3rd spaces and church buildings

The barbershop -one of the earliest expressions of a "third space!" Social theory proposes that people collect in 3 main spaces/places in the rhythm of their lives: the first is home, second work or school and third a variety of settings in which they enjoy life with their "tribe" of people. Picture the barbershop with its regular crowd, some cutting hair and shaving, some sitting around the shop listening or holding forth on the subject of the day, whatever that might be! Or think of the coffee shop of our times, perhaps usurping the place of the corner pub of times gone by, or perhaps not! These are places where people do life with the "usual suspects," where they feel at home, where they are accepted and loved. These are places that are on the maps of our lives. Think of a week in your life and draw an imaginary map of the week. Where did you go? Where did you stop? What are your 3rd spaces? It could very well be that you have put church on your map. It could very well be that for many of us the church (or its programs) has been our 3rd space for the past many years. But think of the majority of people who live near us. For how many of them is the church a 3rd space anymore?

In order to live into our desire to invite others to experience the reality of God's Kingdom in their lives it is obvious that we need to be present with and to them in real time and space. Where can we do this- do life together with others in such a way that they can begin to experience God's future in their present? Can we do it best in the 1st, 2nd or 3rd spaces? Arguably in all 3, right? We need to talk about the hows of all 3. But for now, we have questions about the church facility. As part of the answer, what vision is God stirring about the Southside building and how it could be a 3rd place for people in the Milton community? This question is about one of the "restarts" we are deliberating on. Restarting small groups, restarting soccer camp, restarting elder mentoring and restarting our facility opportunities. With the departure of Milton Christian School into their new digs we have a fresh opportunity to consider the use of the building.

We are on the edge, literally, of a rapidly growing new development with thousands of homes. Our study of the demographics of this community gives us a clear picture of who our neighbours are. They are, almost exclusively, young families. And the more the population grows the more ethnically diverse it becomes. Young families, parented by new Canadians, moving to Milton to settle and raise their families after their first arrival point somewhere else in the GTA. Both parents are commuting to work away from Milton early in the morning, returning tired in the evening with divided responsibility to drop off and pick up the children. Weekends? Soccer, gymnastics, hockey, karate, music lessons.. you name it! And with the time left over a commute to the grandparents in Brampton or Mississauga. Get the picture? Southside is not on their map.

So here's the conversation we need to have. What would a Southside 3rd space look like for these folks? Would it look more like a church? a nursery school? a serving kitchen? a community centre? an arts studio, a computer cafe? a counselling centre? a family life resource centre, or? 

Elder Squares

The square is our icon for training at Southside. The training/learning journey begins at the top left corner (D1/L1) and proceeds around the square in a clockwise direction. Two concurrent journeys are described in the square, that of a disciple  and that of a leader. The experience of the disciple is in the area of competence. The competence can be in many aspects: skills, knowledge, character, etc. At the outset the disciple is unconsciously incompetent -the disciple doesn't know what she doesn't know! When I am recruited to something I may well not know what I don't know and that can often show up in blind enthusiasm and the pain of spectacular failure! But this learning process is only beginning. The next stage is one of conscious incompetence- the disciple is beginning to identify those things that he doesn't know. This is the zone of great teachability. I am keen to learn what I don't know, to be trained to do what I can't yet do. Then in the maturing of a disciple there is the settled season of conscious competence. We have all felt the tremendous satisfaction of learning something new. Perhaps it was in school at exam time when we were able to understand the test question and feverishly write out the answer all the while thinking "I'm killing this!" Beyond this is the "expert" category in which the disciple has been well and fully trained. While in the D3 stage the disciple is thinking, remembering, rehearsing  the ideas or knowledge or skill she has been taught- in D4 her knowledge or behaviour is second nature. We are able to do what we've been taught almost without thinking about it!

The plan for any effective discipleship is very basic, and is described in the square from the leader's point of view. I do and you watch, then I do and you help, then you do and I help and then you do and I watch. Simple.

One key area of training at Southside is that of elders. These are the leaders entrusted with Southside's people and plans. An instructive Scripture for us is the description of what Jesus was intending to do as He trained the Twelve: “He appointed twelve that they might be with him, and that he might send them out to preach, and to have authority to drive out demons.” (Mk 3.14-15) His plan seems to have had 3 parts: relationship, skills and power. Here is a basic plan for our elder training along the same lines: 

 Relationship (“with him”): intentionally invite prospective elder (couple) into friendship, checking in to encourage weekly before worship service, etc.  

Skills (“send to preach”): take mentee along (3X) on elder tasks- home or hospital visit, serving communion, elder meetings, elder interviews (membership, etc.) (D1-D2) 

 Power (“and to have authority”): train prospective elder (couple) D1-D4 in Sunday prayer ministry.

At Southside we identify elders as the "directors" of the corporation as per our legal requirements and we function as "pastors" as elder couples in the regular life of the community. Would you like to be discipled towards eldership?

