The Institute of Evangelism

Every Church an Evangelizing Community!

Sean Davidson

About Sean Davidson

SEAN DAVIDSON is currently an associate pastor at the Church of the Resurrection in Toronto, and a visiting professor at Briercrest College in Saskatchewan. Over the last twenty years, he has taught in various ministry contexts and has helped to develop and lead missional small groups in several churches of various sizes across Canada. Sean has a BA in Theology from Briercrest College, a PhD in Renaissance and Reformation Literature from McMaster, and a certificate of Anglican Studies from Wycliffe College.
Sean currently lives in downtown Toronto with his family, and enjoys unwinding by fly-fishing in local rivers.

Sean is also an Institute of Evangelism Mentor and can help your church to better work with missional small groups.

Sean will help churches assess the small groups that presently exist in their church and help these groups (as well as new ones) function in a more missional way, through such shared practices as hospitality, study, prayer and setting down roots in the Christian faith.

Missional Family Church Planting: Include the Kids!

by and .

Below is the third part of a three part interview with Matt Pamplin of St. Clair Community Church. In the previous two installments, we explored various issues of discipleship and evangelism in connection with “missional families”. In this final one, we talk about the important place of children in the mission and ministry of the church.

 

Sean: You’ve mentioned a few times that children have an important place in “missional families” at St. Clair Community Church. That sounds really interesting – and maybe a bit crazy for those of us who haven’t tried it. What led you to believe it’s important to include kids in small group?

Matt: I mentioned earlier that we called our groups missional families intentionally as they are families trying to live on mission together. We felt strongly that if we are families we need to model that. We wanted our children to grow up assuming that following Jesus in family was part of our week not just Sunday mornings. At times in the western church we have siloed ministry to specific age groups. We want our children to participate in ministry with their parents.

An older mentor and wise friend a few years ago challenged me with a statement that has shaped this vision. He said, “If you stick to your values or principles, in twenty year’s time your children will think this is normal for following Jesus.” We are often impatient and short sighted in our churches. Psalm 145 says “one generation will commend your works to another”. If something doesn’t work initially we assume God’s not in it and scrap it. Patience has to be a key virtue in the life of the church.

 

Sean: That’s a super helpful perspective. I guess I’m wondering what it looks like in practice. How do you keep everyone together and moving in the same direction with kids in the mix? Do you have some house rules? Or is it more free flowing?

Matt: Well, first off let me say it’s not easy. But it’s so worthwhile. We are looking to our children’s long term formation and discipleship. The two biggest criticisms we get regarding children are that it’s messy and sometimes hard to have “good discussions”. We also have missional families that meet at different times during the week to accommodate children. Most meet early evening (midweek) 5:30-7ish or on Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons. Being structured or free flowing can depend on who’s leading the missional family. We also encourage our missional families to “check in” a few times a year to see what is working or what’s not going so well. They do that by evaluating how each of the core practices are going. Each missional family is based around our core practices, but is free to figure out how to incorporate those with their children.

 

Sean: OK, that’s a really important. I’m remembering back to your 5 core practices: 1) Eating together; 2) Prayer; 3) Engagement with scripture; 4) Caring for each other; and 5) Serving the wider community. How do you engage these practices with kids involved?

Matt: Most groups include children with their meal and prayer time at the end. Also, a few groups involved kids in “serving” in the community, though this can be more of a challenge. Some groups have included a children’s teaching time in their group, led by different families, or they take the children for a time to do teaching by themselves. We send out children’s questions each week to missional family leaders along with adult questions. They involve reading scripture together and trying to ask what is Jesus saying through this scripture and what is he asking us to do.

 

Sean: One thing I’ve noticed in intergenerational settings is that the learning can go both ways. Do you have a story or two about learning together in missional families? What are your kids teaching you about following Jesus and sharing the gospel with others?

Matt: Our children teach us regularly about following Jesus. One area is prayer. When we have something that we need to ask God for in faith our children lead the way. Our children have prayed for healing and also financial situations and we have seen answers to prayer.

One young girl said she was praying for a local building that we could meet in and two months later we rented the shut-down church building for our new church plant. This is where she and her family are now rooted.

We also find that our unchurched children are much bolder in inviting friends to missional family and to church more generally. One young girl whose family was new to St. Clair and hadn’t grow up going to church, invited her friend who was her neighbor to come to missional family. She said it was “because this is our family”. These are some of the surprising ways that we’ve been learning with and from our kids. I think it’s really important to join together across the generations. It takes lots of patience and some hard, but the benefits for the whole community are incredible.

Prayer and Food: Keys to Church Plant Growth

by and .

Sean: In last month’s Good Idea you gave us an overview of life and ministry at St. Clair and of “missional families” in particular. Can we go a little deeper? I’m wondering if we could explore in the area of prayer and discipleship. You say that prayer is the key to everything you do. What does that look like in your missional families? How do you pray and what do you pray for?

Matt: Prayer is one of our key practices. We try and explore different ways of praying in our missional families. I know one “mish fam” (that’s the best slang we have!) that spends time in silence and listening prayer consistently each week. One of our missional families has used the prayer of examen in their meetings to help people reflect on their days. We often do the fairly typical prayer for people’s needs within our missional families. One thing we try and stress is not to ask people to give their opinions or solve their problems but to bring it before God. We may take time to pray for friends, co-workers, neighbours who don’t yet know Jesus or are struggling in certain ways.

