Tag: mc-practices

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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 different angles:

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Kids and the Family Meal

In the first post of the series, I talked about why you should involve your children, primarily from applied theology.  The rest of the posts will focus on the philosophy and practice of involving children.  Before diving into this next post, I’d highly recommend you read the MC Family Meal post for context.

Kids can present some interesting challenges when it comes to life together.  If you are primarily gathering around the event of Bible study, then more often than not you’re going to want to keep the kids separate.  But that’s not the primary purpose of the missional community family gathering – it’s to be obedient to Jesus in acting like a family.

With that in mind, and a meal at the center of what we do, I would strongly encourage you to integrate children into this time.  First, it presents the opportunity for them to see and hear other people’s stories of following Jesus, both the good and the bad.  Second, it helps them see that they are part of a community that knows, loves and serves one another frequently and often.  Third, children learn to relate to people of all different ages and life-stages, and are presented with examples of faithfulness that will equip them well for the future.  Finally, it’s just a whole lot of fun having a mess of kids running around for dinner!

How Does it Work?

As far as involving kids in the Family Meal, there are two strategies that I have employed.  The first is to keep them involved in everything we do, from prayer, to eating, to sharing Jesus stories, and all the way to cleaning up.  I think it’s a great way for my oldest child to learn what it looks like to have healthy, Jesus-centered relationships, and I still learn things about the Lord from his struggles and successes throughout the week.

The second is actually feeding the kids all together at a different time.  I really like this strategy, especially with kids of a similar age.  You really only hate the “kids table” when you are old enough to understand adults!  Often we will set the kids up at a table outside, serve them dinner together, and let them make an absolute mess of themselves while we are inside preparing.  It’s been fun to watch as occasionally the conversation will turn to more important things than farts (boys) and ponies (girls).  While the adults are eating, we let the kids go play in the back yard if it is nice outside, or upstairs in our playroom if not.  It gives the adults a chance to focus on conversations that will last a little longer than 30 seconds.

How Long Does it Last?

My family gatherings were typically involved affairs, lasting for a good solid few hours.  I have found that in order to the Family Meal to be successful with children, you need to give it plenty of time.  Don’t expect to have any sort of joy in the evening if you’re trying to cram food down your throat while feeding your kids so you can get out of there in an hour.  Take some time as a family, enjoy one another and the mess the kids are making, and joyfully clean it up when you’re done!

When Do You Do It?

Especially in suburban life, I have found that week nights are absolutely insane.  Whether it’s sports, community involvement, date night, or something else that comes up, weeknights are a really difficult time to accomplish a healthy gathering.  In our rhythms, I have found that Sunday afternoons or evenings are quite possibly the best time to practice this kind of gathering.  Most people are available during this time, and you have plenty of time generally on either side of the gathering to prepare and clean up. Lastly, most of your neighbors rarely have regular appointments on Sunday afternoons, so they may just be interested in sharing dinner!

A Final Word

To be quite honest, doing this kind of gathering on a weekly basis can be really exhausting.  Our normal rhythm has typically been every other week, and we have found that it has pressed us to be more intentional in forming LTGs and given us more space to practice Third Place.  Don’t wear yourself out trying to pull of an event…the point is to act like a family and enjoy one another!

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missional community

Missional Community Practices – Fitting Them All Together

This series of posts provides an overview of each of the missional community practices we foster at The Austin Stone:

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How Do I Do This With a Busy Schedule?

So we’re teaching people to gather as family over a meal, as disciples in an LTG, and as missionaries in a third place.

As we train folks in these different practices, honestly people freak out just a bit. The common refrain is “You mean I have to do ALL of this in one week?!?”

I recently had a conversation with one of our leaders. He is an orthopedic surgeon with three kids. His community has something like 25 children, and about three months ago they were completely exhausted with trying to meet each week.

In training, we gave him the freedom to stop gathering their whole community each week. Instead, they’re gathering every other week for a meal, and focusing on LTGs and third place.

Three months into the change, they are being far more effective at both community and mission.

It’s because they thought through a month, not a week.

As you think through shifting your practices, consider that these don’t have to happen the same way all the time, and every member of your community doesn’t always need to participate.

In the same way a nuclear family has different seasons of life and different needs at different times, so too do missional communities.

I recommend that communities at minimum cultivate:

  • Gathering weekly in LTGs
  • Gathering at minimum every other week for Third Place
  • Gathering at minimum monthly for Family Meal
  • Gathering to worship corporately on Sundays

Missional community doesn’t have to be complex – it’s thinking outside the box we have built for ourselves, and asking the question “how do we obey what God has commanded?”

Whether you’re leading a missional community or leading a ministry, I want to challenge you to consider – how are our practices fostering obedience to Jesus?

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missional community

Missional Community Practices – Third Place

This series of posts provides an overview of each of the missional community practices we foster at The Austin Stone:

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Third Place – Gathering as Missionaries

The third way we gather is as missionaries in a third place.

Up to this point, we’ve reoriented a typical small group with a family meal, and cultivated discipleship with the LTG. A third place is where a missional community becomes intentionally missional.

Unless we intentionally make time for people outside our community, we often won’t do it. Very few of us naturally drift into mission! What does it mean to obey Jesus and be a missionary?

