The third type of small group strategy, is not so much a strategy as it is a way of life. Churches of small groups, are just as the picture shows… clusters of small groups within a larger context. These types of churches, are sometimes labeled with the house church movement and have a variety of expressions and accountability. I want to focus in on a particular subset within this context, that is churches whose main expression of community life is not found in a Sanctuary on Sunday, but over a meal at someones house on Tuesday.
When I was in graduate school at The University of Oklahoma, I found myself very disenchanted with organized religion and found for the first time in my life an aversion to Sunday services as I had known. During this time I became friends with a pastor of a missional church and began a dialogue with him about discipleship, church hierarchy, and theology. His name was Ken Primrose and the church was Norman Community Church. At that time the church met the 1st and 3rd Sunday of every month as a corporate body, which they called, “Celebration Sunday.” During the week they met in smaller missional communities, located in a house or a dorm room. These small groups or house churches had structure, accountability, and leadership but felt organic, relational and very missional. House churches were centered around a mission or purpose, and were also put in a cluster (a collection of house churches that had similar missional demographics). The house churches then met as a larger cluster on the other Sundays throughout the month.
Confusing… maybe if you were on the outside. The beauty of the system was that a new person would not normally be invited to Celebration Sunday, it would be to forward and ask. Instead they were invited to house church and if they became a regular, they were invited to cluster and if they loved that, they were invited to Celebration Sunday, which gave them a complete glimpse of the Body of Christ… families, boomers, collegers, and other members of the body that were not particularized to the missional house church that first brought them into Norman Community Church.
Sunday was not meant to be attractional… it was meant to be celebratory. Cluster was not meant to be attractional… it was meant to be motivational. House Church was not meant to be attractional… it was meant to be missional.
Missional communities collecting people of common interest and passions; Clusters bringing together a larger network of missional communities to motivate and encourage each community in mission; Sunday worship which celebrated all of the communities and clusters while also inviting everyone into the larger mission of the church… which was to empower leaders to view ministry Up, In and Out:
UP, our relationship with God. IN, our relationships within the church, and OUT, our relationships with those who have not encountered the love and truth of Jesus physically, emotionally, relationally, or spiritually. [more here]
And what about accountability? In this particular structure the leaders of missional communities met together along with the lead pastor to communicate vision, talk through struggles, pray for the church, and identify new leaders. The last of which was very important as new missional communities sprung out of house churches that had grown too large. Multiplication was very important to the structure as the familial fellowship is lost when a house church grew too large to accommodate transparent interaction.
This example, is one of many healthy expressions of churches of small groups. And even in my very high level presentation of Norman Community, there are holes in which a longer post would better serve. But I want to make sure we have some room for conversation. Have you experienced a church of small groups? If so, how has it looked, felt, operated?
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Small Groups and the Church series posts:
*design by Brandon Jones