The missional family I was in last year took time at the end of each gathering to have one family stand in the middle and have everyone gather round them and lay hands on them and pray for them. We have had missional families who have prayer walked their neighbourhoods asking for God’s shalom to come in those geographical places. In each of our prayer “initiatives” we try and include our children so this is a normative practice for them.

 

Sean: I entered the Anglican church later in life, and I’m deeply grateful for new relationships and for the gifts of the Anglican tradition, but I’ve noticed that many people in the church (I suspect this would be true of other mainline denominations) struggle with the idea of informal, lay-led group prayer outside of Sunday worship, especially with children. Can you say why this kind of prayer matters so much for missional ministry? What are the practical benefits of praying like this? Perhaps you’ve got a story or two.

Matt: That’s a great question. Depending on what tradition you are from, prayer can be seen as something that really spiritual people or “prayer warriors” or wonderful older ladies do. I think that has caused the majority of people to see prayer as distant or disconnected from them. We have to put ministry and particularly prayer back in the hands of the laity.

The one time in the gospels that the disciples ask Jesus to teach them something is how to pray (Luke 11:1). Jesus starts by reminding them of who they are praying to. They are children of God and he is a father who receives their prayer lovingly. And he encourages them to pray for comfort, peace, strength, guidance and for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

I realize this can be hard in small group settings, especially if it’s not a regular practice.

Last year someone from one of our missional families came to speak to me. She said she had never prayed out loud in public before and felt nervous because she didn’t always know what to say and others seemed more eloquent than her. I told this person not to worry. Prayer takes different forms and there was no pressure at all, and I normally just pray honestly what’s on my heart and mind. Eloquence and long prayers didn’t seem to impress Jesus. The following week we prayed for another family and my friend was the first person to pray. It was so great to see her step out and trust God.

But your question zeroes in on “missional ministry.” Praying for each other as people living into the mission of God every day is so important. We can get exhausted and disillusioned at times, and life can be difficult and painful. And we can be tempted to do everything on our own strength and forget that it’s God who invites us into his mission and equips us for it. Quite a few times we have prayed for people who want to share the good news of Jesus with friends or co-workers and then that week they have had opportunities to share with them or invite them out to missional family. We have also seen people encouraged and strengthened as we have prayed for them—including people beyond our church community.

One time we took some school supplies and back packs to a local elementary school to help with children who didn’t have new supplies. Some moms in our group baked cookies for the teachers to say how thankful we were for them. As we handed the backpacks over, the principal was expressing her gratitude. Without thinking I asked if I could pray for her and the school and she agreed. We stood in the front reception area and prayed blessing over the school and teachers. When we had finished the principal was moved to tears and so appreciative.

 

Sean: Wow, that’s a great story. I’m guessing that was a moving experience for you too. Gathering together in prayer, trusting God for his provision, listening for his leading, praying for each other and for others—these are really important aspects of discipleship. Can you expand on discipleship more generally? How are people learning to follow Jesus in missional families? And what are some of key practices of missional family that help with the learning?

Matt: At the end of Jesus earthly ministry he gathers his followers together and with some final instructions says “Go and make disciples of all nations”. What does it mean to be a disciple? In our modern context, it would be something like apprenticeship. Jesus gathered a small group of people who did life with him every day. They learned from him and then tried to practice everything he had shown them.

In most of our church traditions we have confined discipleship to an hour or two on a Sunday morning. While Sunday is deeply formational, we need a more rounded approach to discipleship. What does it look like to be in relationship with God and each other the rest of the week? Missional families is part of the answer to that for us. But it’s also about engaging certain practices in our life together—practices that go back to the early church. We’ve identified 5 core practices: 1) Eating together; 2) Prayer, which we’ve talked about; 3) Engagement with scripture; 4) Caring for each other; and 5) Serving the wider community.

This is what we are trying to live out during the week. There are times when we focus more on one practice than others, depending on what season of life the group is going through, but this is what we’re aspiring to, with Jesus at the center. I should say that we’re also careful not to pressure people or give the impression that our apprenticeship with Jesus is somehow meritorious. The practices don’t gain us favour with God, but they do serve as a conduit for the Spirit to move.

 

Sean: You mention above the importance of food for discipleship. Can you expand on that? I think we could all appreciate how shared meals can bring people together. But how does it help us to follow Jesus in life together? And how does it do that in connection with our neighbors?

Matt: A wise person once said if you take meals and mountains out of the scripture, it’s a much shorter Bible. Meals are central to the biblical narrative and also important to the life of Jesus. When you read the gospels you notice Jesus eating with people on a regular basis. He is eating with his close companions and also those far from the kingdom. And he does this as both a host and a guest.

My sense is that sharing meals is central to God’s mission. We can think of our Bible studies and prayer times as spiritual but eating with people as just something we do. A friend of mine who owns a local coffee shop here in Hamilton but wouldn’t claim to be a Jesus follower once said to me “Matt, I think a meal is a sacred thing”. I think that’s right, especially when we recognize Jesus at the center. Meals help us to drop our defenses and to listen closely to each other with empathy. They keep life whole.

