Practices of Healthy Missional Communities
Seventeen essays on shared meals, Life Transformation Groups, third places, mission, and the rhythms that hold a community together.
Read from the beginning, in publication order.
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Missional Community Practices
Missional communities at The Austin Stone gather three ways: as a family over a meal, as disciples in a Life Transformation Group, and as missionaries in a third place. Here is the overview, with a story…
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Missional Community Practices – Different Kinds of Gatherings
We build different kinds of gatherings because the aim is obedience rather than information transfer. Practices without the gospel underneath them produce self-righteousness or self-loathing, so this post answers how rather than why.
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Missional Community Practices – The Family Meal
If obedience means acting like a family, the question is what families actually do, and families share life around a meal. So we asked leaders to host a meal rather than prepare a lesson, which frees…
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Missional Community Practices – Life Transformation Groups
A Life Transformation Group is two or three believers of the same gender meeting outside the community gathering to hear and obey, repent and believe, and consider and pray. Neil Cole got this right, and it…
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Missional Community Practices – Third Place
A third place is where a missional community becomes intentionally missional: neutral ground, natural to the rhythms of your friends who do not know Jesus, and regular enough that they can belong before they believe. Mission…
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Missional Community Practices – Fitting Them All Together
The most common objection to these practices is having to do all of them every week. One of our leaders, a surgeon with three kids in a community with twenty-five children, stopped gathering everyone weekly and…
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Kids and the Family Meal
Perhaps the single most frequently asked question I receive with respect to missional communities is “what do we do with our children?”. For this next series, I’m going to focus on answering that question from multiple…
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Kids and Life Transformation Groups
Perhaps the single most frequently asked question I receive with respect to missional communities is “what do we do with our children?”. For this next series, I’m going to focus on answering that question from multiple…
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Kids and Third Place
Perhaps the single most frequently asked question I receive with respect to missional communities is “what do we do with our children?”. For this next series, I’m going to focus on answering that question from multiple…
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Kids, Missional Community and Demonstrating the Gospel
Perhaps the single most frequently asked question I receive with respect to missional communities is “what do we do with our children?”. For this next series, I’m going to focus on answering that question from multiple…
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Missional Community with Different Ages of Children
Perhaps the single most frequently asked question I receive with respect to missional communities is “what do we do with our children?”. For this next series, I’m going to focus on answering that question from multiple…
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The Family Meeting – Sharing a Meal
This series will drill down on the missional community practice called “The Family Meeting”. Although there isn’t a formula, here are some things to consider putting into practice: Sharing a Meal What Do You Talk About?…
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The Family Meeting – What Do You Talk About?
This series will drill down on the missional community practice called “The Family Meeting”. Although there isn’t a formula, here are some things to consider putting into practice: Sharing a Meal What Do You Talk About?…
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The Family Meeting – An Evening of Prayer
This series will drill down on the missional community practice called “The Family Meeting”. Although there isn’t a formula, here are some things to consider putting into practice: Sharing a Meal What Do You Talk About?…
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The Family Meeting – Celebrating Communion
This series will drill down on the missional community practice called “The Family Meeting”. Although there isn’t a formula, here are some things to consider putting into practice: Sharing a Meal What Do You Talk About?…
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Implementing LTGs in a Small Group
In a recent conversation with a pastor from another church, I was asked: “Practically, how do you go about forming Life Transformation Groups in a small group that is used to meeting once a week?” I…
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Suburbs and Missional Communities
Over the next few weeks, I’ve asked several members of our team at The Austin Stone to write on different aspects of missional community in different contexts. Today, Jon Dansby is going to share some learning…