My name is Kirby Holmes and I am one of the Growth and Groups pastors at Gateway Church in Austin, TX. Alan and I have been friends for 3+ years. He has been a big supporter of mine and I am grateful for his encouragement. Thanks Alan for letting me share some of my musings on your blog.
I am considering the consequences of being too reactive to current realities in church and Group Life trends. How is the tension between Community and Mission going to affect the future of church?
The emphasis on ‘Community’ in churches over the last five decades has produced amazing fruitfulness. In fact, I got to sit in on a casual conversation with Keith Miller last week and learn from his 50+ years of experience in church leadership and his perspective on the beginnings of the Small Group movement. It was amazing to get his perspective. You can watch the video of Keith’s Conversation here.
Small Groups have been a big part of helping people feel known, cared for and encouraged to grow as Christ followers. However, for some churches these groups have gotten stale, in-grown and mission has stalled. Now ‘Mission’ is becoming a new wave of emphasis in churches. How can we go beyond our safe places of community and begin entering the cities where we live to love people outside the church who need hope and healing the most?
I think it is worth taking caution in the midst of our bold action to follow the wind of God’s spirit towards ‘Mission.’ How can we maintain critical balance between Community and Mission in the midst of these strong winds of change? Are there other aspects of Group Life that need to be held in tension too?
I recently watched a documentary called ‘Man on a Wire’ about tightrope walker Philippe Petit’s daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City’s World Trade Center’s twin towers in 1974. It is considered by some, “the artistic crime of the century.”
We can learn something from Phillipe’s amazing act. He took bold courageous action on that wire but only after precise planning on how to create a stable environment.
I think there are four guide wires we must pull equally in tension for our churches and Small Groups to be holistic in the future. We can’t have the shiny object syndrome of focusing all of our energy on just one or the other. We must give rotating emphasis to the needs of our local church or ministry in the following areas.
We must be about loving God (God) as a response to his love for us in Jesus. We must be about individual personal Transformation (Me) in building character from the inside out. We must be about about loving one another in Community (You). And about Mission (We) as the body of Christ meeting the physical and spiritual needs of modern day widows and orphans in our cities.
Here are the four tension points I believe we must continually keep balanced and emphasized continually.
GOD
Loving God – The greatest commandment given to us by Jesus himself. Loving God is about recognizing the priorities in our life that have squeezed God out of first place in the way we live. Living out the greatest commandment is the process of putting God as our first love and priority in life. Jesus says the greatest commandment quite simply is to:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Mark 12:30
ME
Building Character – Without a doubt, most of us look at ourselves and desire varying degrees of change. We see anxiety where we want peace. We see fear where we want courage. We see addiction where we want self-control. Transformation happens not by applying the latest self-help fad but by understanding and implementing the full richness of inner life change at a heart level. Jesus produces this change in each of us by his power and influence on our heart and ultimately resulting in changed behaviors.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5
YOU
Loving People – Truth be told, relationships bring about the best and worst of life. Our greatest joys consistently involve people. Our greatest pains consistently involve people. How does love for God impact and influence our love for people? Christ gave two great commandments. First, we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. And second, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Life is rich when we increasingly practice truly loving people—not put up with people, not walk over people, not use people or avoid people—but truly love people.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34
WE
Being the Body – The world is a beautiful place, but it is also a broken place. How can we, with our limited time and resources, really matter in a world overflowing with needs? Liberated by a love for God, set free from enslavement to living for instant gratification or the accumulation of things, authentic Christ-followers liberally and passionately pour love and grace into the world around them. Astounding things happen when followers of Christ discover their spiritual gifts and mobilize into action by partnering with the body of Christ around them.
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.” 1 Corinthians 12:12
Balancing These Four Tensions Points
We must move our churches and Small Groups into the future by helping each person grow in these four areas. Leave one behind and we fall off the wire. In our Small Groups at Gateway we emphasize growing in all four of these aspects. We call this the way of Christ. We want every person to discover, develop and deepen in the way of Christ so we can each live the life God intended for us. We are developing a path of resources like Morph, Soul Revolution and others to help Small Groups take their next intentional step of growth on the way of Christ.
How is your church doing at balancing these four tension points? Do you have shiny object syndrome where you are stuck on one of them while neglecting the others? How can you emphasize these four areas in your Small Group over time to develop holistic spiritual formation in the people in your group?
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Kirby Holmes loves revealing the masterpiece under the mud through life giving community and his blog. He is the groups and growth pastor at Gateway Church Austin, TX. Also, he’s probably the tallest groups guy in the western hemisphere! You can find Kirby on Twitter and on Facebook…he’s definitely a guy you should know!
-Alan