We need to remember that hospitality for Jesus isn’t simply about entertaining people you know. It also includes welcoming the stranger. In our missional families, we talk about what it means to be the kind of hosts who welcome strangers. We also explore how to be good guests in the wider community. In a very individualist culture to invite someone for dinner or welcome invitations from others can be a hugely significant thing. It helps with loneliness, of course, which is a real problem. But table fellowship can be a wonderful way to encounter Jesus and to introduce the gospel to others in the midst of daily life.

 

Sean: Thanks so much Matt! We’re already looking forward to our third and final interview with you when we’ll discuss how children and youth are discipled and minister within your missional families.

 

From the Director of the Institute of Evangelism

Learning to Pray Like a Church Plant

What can established churches learn about prayer from church plants? Here are at least six things:

  1. Prayer should be the starting point of ministry. Church plants begin with someone hearing a call from God to share the gospel in a new way in a particular place and time. In this sense listening to God is the starting point for every church plant. This calling and all its ramifications can only be further fleshed out by both listening and talking to God. This places prayer the very heart of church planting, whereas in more established churches prayer can sometimes end up being relegated to Sunday morning or little more than a ‘tag on’ to open or close meetings.
  2. Prayer should have a decidedly missional focus. Church plants, by their very nature, tend to place disciple-making at the very forefront of their planning and practices. They tend to pray more intentionally for people who don’t yet know the love of God and for all their members to share their faith with someone new. Prayers with this evangelistic focus are often rare and sometimes completely missing in more established churches. Let’s bring this focus back.
  3. Prayer should flow from a deep dependency on God. It’s often in settings of experimentation and uncertainty, such as church plants, that people are forced to really rely on God’s direction and power. Because of this, prayer takes on an urgency and nurtures a real dependency. All too often established churches begin to focus inwardly, risking less and so losing that key sense of reliance on God.
  4. Prayer should involve everyone. Church plants, particularly those that start in small groups, necessarily reclaim the role of lay people in the practice of prayer. This is something that can be lost in established churches that may unwittingly cause lay people to feel ‘less qualified’ to pray than their clergy.
  5. Prayer should come in many forms. Since most church plants lack a centralized building many naturally use small groups meeting in peoples’ homes to disciple people. Diverse practices of prayer often emerge in these groups since they’re driven by a less centralized and uniform mentality. A prayer walk through the neighbourhood, silent ‘listening prayer’, the Prayer of Examen, extemporaneous prayer for the broader community, laying on of hands with prayer for a member, historic written prayers; these are all often found in such contexts. Sometimes in more established churches corporate prayer begins to mirror whatever form is modeled during the Sunday worship service.
  6. Prayer should be naturally linked to food! When people meet in small groups there is almost always food involved, and often a shared meal. This is not detached from the prayer time of these groups but is intrinsically a part of it. Members learn of the struggles and joys of each other and their neighbourhood as they serve up lasagna and pass around the garlic bread. The content of their prayers is deeply linked to the hospitality and relationship building they share over food together. Increasingly, established churches are learning that the bigger you become the smaller you must become. Perhaps this is especially true when it comes to people praying together for the needs of both themselves and their neighbourhoods.

Which of these lessons is most needed in your community of faith?

 

 

How a ‘Missional Family’ Became a Church Plant

by and .

This past fall, I had the opportunity to connect with Matt Pamplin, a church planter from Hamilton, Ontario. I invited Matt to speak as a guest lecturer in my church planting course at Wycliffe College. We enjoyed his talk so much that I later asked if he would like to expand on it as an interview for a Good Idea article. Below is the first of a three part interview. I hope you will find Matt’s story as helpful and challenging as I have.

Sean: Tell me a little about St. Clair Community Church. I understand that your community emerged out of a small group, or what you are now calling a missional family. How did that happen?

Matt: I was on staff at a healthy established church In Waterdown, Ontario, about a 20-minute drive from my home in downtown Hamilton. Things were going well. My wife and I loved the church but had felt a call to the neighbourhood we were living in and where we had built some strong friendships with our neighbours. During this time a few friends / families who lived downtown were also “commuting” to Waterdown for church. So we decided to gather some people to pray for our neighbourhood and the city of Hamilton.

Prayer was the starting point and continues to be the source of everything we do. The presence of Jesus is the engine of the church. We often think if we run better programs or have better plans things will grow but if we don’t pray or seek his presence we don’t have anything. So we prayed, ate together, shared communion, spent time in the scripture and asked “How do we love our neighbourhood?” We prayed and gathered for over a year and realized that we wanted to be a family joined together on mission. So when we “officially” planted a Sunday gathering, we started with these midweek groups that we called missional families.

 

Sean: So you were gathering as a small group before you knew that you were planting a church—instinctively, as a way of engaging your wider community. Usually it’s the other way around.

Matt: Very true! We just felt called to pray, listen to Jesus and then do what Jesus said. That was really the heart of what we did, and then a church grew almost accidentally out of that. A pastor, who we have learnt a lot from, Mike Breen, says “If you make disciples you will get the church, but if you start with the church you may not make disciples”. This has been really helpful to us, we felt called to make disciples of Jesus by living as a family on mission and see what happens. That was our starting point as opposed to getting a building, projector, great Bible teacher, etc. and trying to form a crowd. We prayed and then asked our neighbours and people who lived in the community what their dreams, hopes, fears and heartaches were. We wanted to reflect our neighbourhood (which has historically had lots of economic disparity). A friend while praying for us during this time said he had a word for us: “If you take care of the least of these, I’ll take care of your church”.

