Balancing Community With Mission

When you run a Missional Community gathering where people come to grow closer to God, to one another, and pray into their missional context, some ideas to consider include:

• Food – ideally sharing a meal together
• Socializing/ laughing/ having fun
• Breaking bread and sharing Communion
• Story-telling (i.e. testimony), especially of things people are grateful to God for
• Bringing praise and worship to God – this could be done with guitars, but it doesn’t have to be!!
• Offering prayer for healing and prophetic encouragement to anyone who has particular need
• Studying the Scriptures together, especially from what God has been speaking to the leader (or whoever is leading that portion) about during the past week.  People are hungry for fresh bread.
• Praying for the wider community that you are seeking to reach, as well as for your witness there
• Planning practicalities for mission activities

We could summarize this as a 1 Corinthians 10-14 model, which seems the fullest unpacking of how a church would meet and express its life together.  From what Paul writes, it is also clear that such gatherings were led in such a way that people who weren’t yet Christians could come in and be welcomed, without it throwing all the plans into confusion!

As well, the MC will go out together in specific missional activities, to serve and witness to their place of calling.  Such events need to be regular and rhythmic, so that the group sees this as an integral part of their life together. It should be no more a “special” than meeting to eat together or pray together is.  For this reason I would strongly urge a brand new missional community to start doing out activities from the inception of the group, so that it is fixed in from day 1.  Some will try to argue that this can’t happen until the people have “got to know each other/ become more sorted out” – but this is an unbiblical perspective, which simply lets people off the missional hook.  Furthermore, experience shows that the groups that gel the most and the fastest are the ones who share common battle stories and missional escapades (successful and less so!).

• What one new thing can you add into the mix of your ‘IN’ House Church gatherings?
• Does your HC go out in mission in a pattern that could be called, ‘regular and rhythmic’?