Small Groups as an Enabler of Discipleship

(I am writing some stuff for our church and thought I would share my thoughts here)

In everything we do as a church, we function to expand the kingdom by making disciples. This purpose focus our community and gives us a way to reflect upon whether or not we are “doing church” according to the way Jesus has directed us to “do church”. The same purpose directs our meetings in small group and in our 1x1 discipleship relationships.

Even more foundational than the purpose of small groups is the faith that motivates our meetings as a church and as small groups.

We believe that the kingdom is within reach. we believe through faith in Jesus Christ that people can find a path to an abundant life. We believe that Jesus provides the way to live a life of righteousness, peace and joy in the holy spirit. We believe this is expressed in joy-filled families, love filled life long monogamous marriages, and lifelong mutually supportive and fulfilling friendships.

We believe that these are the outcomes that the discipleship process delivers for people . These outcomes of health lives and healthy loving relationships glorifies God.

We believe that discipleship is the process to deliver these fruit and these kingdom experiences to people that they may from the heart have a testimony of the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in their life. These kingdom testimonies are the fuel of our mission. It is through our testimonies of the joy and satisfaction that Jesus has given to us that we are compelled to serve Jesus by sharing His compassion and grace with others.

Small groups are a central part of this discipleship process and our understanding of how Jesus taught us to make disciples informs the way we will do small groups. So in summary, the following beliefs inform how we do small groups:

1. We believe that the kingdom is available
2. We believe the kingdom is experienced through discipleship
3. We believe small groups are a central place to implement and model discipleship and
4. We believe discipleship, the application of the teachings of Jesus, is about:
1. Heart Management (Matt 5-7) - inward
1. in small group
2. 1x1 relationships
3. in devotion
2. Encouraging devotion - upward
1. In small group
2. in devotion
3. Leading in service and the gifts of the spirit- outward
1. as a congregation
2. as individuals
3. in 1x1 relationships
4. as a small group

How To Survive a Mid-Life Crisis

(this is part of a larger essay...It starts by explaining why the ego of a person starts to fight for survival in the mid forties)

What is a Mid-life Crisis?

The human self develops a heightened view of itself which he or she desires to project out into the world. For men, this projection of the ego is accomplished through achievements. Throughout life, a tension exists between what the person is in life in the present, his status and accomplishments, and what he would like to be or thinks he ought to be recognized as. This psychic tension must be resolved. Throughout life, we most often resolve this tension of our current position and circumstances and what we desire to be by projecting our vision of our self out into the future. We may not be accomplished and strong and victorious but we can conceive that we one day might accomplish all that our ego sets out to do in the world.

A crisis occurs at 45-55 when a man realizes that the resolution of his shame and pride, the desires of the self, through the acquisition of a preferred future is not likely. Time is running out. At this point in life, the strategy of using a projection into the future of a better you or better position or circumstances is no longer tenable. The psychic tension is irresolvable using the future projection method. It is not likely that the self will be able to affirm itself through future accomplishments. The ego begins to go into crisis. If a man is not well practiced in the process of voluntary death to self, he will not know how to put his ego to death. Instead, his ego will fight to create, before time runs out, the preferred future or vision of himself. The ego refuses to die and begins to seek affirmation in manic fashion.

Death to Self

When encountering a person or developing a relationship with a person, if one is well versed in the problem of human pride, it is not difficult to predict that this man will have a mid-life crisis. Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to follow me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Everyday provides opportunities to die to self. Life is social and men are constantly managing their place in the politics of their social networks and relationships. The disciple hates this jockeying and managing one’s power and position and the perceptions of others. To live on a spiritual basis is to actively cease participation in this worldly dynamic. When a person disrespects us, which happens many times in a given day, we actively allow this person to hold this opinion. We forgive and we cease managing people’s perceptions. We are not in management. Only God is in management. It is easy to see and observe if a person knows this practice of death to self. Death to self has thousands of permutations because life provides thousands of opportunities and different circumstances to die to self, to allow our ego to be humbled both before others and before ourselves. But most men are continually acting according the to the worldly system through which the individual attempts to project himself as successful, mature, wise, healthy and kind.