 

Sean: I understand that you continue to practice missional families as a church community. How would you describe these groups and what do they do?

Matt: Missional families are central to all we do. We feel called to make disciples and to do that we need a context. We can’t make disciples simply by meeting in a large group for an hour once a week. Jesus and Paul, throughout the New Testament, gather together in a smaller context to live out the way of Jesus every day. We say our missional families are not a once a week meeting but they do involve one.

We now have around 14 missional families at St. Clair that are spread throughout the city. They are based around 5 practices: Eating together (there is always a meal involved), praying together, engaging in scripture together, caring for each other and serving together. The serving involves loving people outside our existing missional families. Each missional family bases their serving on a question “Are we called to our neighbourhood or a network”. The neighbourhood is the place we live in and the network is a group of people drawn together by affinity, interest or life experience—things like school activities, arts community, sports teams, refugee support, etc. We ask each missional family to pray and see where they are called to serve and love.

 

Sean: Traditionally one of the big challenges of small groups is that they can so easily turn inward and become huddle-like. How do you remain open and on mission together?

Matt: This is a challenge for every church I think, ourselves included. We meet with our leaders for training during the year and continue to remind them of the vision and values of missional family. Each of our missional families is open to new people and we want them to multiply. We don’t talk about splitting but multiplying. When a group gets too big (which many have) we pray and send out some new leaders to start their own missional family based around “mission”. We then ask if other people want to join them rather than just splitting the group in half. We also use Sunday mornings to teach and reiterate the fact that the church is a missionary people. We often say we “gather” on Sundays to remind ourselves we are a “scattered people”. We also believe that if we truly pray and seek Jesus, prayer always grows legs and leaves the prayer room.

 

Sean: I’ve heard that one of your current missional families is set to plant a church in another part of the city? So the story continues! Can you say how that’s come about and maybe share a few highlights and challenges?

Matt: My wife and I were leading a missional family and then launched two new ones out of ours. So we decided to go and join one of the new couples leading this group to help support and encourage them. They were meeting in their home in the next neighbourhood over. On the first night there were just two families and a single lady from our community. During the year more people started to join until we had no room in their house (there were 18 children in the group). We also had some other families from St. Clair who had bought homes in that neighbourhood who said they were interested in joining. During the time this missional family was growing we felt as a leadership team that we should church plant again. So we invited our community to pray. We spent a year praying with no pre-conceived ideas of where or what it should be, and during that time we sensed that God was doing something in the neighbourhood the missional family was in. So we told our church we would be planting again and in September started meeting as a missional family that would birth the church plant.

 

Sean: That’s great. I’m noticing a theme in your story: the centrality of prayer. It seems this takes precedence over everything, which is good news for people who may not think of themselves as particularly skilled or gifted for missional work. We can all pray! And we can all take small steps in response to God’s leading.

What advice would you have for people in an existing congregation if they are wanting to experiment with something like missional families? What would be a good place to begin, and what are some of the key perspectives and practices that incline in this direction?

Matt: I think start small and be willing to experiment. We heard a phrase during planting that has been really helpful to us: “It’s evolution not revolution because in revolutions too many people die”. We have said to a few people just start a small gathering that lives out the practices of family on mission and invite people to be part of it. You don’t have to overhaul everything but just start with this. Two of the key practices are eating together and having children as part of the missional family. I’ll say more about that later*, but we’ve learned so much from this. It has been an amazing journey for us but it hasn’t been easy and we are continuing to learn and grow every day.

*see next month’s Good Idea

From the Director of the Institute of Evangelism

Church Planting Turned on its Head

So let’s assume that for some crazy reason you have decided to plant a church. How will you go about it? There are a number of different models you could choose from.

One model prevalent across the centuries has been the ‘mother-daughter’ church plant. It’s a predominantly top-down model that often begins with a decision to plant a church in a new residential area. Denominational executives meeting with the leaders of an established church is a usual starting point. Funds are raised from both of these sources. A planting-team is formed from the ‘mother church’ with a lead planter often provided by the denomination. Land is purchased, a building is built, advertising is done, doors in the new area are knocked on, and collective worship begins. The new church hopes to grow largely by attracting people to come to its Sunday services. Financial support, from both the ‘mother’ church and the denomination, may be relied on for a decade or more.

This model depends on the intentional support of both robust and mission-focused denominations and established churches of significant financial means. There is usually a strong family resemblance between the ‘mother’ and ‘daughter’ churches. They share denominational affiliation, organizational structures, leadership practices, worship style, and congregational demographics. Even their buildings share a particular architectural style. This model requires significant financial support from the start. It is heavily grounded in a denomination, land, buildings and salaried clergy. It was a model prevalent throughout Christendom. And it is a model that is increasingly rare today.

What are we to say about the decline of this model of church planting? Shouldn’t we be concerned that countless new subdivisions are being built today without a church building rising in their midst? Shouldn’t we be troubled that so few established churches are today embarking on ‘mother-daughter’ church plants? Not necessarily.