  

Shaping Small Groups

Notice the double (or even triple!) entendre of the post title? As we shape Southside small groups we expect that God will use them in our lives to shape us to be more fruitful disciples  and we see the LifeShapes to be the tools of all of this formation.

The Triangle: Deepening our relationships with God, one another and those whom we seek to invite to know the reality of God's future arriving in their lives is one of our discipleship values. Striking the balance in these 3 directions is very important. At any point in the life of a small group we should be able to describe the way that the group is active in the "up," "in" and "out." When 1 of these is missing the group is not healthy. You can probably remember being in a small group at some point that had a focus on 2 of the 3 (actually any 2) and how that group was dysfunctional to some degree. So in shaping Southside Circles we must remember the triangle. Up: we will see the Circles as a setting in which we pay attention to what we are learning in God's Word and worship as their curriculum uses (predominantly) the circle to take us from kairos to kairos. In: The New Testament is full of "one another" instruction. We are a community of faith and the Circles can be places where we encourage one another and disciple one another as  we all sharpen the tools of LifeShapes. Hence the "in" angle collects all 8 shapes in its learning circle. Out: Perhaps this has been the angle most neglected in small groups. And yet the most dynamic relationships in groups and teams are usually formed when there is a common cause or task or project. Think about sports teams, short term mission teams. A packed full word about this is "communitas." It'll take another post dedicated to this to do it justice, so stay "posted." But often mission needs more manpower (personpower?) than 1 small group can muster. So clustering groups together can make sense. And "out", as well as "in" and "up" but more poignantly, needs the Spirit given orientation and abilities of the 5-fold APEPT preparation. So the pentagon LifeShape is clustered in 5s (5 joined Circles.)

Let's talk about some "restarts" in the Southside ministry. Is the day of small groups over? Why even ask that question? Remember the emphases throughout the '90s about small groups, cell groups, home groups, etc.? In church theory circles we identified 3 kinds of collections of Christians: celebration was the largest of the 3, usually expected to be the weekend worship service venue; congregation was the mid-sized group and often was in the form of age fellowships or Sunday School classes; and cell was the smallest, intimate group, often meeting in homes or coffee shops for Bible study and care. Then came a period in which many churches dispensed with the mid-sized groups and emphasized the celebration and cell gatherings as the 2 necessary forms of gathering.

Really? One of the most common comments about the value of the small group has been that it is like the nuclear family, the basic unit of society as the basic unit of the church. Mid-sized groups have often then been dispensed with. The "aha" realization, though, has been our noticing that while the nuclear family in the West has been considered the basic unit of society this is not the case in most of the world, nor has it been the case in history. The extended family is (in most of the world and in most of our history) the basic unit of society. Hence some of the malaise of our day as families have been scattered away from home and the support of grandparents, siblings, cousins and the rest of our kin. The nuclear family does indeed need its extended support. The small group, similarly, is unable to provide all of the spiritual life function and resources of our faith -it needs its extended family. This requires more than being parachuted into the celebration setting where we chat in the lobby, but only until it's time to move into the auditorium where we sit in rows and sing, listen and leave. Hence the renewed attention on mid-sized groups. Congregations. Specifically in the "missional church" movement it has proven difficult, if not impossible, to do mission as small group. Much of mission requires more than a dozen shoulders to the wheel. But much of mission doesn't require the hundreds or thousands. How about 40 to 100? Well I'm tipping my hand at this point because it is exactly at the missional "out" that I find my bearings with a restarted model of small groups. By the way there is an idea called "Dunbar's number" that points out that 150 is the maximum number of relationships an individual can conceivably manage. That number is often suggested as  the ceiling for "congregation." Now I'm rambling off topic, but we'll be back to this. My thoughts are that Southside will need to organize ourselves in the 3 c's again. Of interest is that we are (as the vast majority of churches in North America) settled at Dunbar's number both for "congregation" AND "celebration." This is very often a plateau. We need to prepare to multiply congregations.

So: 3 sizes, 3 functions, 3 identities. The small group "restart" needs to conform to our future configuration and missional strategies as a network of missional communities. Wow.. what does that mean? Later!

Have a look at the chart that is a draft attempt to sketch Southside Circles (cells) with the background of our year long emphasis that the Kingdom of God is near and that we are able to live our individual and church lives around the question "what will it look like as the Kingdom arrives?" God's future arriving in our present. And the background of LifeShapes forming the tools of our discipleship as we seek to nurture a disciple making culture.

My next post will be a detailed explanation of the diagram, but see what you can eke from it yourself first.

Let's talk!

Southside heads-up

Through the month of June I'll be posting about some strategic ministry "restarts" at Southside. Each of these will be prompted by an in-service heads up on Sundays, but the conversation and interaction on the blogs will be most helpful in shaping our thinking and planning. Whether you call Southside your home or not, join the chat.