‘Wow, he is skilled and together. I wish I was like him”. This is how every man wants to be perceived, and in the minute relationships of life, at home, at work, in church, we size up ourselves and the other men. In each encounter with another person, egos are present and seeking power and recognition of some sort. This is the process which the disciple of Jesus is actively disengaging from. The disciple must be aware of the process, and, in this awareness, it is easy to observe other men acting out according to the desires of the pride and ego. So it is easy for a follower of Jesus to be aware of whether another man is attempting to follow the teachings of Jesus in the midst of our interactions with them or whether they are following the motivations of their self, their ego. Are we “denying our selves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus” or are we following the desires of our self?

So here is the first key to surviving a mid life: We must start learning how to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Jesus in the small areas of life, many years before we reach this critical age of our mid-forties.

Learning to Deny Self Daily

1. Seizing the Opportunity (in the moment): The Actual Game
2. Silencing the Self
3. Asking for power and faith to deny self - Mediating the situation with the presence/intimacy with Jesus Christ.
1. Strength to resist the persistent ego (refusal to die)
2. Faith to see it as the cross (obedience to God)
3. Compassion for your adversary (he is sick; this battle is sick; the whole war is sick)
4. Comfort and affirmation as a child of God
4. Death to Self in the Big Opportunities (reflection) : Practice
1. Sober moment of reflection
2. Thorough inventory

The Necessity of Cell Groups of Two or Three Interacting Daily

All life consists of cells. The body is made up of living cells. If the body is not made up of cells, you cannot call it a body but a machine. Any organism that is not made up of cells is not actually alive. You can have a body that has dead cells, but it is necessary to remove the dead cells if the body is to live.

Jesus made disciples in small groups or in cells. Jesus never commanded us to make churches but only to make disciples. We make disciples in the smallest group level of 2-3 individuals walking with Jesus on a day by day basis. The best possible small group structure is 2-3. This structure of smallest groups is the foundation of all living bodies or living organisms. The foundational structure of the body is small groups of 2-3 that live together on a daily basis. Any other structure in the church is useful to maintain unity for greater city-wide purposes but only the cellular level is absolutely indispensable. It is disciple. We make disciples and equip the saints by teaching men and women to make disciples in the cell group level of the smallest groups.

How I think this works, at least in my experience, is that such intmate relationships that are focused on the teachings of Jesus and living them out surface our problems. We are broken people and our brokenness become apperant if we allow people to know us on a daily basis and if we allow them to speak into our lives. It is not that small groups work in themselves but that these relationships surface and make visible our weaknesses. Couple this surfacing of problems with the covenant to give and take spiritual direction and you are on your way to desperately needing the power of the Holy Spirit.

The training of leaders is training leaders to make disciples in the smallest groups of 2-3. many men and women are not called to provide spiritual direction in larger groups like house churches but all are called to provide leadership at the cellular level. Everyone is called to make disciples and this equipping is fueled when we develop a cellular structure of disciple-making relationships. By doing this we can release leaders like Jesus released leaders. Jesus recruited his church and ALL the members of His church were released into leadership. This is true for a few reasons. Most importantly Jesus only recruited fourth soil believers. Work only with people who are willing to be disciple-makers at the cellular level. Place all our effort at the cellular level where ALL the members are being equipped to be leaders of groups of two or three. This is the foundation of the church and the focus of almost all of our attention.

So principle #1 is that the primary group where all the actual work is being done is at the cellular level of groups of two or three that interact with each other daily.

This group of cellular discipleship interacts daily in one way or another. This discipleship is daily relationship of prayer, worship, confession, and contemplation of the teachings of Jesus.

Principle #2 is that leaders are released to lead intentional discipleship relationship that meet daily. Leaders are men or women who are capable of:
1. Meeting with one or two people daily.
2. Communicating the teachings of Jesus both the Sermon on the Mount and the parables from their own experience.
3. Have a practice of daily worship and prayer in private.
4. Are able to lay hands and pray for others.
5. Are equipped to teach others to make disciples.