What if the ‘mother-daughter’ model so effective at one time is being superseded by another model better suited for today’s post-Christendom context? What if God is doing a ‘new yet ancient’ thing?

A very different model of church plant is explored in this month’s Good Idea. It’s a distinctly bottom-up model. We’re not even sure if ‘model’ is the right word in this case, since like many of these sorts of church plants they don’t actually begin with the intent to plant a new church! They may begin with someone who has a desire to simply pray for their neighbourhood. They then may gather some others from the neighbourhood around them; meeting to share food, read Scripture together, talk about the strengths and needs of the neighbourhood, and pray for its flourishing. No Master plan, no funds, no land, no building. And yet such small groups then grow and multiply, eventually coming to a point when they recognize they have planted a new church.

What are the possible advantages of this model for today? As I see it there are several:

  1. It begins less with an idea to plant a church and more with a desire to pray about where God is leading them to offer their gifts in service to His kingdom. Prayer and mission are the starting point, without the outcome of a new church driving the agenda.
  2. It is founded on, and encourages, a more contextually-driven form of ministry focused less on replication of an established church’s practices and more on an incarnational ministry within a specific neighbourhood.
  3. It is more flexible and responsive, since it isn’t burdened down in its formational stages with the high cost of land and buildings or with complex denominational structures.
  4. It is highly relational in an era when a large percentage of the population are living alone. This focus on relationships returns disciple-making to an ancient model involving a life-long discipline. It suggests that growing as an apprentice of Jesus is not a six-week course but an ongoing walk within the community of faith.
  5. It is a model of church planting that even small and less well-heeled congregations can engage in as they seek to live in a particular locale as a sign, foretaste and instrument of the Kingdom of God.

Will this bottom-up model of church planting become more the norm than the exception in our post-Christendom context? I think it’s highly likely.

Learning About Mission . . . From the ‘DONEs’

by .

How can we learn from the “DONEs”- those done with the institutional church but not done with Jesus? I recently sat down to talk about this and our call to mission in the community with Duke Vipperman. Duke has been an Anglican priest for thirty four years, and served at both Little Trinity and Church of the Resurrection (The Rez) in East Toronto.

Sean Davidson: Duke, I understand that you’ve been having conversations with people who have walked away from the church. What have you been learning?

Duke Vipperman: I’m amazed at how much has changed since I started out in ministry. The shift from Christendom to whatever we call this age has had profound effects, and we can find ourselves estranged from the neighborhoods around us, with no clue how to get rewoven into the fabric of the community.

So, after departing the Rez last November, I wanted to spend more time beyond the walls of the church and explore what the DONEs were doing. Their critiques cut to the heart of the institution many of us are trying hard to preserve. This can be intimidating, but they have really important insights. We have much to learn from them.

SD: That rings true in my experience too. I find some of the best insights come from friends who love Jesus but no longer go to church. We want to be people of mission, reaching out with the Gospel, but it’s difficult to know what that really means when we’re so immersed in institutional life. What are some concrete practices that can help to break the mold?

DV: There are a few things that I think are crucial:

First, spend ample time with Jesus in His word. Our God is a missional God, always moving into the neighborhood and partnering with his people. Good teaching and preaching is a must. This helps to open up the discussion.

We need to get out of the box – the building – and listen. That can start with walks-about, prayer walks and conversations, wherever you can find them. For clergy this means being known in your community like 19th century parish priests were once known.

Having a missional coach is helpful too. The success of an experiment is not whether it works as we expected, but what we learn. One of my pastor friends calls himself the “lead learner” in his church. I like that. Change comes very slowly, but the encouragement of a coach can yield fantastic new life.

Related to this is adopting a posture of continual discovery. We need to shift away from being knowing-it-alls. And we need to learn how to “reach with” others in community. The older idea of reaching out can be patronizing.

SD: Reaching with—that’s a really interesting idea. Can you give an example or two of what that might look like? What have you seen?

Early in my ministry at Little Trinity, I was part of a missional small group that was eager to build relationships with the St Lawrence community just to the west of us. One day, we met some folks who were trying to organize the St Lawrence community annual festival but were short of volunteers. We joined them, and between us had enough volunteers to pull off a party for 20,000 people. That was an amazing experience.

I also think of Rev. Julie Golding Page who enrolled her daughter in the Montessori School at St. Columba’s, a building the Rez took over for a time. She offered coffee to the teachers, parents and guardians of the children. Gradually morning conversations developed over a good cuppa. Some parents used to do church but weren’t anymore. Every Christmas the Rez gave out Christmas Star Boxes for local families. The coffee drinkers saw the boxes, asked what they were, and took on the task with enthusiasm. One woman picking up a set of boxes to deliver suddenly stopped and cried, “Oh my! These children go to my kids’ school. I had no idea there was such need in MY neighbourhood”.

SD: I love when the walls come down like that. So “reaching with” is about joining with others who are already active in community or allowing new friends to take your projects further than you could alone.

DV: Yes, that’s it. It works both ways.

SD: Recently I’ve been challenged to think of how small groups can be more missional in focus. Something tells me that your advice above goes a long way to answering that.

