out having a much larger initial group of people to start with.
Speaker:Compared to say, Tina and I are in a new neighborhood.
Speaker:We are get there's no other Christians we know yet.
Speaker:And we're getting to know a few other people at Peace.
Speaker:It's slow work, but God's moving.
Speaker:We can see it.
Speaker:Well, if there's two or three, four families that are Christians, even if they're spread out, but they all have identified their own People of Peace.
Speaker:And there's a lot of trust there.
Speaker:And so they're going to say, Hey, we want you to meet some other friends.
Speaker:We're going to start hanging out together, doing life.
Speaker:And they have that type of relationship.
Speaker:It can be a lot quicker to get started.
Speaker:Here's an here's the third advantage to this approach being networked across a wider geographical area, sort of plants, oikos, or family on mission seeds all over the city.
Speaker:Ready for city-wide multiplication.
Speaker:That's one of my favorite aspects of a network-based Missional Community.
Speaker:If you're really intentional about it, you say, okay, we're network from all over town.
Speaker:But we're kind of in equipping mode.
Speaker:This is like a pilot group.
Speaker:And then we're all going to, at some point when it makes sense, we're going to all, boop, we're going to become three or four groups when Soma Community started in Tacoma.
Speaker:We had one sort of training, very, very networked Missional Community.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:After several months, boop.
Speaker:It went out to four.
Speaker:We just sort of grew a big X in the city of Tacoma.
Speaker:And there was four Missional communities and they were sent out, sent out into their corners.
Speaker:And so whoever lived closest to those families, they were part of that.
Speaker:And as it just kept multiplying, we got closer and closer to proximity, but boy, it did facilitate some pretty quicker geographical growth.
Speaker:I loved it.
Speaker:Now here's some challenges.
Speaker:Kind of already run over him, but here's some challenges to starting a network-based Missional Community.
Speaker:It's very hard to get together for the organic rhythms of life.
Speaker:Everything's gotta be planned and scheduled and to cause, and can start to feel like a program meeting to meeting event, to event.
Speaker:And we've already had plenty of that for way too long in the church.
Speaker:We want this to be like a family.
Speaker:So that's a challenge.
Speaker:Second challenge to starting a network-based Missional Community, since discipleship's about all of life.
Speaker:It's going to take much greater level of intentionality and commitment to actually do all of life together.
Speaker:Otherwise we're just fooling ourselves and that's especially true with your People of Peace who are out there networked connected to the believers who they're not really on mission with you yet.
Speaker:They're still checking out these relationships and stuff.
Speaker:So it's hard.
Speaker:For them to experience normal, organic family rhythms of life with you, you might have some better luck getting the Christians to hang out a whole lot more often than once a week, but it's going to be exponentially harder with your People of Peace for awhile.
Speaker:That's a challenge.
Speaker:And here's the third challenge to starting a network-based Missional Community.
Speaker:Oftentimes when we're not living in proximity with shared relationships with our People of Peace.
Speaker:So, you know, my People of Peace, I know yours, theirs, maybe they're yours too.
Speaker:People can feel like they're just a group of lone ranger, vagabond, missionaries, the Christians, they feel that way.
Speaker:Like we're just kind of lone ranger missionaries.
Speaker:We meet together.
Speaker:Once a week maybe to talk about our individual missions, but we're really not living like an oikos, like a family on mission.
Speaker:We're not on the same mission.
Speaker:We kind of have our lone ranger missions out there.
Speaker:We just kind of come together to talk about and pray about it.
Speaker:That's not a Missional Community and you can't make a mature Disciple alone.
Speaker:You can't Disciple someone just one-to-one to be like Jesus.
Speaker:Cause it takes the body of Christ.
Speaker:No one of us is like Jesus alone.
Speaker:We're part of the body.
Speaker:It takes a Community.
Speaker:Same way.
Speaker:Jesus did it.
Speaker:So you can see there are advantages and disadvantages to both ways of starting and organizing a Missional Community.
Speaker:And even how they multiply both are going to take a lot of intentionality.
Speaker:And one type of Community may even morph into the other over time.
Speaker:But I hope that helps and maybe brings down some of the tension or confusion connected to all of this.
Speaker:But I hope you'll get started.
Speaker:I hope you keep going.
Speaker:And by the way, if you're loving what you're learning here, if this is helpful and you'd like a little more personal help, I would love to talk with you and get you some information about the coaching and the mentorship that we offer.
Speaker:If you're interested in learning a full framework for discipleship and Missional living and how to multiply networks and all that.
Speaker:If you want to grow in your gospel fluency in everyday life, I'd love to set up a short zoom call to get to know you better answer any questions you might have and tell you all about it and hopefully get you started with Tina and I soon you can get more information by going to Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash coaching.
Speaker:Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash coaching.
Speaker:There's a little video there, a bunch of information and a little form to get ahold of me.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:It's time for the big three takeaways from today's topic.
Speaker:You don't want to miss these and as always, you can get a printable PDF of this.
Speaker:Week's big three that I'm about to read here.
Speaker:You can get that as a free download by going to Everyday Disciple dot com.
Speaker:Big three, big three.
Speaker:Here are the big three for this week.
Speaker:First.
Speaker:Don't miss this starting Missional Community takes a lot of intentionality either way and it takes great trust in the Holy Spirit's leading.
Speaker:So whether building a Missional Community with a group of other Christians or starting off alone with mostly not yet believers you'll need to be super intentional on developing both organized and organic rhythms.
Speaker:Like write that down, organized and organic.
Speaker:Your goal is to increasingly live like a family and be able to experience the Gospel, transforming every area of life together.
Speaker:Number two, God is committed to his eternal purpose to fill the world with his glory.
Speaker:And that includes your neighborhood in mind and neighborhoods all across your city.
Speaker:Will you take the next step in joining him on this mission?
Speaker:Or will you continue to be a church attender with a little mission thrown into the margins of your life you were created for just such a time as this and God has you exactly where he wants you trust him and get started.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah, we get two.
Speaker:You get two and number three, which of these approaches are you taking?
Speaker:What are you doing?
Speaker:If you're starting a Missional Community, or maybe you have one identify, whether you're structured based on a network of relationships or making disciples in closer proximity within your neighborhood, healthy things always grow in whichever way you start may change and morph, but determine where you're starting.
Speaker:So you can plot a course.
Speaker:You're going to be glad you did.
Speaker:It will be a lot less stressful.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:And again, I'd love to help you with any of this at least stop for a second.
Speaker:Go and check out Everyday.
Speaker:Disciple dot com forward slash coaching.
Speaker:Get a whole bunch of information on the coaching and mentorship we offer.
Speaker:All right, well, there it is.
Speaker:Again, another episode in the can, as we say, uh, please join me next week.
Speaker:I'm going to be talking about micro church house church.
Speaker:Dinner church, Missional church or Missional Community.
Speaker:How are they alike?
Speaker:How are they different?
Speaker:Which should we be doing?
Speaker:So if your church has latched onto a new strategy that uses one of these terms, or you're thinking about it, you don't want to miss this episode.
Speaker:I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker:Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker:For more information on this show and to get loads of free discipleship resources, visit Everyday Disciple dot com.