Principle #3 – If your church is not made up of people in smaller groups of two or three, then you are not making disciples. The purpose of the church is to make disciples. The church exists to make disciples.
1. Everyone in the church is challenged to participate in daily smaller groups of two or three and to be equipped to lead these smaller groups.
2. If it is not a distinguishing mark of your church that everyone needs to be making disciples in daily covenant relationships, then your DNA is wrong. Somehow we haven’t set an example and articulated an example of a life transformation model that works. I am convinced that the only way to get victory over besetting character defects is to live in discipleship daily. I am not saying that daily discipleship works but that daily discipleship is necessary for human beings to live in faith. Such a faith is so aware of it’s weakness that daily confession has become the means of surfacing our weakness and abiding in Christ. If there are people in your church who think the weekly meeting is where discipleship happens, your DNA is wrong. Stop doing church and start over.

Think about it for a second. Jesus said, “If your brother sins against you 70x7 times a day forgive him.” This passage is speaking out of the context of living in community and how these relationships surface our brokenness. It is this process of surfacing our brokenness that leads to walking in weakness and grace.

Principle #4 – The purpose of larger groups is to equip the members in making disciples. This is accomplished primarily through teaching the teachings of Jesus and the scriptural commentary upon the teachings of Jesus.
1. Do not attempt to do the work of the group of two to three in the larger house church meetings of individual confession and prayer for one another.
2. The larger group is to teach the apostolic teaching and proclaim testimony of what is happening in the smaller groups (i.e. on the street).

God Bless,
brad

Alienation, Confession and Brokenness - Reflections on Ted Haggard's Confession

Many of us who love the church would like to simply chalk the Ted Haggard's moral failings up to an individual incident of sin that any of us could fall into and move along to other discussions, but such an approach simply once again ignores the root causes which allow such problems to arise. Fellow evangelicals, there is something deeply wrong with the way we do church and practice our faith and this public incident provides us with a symbol upon which to reflect and discuss what is not working in popular evangelicalism.

Certainly, such discussion is not based on mountains of data but on one point of data. Certainly, none of us are intimate enough with Ted Haggard to observe closely the nuances of his history and his discipleship process that allowed him to lead a double life. BUT the incident and the content of his confession reveal some general principles that provide insight into the tragedyof being a sinner and an evangelical at the same time.

The content of Haggard's confession that I would like to focus on is as follows:
"The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life," he said.

Alienation, Confession and Brokenness
As a pastor and a discipler, I have learned a very important phrase that I have to use with everyone at some time or another. In our discipleship method, we often say, “your problem is not unique”. Human beings have been covering up their nakedness for a long, long time. It is only in the safety of a gospel immersed people that a sinner can find the acceptance to tell his or her whole story. We do this in one on one relationships with some other totally broken idiot. I am sometimes privileged to be that broken idiot on the listening end.

The culture of Popular Evangelicalism is completely contrary to this level of open confession. In almost all instances people have to go outside the church to some special recovery program or to therapy to make a thorough and open confession. In other words, hearing good sermons, that happens in the church, but for discipleship, you need to go outside the church. For actual help with overcoming sin, we the church are almost totally lost. Something is desperately wrong here.

Magic or Method
The church offers two solutions that simply do not work. Both methods are more magic than method. In the Charismatic church, of which Haggard is a part, there is the Holy Spirit magic method. In these churches, you come forward for an alter call and a ministry worker lays hands on you and presto, problem solved. Of course, the problem is only solved until you go back to your seat when all your totally broken affections come rushing back in.
In the conservative churches, the method is exactly the same except you replace the Holy Spirit with the bible. Listen to a good message and have morning devotions and presto, problem solved. For total idiots like this sinner, that method led me to loneliness and debauchery not holiness and freedom.