DV: I think you might be right. Getting out into community; learning with others; building relationships; reaching with. Of course, institutional control is a quick and easy way to organize a large group of people, but it is terrible way to do mission. It suppresses the impulse and imagination of the people who are best positioned to see the openings for involvement in their worlds – the extraordinary ordinary people of God. Small groups can more easily engage in mission if they’re freed up to do so.

And they can help foster genuine community. I don’t know who first said it, but it’s brilliant. You can’t create community unless you waste time together. What if missional-minded Christians were inclined to waste more time with neighbors in small group settings -to eat together, to laugh, to build friendships, to share life? Who knows what might happen?

SD: That’s so good. And think of how that relates to “reaching with”. Small groups seem best suited to go along with others to take part in rather than initiating new projects of their own.

DV: Yes, I think that’s exactly right. And this can take on a variety of expressions:

During my time at the Rez we tried to encourage a regular missional edge for our small groups. Sometimes that meant taking up a special project, but often it was a matter of helping people to recognize that their 9-5 work held missional possibilities of the “reaching with” kind. Rather than add another assignment to such a group, we would encourage them to see their gathered time as mutual support in mission.

We also found that when special missional projects arose, an ad hoc group of people from many different groups and some with none would naturally form to respond to it. I am thinking of the Sleep out for Syrians event (Fall 2015). It was a massive community effort supported by many Rez folks who willingly leapt at the chance. I think if we had centrally laid the task on a few groups it would not have had nearly the profound effect on both the Rez community and the neighbourhood.

Again, this works well when small groups know they’ve got permission to experiment—whether they are long-standing ones with stable routines or new ones formed organically around emerging projects. The important thing is for people to be freed up to explore the possibilities.

It’s difficult to remember, but God is at work in the world, present to us by the Spirit, and he is inviting us to share in an abundant life together across all the lines that would separate us—including the institutional ones. I can’t think of better motivation for practicing hospitable community wherever it can be found.

How to Make Small Groups Missional

by .

A pastor friend recently asked me out for coffee and put the question to me directly: “What are your thoughts about missional small groups?” I smiled. Both of us have led small group ministries in various church contexts, so I knew that he was pushing me a little. There was a question behind the question. Is it possible to share life together through small groups while being outward focused? This is what he was really getting at.

The Challenge

The question is challenging because our typical small group practices tend to be inward looking and oriented to our own needs and concerns. Of course, it’s good to share time in prayer and Bible study with trusted friends. This is why we typically gather in small groups. But if this is the only way that we gather beyond Sunday worship, we can easily end up fostering a sheltered, secluded life that revolves around ourselves.

We had a good discussion together. I appreciated my friend laying down the gauntlet. Missional life and learning is something that we both care about, but we also know the difficulty of rejigging our routines. So we dug into that together. How do we become more missional in small group when our instinct to turn inward is so strong?

Shifting the Frame

 I think the place to begin is with our calling. It’s amazing that the early Christians not only met in each other’s homes for study, prayer and table fellowship, but in a way that was open to the wider community. They shared an ongoing life together in visible, public ways while inviting others to join in. The effect was amazing. Luke tells us that they “enjoy[ed] the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (2:47). This wasn’t the outworking of some grand strategy. They were simply giving expression to the “new commandment” Jesus had given them: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34).

 Together with the first Christians, we are called to gather in the interests of loving one another and, through that love, pointing people to Jesus. We are also called to serve in the broader community and to welcome others so that they too might find belonging in Christ and share in his love. This is so important to remember. It helps us to shift the frame and begin to live with new intentions and aspirations.

Learning New Practices

Remembering our calling is important, but how do we begin practicing a more outward focus in our life together? This can be tricky because not many of us know what shared life might look like beyond our close friendships and family. Let me suggest a few things that cropped up in the conversation with my friend:

Go with What You Know

 If you are in a small group that tends to be inward looking, don’t be anxious or feel guilty. Embrace who you are and make small moves as you can. One of the easiest ways to become more outward focused is to highlight the areas of life that people in your group actually live in and begin to treat those spheres as ground for mission. So what would it be like to study, pray and share life with a view to ministry and mission in the workplace, at home, in community? That is a game changer, and you don’t necessarily have to change your routine—at least at first. Instead you are simply noticing what is already going on in your lives and coming awake to the possibilities.

Consider Serving Together

 Perhaps you are in the church choir or worship band. What would it be like to take your voices and instruments out into the community? Or perhaps there are helper types in your group. Why not cook together for a soup kitchen or serve with an organization like Habitat for Humanity? This isn’t simply about meeting needs. More importantly, it’s about taking the love that you share for one another– the love that points people to Jesus–and letting it find expression in the midst of community life. This is what it means to be salt and light in the world. It just happens to be accompanied by the clatter of pots and pans and the sound of hammers and saws.

 Scatter Some Seeds

What if you started fresh with one or two others from church to share life in your neighborhood? This recently happened to me. A friend who was going through a difficult time invited me to a local pub. I arrived early and connected with a few regulars. It turned out the pub has a dart league, and I love darts. Before my friend arrived, I had lined up a few times to play. The two of us then invited others from church, and all of a sudden we had a small group that was naturally mixing and mingling with people from the neighborhood. The conversations that we’ve had about life and faith have been remarkable–all among people who have very little experience with Christian faith.

