coracle journeys

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!