We could discuss the entire system of beliefs and practices that maintain this magical approach. Let me just make a list
Individualism – the wrong headed belief that Christianity is the story of me and Jesus working out my salvation in fear and loathing. This American individualism only compounds the alienation and obsession that came to us in Adam. Individualism and its alienation and obsession is the problem so it cannot be the solution.
Celebrity and Spectator Church Services – The church as we practice in popular evangelicalism utilizes a system where one or two men climb up a social latter to success. The winner gets to be the face of the church. To be this face one better primp their entire life. Put your best foot forward. Don’t show anything other than controlled and calculated weakness. Polish you sermon. Polish your social skills. Polish your shoes. Don’t dress to up. Don’t dress too down. Play the part and study hard and you can be celebrated as a success. This works good unless of course you are an actual human being. In this system, there is no way to be totally honest with the people you are working out your faith with.
The Farce of Pastor to Pastor Accountability
In such situations, pastors go outside their immediate co-labors to make open confession. In other words, pastors cannot be honest with the people they are trying to disciple. Pastors have pastor to pastor accountability. Why?? Because it is too risky to be totally honest with the council and one’s co-workers. BUT IF DISCIPLESHIP IS BASED ON OPEN AND HONEST CONFESSION AND THE MODELING OF HONEST CONFESSION, THEN THE PASTOR, BY DEFINITION CANNOT MAKE DISCIPLES IN THE CHURCH IF HE GOES OUTSIDE HIS CORE STAFF TO MAKE OPEN DETAILED CONFESSION!!! My friends, the system is completely wrong headed. Unless pastors confess directly to the people the exact nature of their brokenness, they are discipling, there is no discipleship. Discipleship is modeling the process of over-coming sin through confession and repentance and the applying of the principles of death to self. My friend this is learned only when the student sees us do it before them. The foundation of this is rigorously honest confession. Detailed confession in gender specific discipleship relationships is step one to being a disciple-maker. If the pastors do not have these relationships with their staff they are not making disciples they are planning worship services and events.

Read on at your own risk!!!

Ok here goes…If a pastor has a penis obsession, he needs to say to his staff, “I have a penis obsession”. Have we never dealt with homosexuality before??? If we haven’t, we know nothing about human sexuality. Everyone has sexual problems. Everyone. There is no exception to the rule. Discipleship must deal in total honesty about sex. Piper says if a pastor doesn’t speak at least twice a year about sex from the pulpit, he is not a pastor but a professional. We are not professionals my friends. We are sinners who cling to grace and the power of the Holy Spirit in total brokenness. We live one day at a time by grace alone. We learn what our triggers are and we call our mentors when we are finding that we are losing our balance. Often this requires calling out ten times a day until the obsession goes away. The key is that our mentors confess that they have been through the same thing and they share their solutions. There is no condemnation when our faith communities are honest enough that everyone realizes that no problem is unique. Total honesty. Popular evangelicalism is the exact opposite of what the sinner needs to find peace and the Kingdom.

Do you really think that the red-faced alcoholic at your work is going to get healed and healthy at your church? He was molested as a child and has a masturbation obsession. Church as it plays out today makes real sinners feel more alienated not less. If he does get “saved” what will happen is, he will play the game; find his act to play; become a deacon and still be just as much of an emotional basket case as he ever was. We have all seen it and the world can see it too. We haven’t dealt with the real self-centered fear that comes from our human condition. Fellow evangelicals, “we travel the world to make one convert and when we find him we make him twice the son of hell that we are.” The system is not working!!!

A Process That Does Work

What does work is a process of totally rigorous confession and anaylsis of the nature of our sinfulness in the context of confessing relationship. Folks, are you desperate enough to do what ever it takes to find the kingdom. It is a narrow road paved with confession and honesty. Find a mentor who has what you want. This mentor must have been through a serious transformation process and understand confession.

I have mapped out this inventory process many times here at 21st Century Reformation. Trust me!! It works!!. Here is what happens. In almost every situation, where a person makes a thorough inventory and tells his story in every detail to God ad to another fellow traveler, he or she feels a connectedness to God and to another human being that he has never felt before. It is this connectedness that breaks the power of the loneliness and alienation that is at the heart of all our obsessions.