 Don’t Forget to Have Fun

Sometimes the language of “mission” can make the Christian life seem overly serious. We need to keep a fresh view. Learning to have a more outward focus in small groups requires intentionality, but it’s not complicated, and the little moves we make are more important than we realize. They’re also fun. Let’s remember that Jesus promised an abundant life and calls us to a kind of restful work. This is as true in our small groups as anywhere. May we discover the joy of following him where he leads.

Revisiting Alpha – Finding the Missing Piece

by .

Over the last number of years, I’ve led a course called “Intro to Jesus” as part of my responsibilities as a Pastor of Discipleship in a church in downtown Toronto. The course does exactly what it says: it provides an introduction to Jesus from the Bible, focusing on the personal encounters he has with people from various walks of life.

The teaching style is a little different than other basic Christian courses. Rather than hearing a talk from a pastor and then discussing a given topic, we gather in table groups, immerse ourselves in the Gospel, and explore the way that Jesus and his followers are represented, paying attention not only to what is said but how.

I wanted to help people to become active participants in their own learning and to come away with skills of attentive and prayerful reading. Each session, we began with small group discussion and then shared our highlights. It was amazing to hear people’s questions, concerns, and “ah ha” moments as we discussed together–especially from newcomers. Along the way I would try to draw the threads together, and leave us with a couple of key ideas that were central to the passage and core to Christian faith. The course went quite well. Steadily we grew, reaching 50 people at one point.
It seemed like something was missing, though. At first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It was as if people were gliding too easily on the surface. Some of the passages that we looked at were really challenging – the Samaritan woman, Simon the Pharisee, James and John on the way to Jerusalem, and Mary in the garden. We explored issues of human dignity and brokenness, justice and mercy, suffering and sacrifice, resurrection and new life. Our discussion was always lively and engaging. But we struggled to get personal and to see how these encounters are meant to shape our own experience.

I was in transition to another parish, so we decided it was time for a clean break with a stronger emphasis on evangelism. I wasn’t sure what to think about Alpha. I knew very little about it. To be honest, I was skeptical of the program as a “teaching tool,” partly because of my experiments with a more interactive approach. But this was an outsider’s impression. I had yet to experience it for myself. I think it was about the third or fourth session that changed my mind. There was lots of overlap with “Intro to Jesus”—sharing a meal, round table discussion, focus on Jesus, etc.

The missing piece for me was the way that each session of Alpha helped to facilitate an experience of living faith. This wasn’t simply about exploring the Bible, seeking to understand and appreciate Jesus from his encounters with others. It was about actually encountering Jesus, experientially, recognizing that he is present through the Spirit and readily accessible in prayer. I had always hoped for this, but I wasn’t sure how to get there.

The further we went along in Alpha, people began to open up and share their stories—of loss and regret, of longing and hope. Incredible moments of transformation began to happen. In one of the groups, a middle-aged man confessed to a drinking problem and was finally able to face it and get the help he needed. In another group, a young woman confessed to mistakes she had made in her life and was able to release her guilt in a time of prayer. In yet another group, an older woman who had been exploring all her life finally came to faith in Jesus.

Throughout there was no pressure; Alpha has a wonderful way of to helping people along in steps of faith without being too directive. It simply points to Jesus and gives assurance that God loves us deeply even as we toss and turn and work through our questions. It also gives opportunity to take steps of faith in prayer with others. Some found their way with this quite easily. Others held back. Either way it didn’t matter. There was always the freedom to be ourselves and to explore as we felt able. And we always had good food to share among friends regardless of where we were at.

I share all of this partly as confession. Perhaps you can relate. To put it plainly, I think I’ve been too cautious with newcomers for fear of offending. Of course, there’s the danger of coming on too strongly and imagining ourselves in a saving role. We’ve seen this too often, and it’s probably one of the reasons we would be cautious. At the same time, many people around us are actively seeking and looking for helpful companions on the journey. It’s important to let this sink in: We are those people.

I also share this to commend Alpha to you. I certainly haven’t given up on the interactive learning style I mention above or helping people to read Scripture prayerfully in small group settings. This is all good stuff. At the same time, I’m grateful for having hosted an Alpha course and remembering afresh that at the heart of community God is indeed alive and present and drawing us to himself in an experiential way through faith. I‘m not sure that I’ve ever come across anything quite like it for helping people to begin that kind of adventure. Alpha’s new series of videos, filmed all over the world, are freely available for download from Alpha Canada at https://www.alphacanada.org/ .

I hope some churches that offered Alpha years ago will think about revisiting their use of this wonderful tool. And for those who might have dismissed the course without actually having ever offered it, I’d say try it. You won’t be disappointed.

The Joy of Teaching Beginners

by .

Good Idea! interviews Sean Davidson, on staff at St Paul’s Bloor Street in Toronto, about a new version of Christianity 101 he is teaching

GI: What exactly is Christianity 101, and why do we need it?

SD: That’s a good question. As we know, many people in modern life have lost touch with Christian faith. We’re just trying to give people an opportunity to start from the beginning with an interactive study that focuses on Jesus.

GI: I agree that many in our society have lost touch with even the most basic of Christian ideas or practices. However, I am curious about what makes you think they are interested in finding out more about Christianity. Many people seem quite uninterested in it, and even apathetic. Why would they want to do a course like this?