Obedience means gathering for the sake of people who don’t know Jesus.

For us, it wasn’t enough to just serve together. Mission is about people, not projects. We must think through ways we can integrate people into our communities, not just serve them at arm’s length.

As we wrestled with this, we needed to create a third place – a place to introduce your lost friends to your community.

What makes a good place to invite people? We use three words to describe it:

  • Neutral
  • Natural
  • Regular

An effective Third Place is neutral ground that is informal and non-committal. It naturally fits into the rhythms of your lost friends lives, and we do it regularly.

So where do missional communities gather for a third place? It depends on the people you’re trying to reach. Ask the question, “where do people already spend time and naturally go? How can we gather there?”

For some of our downtown missional communities, this may be an after work happy hour. Downtown professionals naturally gather there after their workday. For some of our moms with younger kids, this might be a park where other moms and kids play throughout the day. My neighborhood gathers at our neighborhood restaurants on the weekends and at events at our school, so that’s where we go.

The Advantages of a Third Place

A third place creates space where someone can belong to before they believe. We want to do it regularly, and invite those who don’t know Jesus to participate often.

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missional community

Missional Community Practices – Life Transformation Groups

This series of posts provides an overview of each of the missional community practices we foster at The Austin Stone:

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Life Transformation Groups – Gathering as Disciples

This leads us to the second place that we gather – as disciples in Life Transformation groups.

Again, we want to judge depth by obedience, not simply knowledge, so what does that look like? What would it look like to study the Bible for obedience, not just information growth?

Obedience, for us, is being serious about obeying God’s word personally.

Going deeper happens with individual accountability to being a disciple. We tried a bunch of names for these kind of gatherings, but they all sound weird.

Finally, we just decided we’d stick with life transformation groups, or LTGs for short. Neil Cole just unpacked them for us, and to be honest, he got it right!

An LTG is a smaller group of two or three believers of the same gender that commit to meeting outside of the group meeting time. This is the place to study the Bible deeply and to be known deeply by another.

There are three primary elements to this kind of group:

  • First, we want to Hear and Obey – we want to read God’s word every day, and be held accountable to what we need to DO in response
  • Second, we want to Repent and Believe – we want to confess and repent of our sin and disobedience. Second, we’re going to remind one another to believe the good news of Christ’s perfect life, his atoning death, and his resurrection.
  • Third, we want to Consider and Pray – we want to consider opportunities we have to share the gospel, and then pray by name individual people, not just generic groups.

The Advantages of an LTG

This weekly rhythm cultivates obedience as a disciple, and forms the backbone of missional community. It helps people go from being a consumer meeting a need to becoming a contributor to the life of a community.

Also, this kind of gathering is the basic tool of disciple-making. The beauty of an LTG is that you can do it with anybody! The LTG the basic tool to disciple a new follower of Jesus.

You can find the basic tool we use at The Austin Stone here. LTG Overview.pdf

What have you found to be effective in these kinds of groups?

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missional community

Missional Community Practices – The Family Meal

This series of posts provides an overview of each of the missional community practices we foster at The Austin Stone:

—

The Family Meal – Gathering as a Family

Most people in our church are familiar with a typical small group meeting…so began with a gathering that resembled it.

The small group movement laid a helpful foundation, but it wasn’t complete. It’s a really good thing that we have cultivated a value for gathering weekly outside of Sundays.

But the gathering typically was an event someone attended that focused on a felt need. Sometimes it’s the Bible. Sometimes it is common crisis. In my personal experience, vital things like sharing everyday life and prayer for one another are pushed to the margins.

When we as Christians believe the gospel, God has adopts us into His family. We are in fact now brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re not just transactional partners in learning. Most small groups are a far cry from resembling a family.

This provoked us to ask a question: If missional community is about obedience to Jesus, what should we do when we gather?

Obedience, for us, is acting like a family.

If obedience is acting like a family, what do families actually do?

Families share life around a meal. The dinner table is a critical time for my family to connect. It takes intentionality to ensure we do it, and sometimes there is formal instruction. More often than not it’s a dynamic conversation. We talk about what was good and hard in our days over dinner.

So what if we asked our leaders to host a meal, rather than prepare a lesson?

Gathering around a meal

In my experience, the best conversations happen around the dinner table, or while we’re washing the dishes. Real life conversation happens in real life situations.

Also, eating a meal together will quickly reveal what kind of community you have! You’ll need to learn one another’s stories, vocations, and passions. Quite simply, you will NEED to become friends.

Participating in a meal together – one that requires a recipe, not a microwave – is a symbol of your fellowship and relationship with one another. We think it is a helpful practice for every community, because it’s a regular practice of most families.

The Advantages of Gathering this Way

One of the great advantages in gathering this way is frees people up to be people. You don’t have to act a certain way, have a certain knowledge set. You don’t need to have listened to a sermon or have a curriculum. Anyone can join in – even an outsider who doesn’t know Jesus.

What do we have to give up?

Gathering like this is a big change for some people. Inevitably, if you start removing Bible study as the central event you gather around, you’ll get push back.

I’m so glad when someone who asks the question “where can I dig deep?” because we really value the bible too!

In fact, we value studying the bible as much as we value acting like a family, but where should we do that?

I’ll answer that in the next post – Life Transformation Groups.