My friends is this the first principle and practice of your local church program. If not, I know one thing is for certain, your faith community might be doing church but you are not making disciples.
God Bless,
brad

Community and Confession

When I was a pastor, I taught a path of discipleship that involves daily confession with our mentors-student-friends. The walk of a disciple in discipleship relationships requires a level of honesty that is essentially total exposure.

One night after a council meeting at the church I was pasturing, a council member said to me, in reference to the practice of daily confessing relationships, “Brad, no one is going to do that”. I have thought about this statement many times. To me it is one of the most discouraging things I have ever heard. Being rigorously honest is a difficult path but to simply say as a matter of fact “we aren’t going to be honest and open” is certain death along the spiritual journey. I picture a man on a quest to climb Everest and finally just quits and says, “I am going to just sit here. I am not going to move. I quit.” Such a decision is certain death as the 3nvironmental effects will overtake the lethargic body and the man will die - so too the disciple who ceases the practice of daily honesty and confession.

All the teacher can do is try to model this level of openness in his own relationships or he could take the real leap to make it happen.

The Leap into Community
For some of us this total honesty is too much work. We lead busy lives and have trouble bracketing time to pray and confess with our mentor-student-friends. We can confess and be open with our spouses but we find it hard to be consistent with partners outside the home. How do we really let people into our lives? The answer is really pretty obvious. We let people live with us in our homes. Our culture’s way of life places walls between families and fellow men or women with whom we desperately need to be open with. The answer is to simply go around the walls and live within the same walls.

The multi-family living situation is I believe necessary to effective discipleship. The few men I attempt to maintain confessing relationships with are busy and lead separate lives with their families. Why?? Do we live this way? As we attempt to confess and walk out our spiritual lives together, we lose contact for most of the week. The whole process is undermined by the structure of our living situations. The answer is to force the change by living in community.

Community and Exposure
Most Christians I know have pretty well manicured homes and gardens. The outside looks very orderly and well managed. This I believe is often a sign of our spiritual poverty. I often find that the more together someone looks on the outside the more sick they are on the inside. Of course the mentally ill provide exceptions to this rule but I am not talking about mental illness but spiritual illness. The well-manicured lawn, so to speak, is often an attempt maintain a wall of protection against judgments. Community has the opposite effect. When we live in community, our friends now see how we raise our kids, how we treat our wives and every tension that exists in our significant relationships. Community is confession without words. So if you are having trouble living a life of open confession, take the leap. Sell your house and move in with another family or two in your church. In doing so, we just might find that our sins are washed away and our sickness cured by the daily walk of confession and exposure that such a new way of life imposes upon us due to our new living arraignment.

The Central Role of Small Group in Mission

There is no BIG in Team

I became a Christian in June of 1986. After my conversion, I began attending a conservative evangelical church with my father. This church was great for the formation of my understanding of the bible as the source of our faith and practice, but it took awhile before I found a place to live out the life and the purpose for which God had called me. Though at the church I attended with my father, I learned good sound bible doctrine, it wasn’t until I met a small group of like-minded people and attended church with them that I felt at home. There is a model of teaching doctrine and ideas that works, namely the pulpit, but to learn how to live out our faith and expand the kingdom, this learning takes place in a smaller group of believers, a team if you will.

The church I first attended with my father was about 4,000 members. I remember trying to get involved with the high school group but I am very NOT gifted to work with kids. I attended the “collage and career group” at this church. That “small” group was really about meeting a mate, so I got a girl friend. That process wasn’t too different from my pre-Christian days. During this time, I went out a few times with the evangelism teams with this church but the cold turkey methods seemed very unnatural to me and ineffective. Then, when I was in seminary, I attended a small group on campus with a couple seminarians. Here for the first time I felt that this group was different. The worship was heartfelt and the group seemed to “assemble around the Lord” (Psalm 7:7a). This group visited the elderly and took mission trips to Mexico and to the parks in Southern California. People were very mission focused. The leader was from YWAM and the group was very mobilized. I began to participate in this missional community. I was actually changing. Life had real purpose and we were living a life that was focused on loving others and not a Christianized version of the American dream.