SD: Yes, I see that trend in the wider culture but, here at St. Paul’s, we have many people showing up who are searching and wanting to explore. It’s quite surprising how people will walk in off Bloor Street with urgent questions about matters of faith. And interestingly, some of these folks have church in their background, but they’ve been away for a long time and now they’re wanting to engage again. So it seems that this kind of course appeals not only to the “unchurched” but also the “dechurched.”

GI: So how exactly do you engage with the questions they are asking?

SD: Well, one-on-one, there are lots of opportunities to engage people’s questions directly. But we try to avoid launching into a straightforward question and answer format. This could all too easily lead to the impression that the church is a vendor of information that simply dispenses satisfying answers to our pressing questions.

The fact is, people of faith have questions too, and we are trying to engage with newcomers in a way that encourages their participation from the outset, and treats ongoing exploration as normative for faith. Now of course, the church does have a responsibility to give answers. The gospel is a kind of answer, isn’t it? And Jesus himself is the answer. The question then is this: how do we offer answers in such a way as to encourage ongoing exploration and help people find their answers in Christ?

GI: Let me turn that question back to you! How do we offer answers in such a way as to encourage ongoing exploration and help people to find their answers in Christ? Or perhaps I should ask, How do you do it?

SD: Well, right off the bat, I’d want to say “not without difficulty.” There is a huge challenge here. Generally, we are not used to thinking about how to learn interactively with one another in life together. I’m guessing that most of us would value this in theory, but we just don’t have it as a concrete practice. Instead, there’s a tendency for professional clergy to “fill in the blanks” and to engage issues of discipleship and even aspects of the life of the church on behalf of others. This isn’t because leader-types are necessarily controlling. Not at all. It’s just been an expectation that has defined our culture for centuries.

But what happens when that loosens a bit, as it has over recent decades, and we recognise ourselves afresh as integrated members of a body, mutually responsible to one another in the adventure of following Jesus? How do we have leaders in play who help to read the signs—while resisting the urge to pre-empt the learning process by making everything simple, clear, and formulaic from the outset? This is not easy!

One thing we’ve been experimenting with in Christianity 101 at St. Paul’s is the practice of mutual attentiveness and thoughtfulness as we read various episodes in the Gospels together.

6213314-group-bible-study

GI: So the heart of your C101 course is studying passages from the Gospels? Which ones? And how do you do it?

SD: We share food around tables over five sessions, and look at a series of episodes from the Gospels in which people from different walks of life are encountered by Jesus. Our journey begins with the Samaritan woman and the rich young ruler, moves on to Zacchaeus (who has a marvelous transformative experience over a meal with Jesus), and finishes up with active followers like Peter, James, John and Thomas.

What’s fascinating throughout is that the different characters are represented as fumbling beginners—even the disciples. I think this may be a key to how the Gospels should be read. They seem to encourage rather than overcome the natural puzzlement, gladness, surprise, thoughtfulness, and wonderment of a beginner.

And this is precisely how participants at C101 tend to engage with the stories. In the last session, I posed the question that the Gospels themselves seem to beg: “So what do you think the good news is?” Groups went to work on this question, trying to get it down to a sentence that Jesus himself would affirm.

The discussions that ensued were absolutely remarkable. They were the sort of discussions that surely would have happened around Jesus everywhere he went in his ministry. And the end result was amazing too—five statements that each in its own way testified to the good news about Jesus. And all this arose from being attentive and thoughtful together and sharing our learning.

GI: Can you give us an example of how this is affecting the people who attend?

SD: Here’s one of the highlights from our most recent round of C101. A young guy in his twenties came forward before the third session to say that he wanted to become a Christian . . . now! Wow. I was startled, and didn’t know what to say at first except “Why?” He said that he wanted to be just like the others, referring to the Samaritan woman and Zacchaeus. “And how is that?” I asked him. “Well, I can tell that Jesus is the real deal, and I want to follow him with my life.” He went on to say how he appreciates the freedom that Jesus gives to ask questions and to explore, without having all the answers. After we prayed together, he joined in with his group for the session and told everyone what had happened for him. This led to a lively discussion, with other newcomers peppering him with questions. It was quite something.

GI: That’s a lovely story. What has your own learning been like as you’ve experimented with this new approach?

SD: I’ve been learning so much. With a course like this, there’s a need to keep on track, and it’s the responsibility of a leader like me to help that along. But at the same time I’m seeing how valuable it can be to keep encouraging attentive and thoughtful engagement, rather than closing things off with a “final” explanation.

This came home for me recently in my wrap-up teaching time in the final session. After each group had presented their one sentence summary of the “good news,” I brought us around to an early Christian variation—“Jesus is Lord”—and unpacked some of the implications of that for faith and practice. The group really appreciated this and there were some important light-bulb moments—but this was not because I was finally getting around to “the right answer.” In fact, I was simply returning to what we had already been working on together, drawing out overlooked elements and building on them. What made it particularly energizing is that we’d been making our way together and helping each other along. My sense from the lively conversation afterward—especially among newcomers—is that shared learning like this is worth persisting in.

  • Get a Good Idea once a month

    Get the Good Ideas e-newsletter monthly on how to share your faith and build up the people around you. It’s completely free and our gift to you.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.