Later I attended Sunday church with this group. I felt like we were part of something very big and revolutionary, but the “us” or the “we” was the small group. We, the small group of friends were involved in something big and purposeful. Many small groups got together and worshipped but what made it so powerful was that each of this small groups was itself involved in mission at the small group level. The identity of the individual was as a team member at a level that allowed everyone to play in the team. You cannot all really play on a team of 4,000. Team sizes max out at about 50. Most teams are closer to 10 or in Jesus’ case about 12. Actual mission happens in teams. Events are led by teams and activities to make an mission activity happen takes a team of about 8-15. To mobilize a people, the people have to be on teams and these teams or small groups, functional or local, are the place where mission takes place and therefore the place where real purpose driven life motivates spiritual growth.

This team playing is key to spiritual growth and the expansion of the kingdom. Therefore, we conclude that true discipleship happen in the small group.

God Bless,
brad
tags: home church; House Church; Church; Christianity

Family as Church – Ecclesiology in Crisis – Part 3

In this blog, we have discussed a million and one ways to maintain the presence of God. How do we keep the line open so we can maintain our conscious contact with God throughout the day? We are people who as individuals carry the presence of God. This daily reality is life. As Jesus said, this is life – to know God. This is our story.

This story of being the people of God’s presence, the people who walk through the desert with a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day, is to be our story as a family and our story as the church.

In this series, I am attempting to give illustrations and stories that help us all form a new definition of what is church. In the first post, I attempted to simply show that if we expand our definition of church to something other than the institutional “church”, we can learn to do church wherever we are. Doing church is the responsibility of each of us. We can do church in the home; We can do church in small gatherings of 2 or 3. We can do church and fulfill our mission with a few like-minded friends. This approach gets us out of the “least common denominator” syndrome of the larger congregation setting. For example, I love serving the poor. So be the church and serve the poor with a few friends. No excuses.

In our second post, I discussed that the real mission of the church is socialization. We are to be a new society that socializes people into a kingdom lifestyle based on kingdom principles, the greatest of these being love. We are the church in our homes, in our small groups, in our ministry outings, in our ministries. In all this we are teaching people how to be the people of the presence of God and how to love.

Today, I want to give a simple example of “How to Church?”

How to Church – 2x a day
Do you have a family? If not, you need to find a likeminded Christian roommate. Do you as a family have sit down meals?

When I first became a member of the CRC, I was having a meal with my mentor and we were talking about family meals. He said in his family of origin, they had three meals together as a family. He went to school near his home and he would come home for lunch. At breakfast, lunch and dinner, his father would lead the family in singing and bible study and discussion.

Another pastor friend of mine, who was actually my mentor before the man above who walked home for lunch, he spoke of his children actually bringing their violins to dinner and leading the family in hymn singing. WOW..That is taking the family as church thing seriously.

In both of these families, prayer is both before and after meals to create structure to the meal time.

Well, I have six kids ranging from 2 to 11 and we do family as church whenever I am home for a meal. So usually, at least this week, we have done breakfast together and I think one or two dinners. So here is the vital question:

How do you do meals together as a family?

Again, it is vital to have a method or in this case a liturgy of sorts for how you do church. For us we take about 15 minutes for the whole affair. We
1. Pray
2. Ask “who did a loving thing today?” (during dinner time)
3. Read the bible
4. Discuss the passages meaning.
5. Sing a song
6. Close in prayer
7. Help mom with the dishes.

Our family vision is that there is a “pillar of fire” at the table. We also teach the kids that they need to “bring something to the table”. Everyone comes with a word or a spiritual song or some spiritual gift for our little church. All of this is our little way to live the life.

Lord, let Your glory fall in this room, let it go forth from here to the nations…
God Bless,
brad

technorati tags: church ; ecclesiology;emergent ; Emerging Church; Religion; emergent church