Small group stages

Scott Boren, author of Missional Small Groups writes about four different types/stages of small groups.

1. personal improvement
2. lifestyle adjustment
both of these stages can apply to any small group, not just church-oriented ones.
3. relational re-vision
4. missional re-creation.

As you can see, it can take some time for a small group to get to a missional mindset: many small groups never make it, in fact, and remain in either stage 1 or 2.

You can see a detailed summary of Scott's four stages either here or here.

V.I.M.

Len Hjalmarson's latest post summarizes an article written by Dallas Willard in which he puts forward an approach to spiritual growth that's worth thinking about. It's not a 'method'; however the three stages are all necessary for any kind of change or learning, as Hjalmarson shows.

Vision – Intention – Means – this is the pattern that Dallas Willard uses to talk about a framework for spiritual growth. He defends this frame very well and it's a convincing bit of work. I discovered on the weekend that he has a lengthy article online that pulls much of the core material from his book “Renovation of the Heart.”

Perhaps these things don’t interest you greatly – one more system to try to work through. But consider for a moment that this same framework can be applied to the formational agenda of a faith community. Do you know where you are going? Do you understand the working of the system you are attempting to change? Are you ready to commit to going there? Will all your key leaders commit? Do you have a means worked out, step by step, to practically move forward?

Hjalmarson goes on to give some good examples of how Willard's framework works out in ordinary matters, like learning a language, or overcoming addiction.

This might be news to you

In a recent post, Andrew aka Tall Skinny Kiwi, who has been back in NZ for a spell, writes:

We are staying for a few days at Ngatiawa which is a monastery in the new-emerging fashion. This used to be a Presbyterian camp in a previous life but has been bought out and changed over and broadened in its use to become a monastic center for protestant youth, with a connection to the Anglicans. Good people here. There are actually 6 urban monasteries in this area under the Urban Vision banner and one rural monastery which adds some balance to the ministry. Ngatiawa is that rural piece of the puzzle - land, cows, gardens, daily prayer in a nice chapel, dung between your toes, etc.

In case it's news to you (as it was to me) that there was a 'new-emerging' monastery called Ngatiawa (which appears to be the joining together of the Maori tribal name Nga Tiawa but may not have particular connections) the following paragraphs from the NZ Urban Vision people may help:

We are a contemporary monastery set in the beautiful Reikorangi valley – inland from Waikanae, on the Kapiti Coast, north of Wellington. Ngatiawa seeks to give priority to nurturing a contemplative life within UV Vision and be an open community for others to experience. We offer prayerful rhythms, retreat and solitude. We enjoy and care for our land, seeking to live more sustainably. We also offer training and team building, as well as plenty of hospitality and recreation in a new way.

Our guest house hosts groups each week from Urban Vision, as well as other friends and neighbours, and church and community groups. Individuals also come to join us for retreat, support, recreation or to explore issues of faith, justice and community and personal wholeness. At least annually we host larger gatherings and festivals, and hope to be a place of connection for others committed to God's love and justice.

All this is great, although the more I read on the site the more it all sounds like what monasteries have been doing pretty much since they began. Certainly they were often more contemplative than active, but reaching out to the marginalised and working justly isn't exactly 'emerging' in regard to the history of monasteries. Just quibbling...!

Small CAN be beautiful

Brandon O'Brien, associate editor for Leadership Journal, has written a new book, The Strategically Small Church. In this work, he seeks to demonstrate how small churches are uniquely equipped for success in today's culture. 

In an interview with Ed Setzer, he says:

A "strategically small" church is one that has learned to recognize and leverage the inherent strengths of being small. Being strategically small means that instead of trying to overcome your congregation's size, you have learned to use it to strategic ministry advantage.

In other words, I'm not advocating a new model of doing church. Instead I'm hoping that by telling the stories of some truly innovative and effective small churches, other small congregations will stop viewing their size and limited resources as liabilities and begin thinking about them as advantages.

....your church--whatever size--has everything it needs to be used in extraordinary ways for the Kingdom of God. You don't need more resources or more volunteers; you just need the imagination to see how God has equipped you uniquely to carry the gospel to your neighbours.

Published by Bethany House 2010

This is an exciting interview, and if the book is anything like what O'Brien says in it, it will be well worth reading.   Not only will it encourage those who are in small rural or suburban churches, ones that those with 'big [church] vision' regard as too small to be of any use, but it will show that small isn't necessarily nonviable. 

Communicating Leadership

John Maxwell's site has had a face-lift, and now appears to be called, Giant Impact. There are two short articles on leadership on the site, one of which focuses on communicating expectations to those you're leading, and the other on communicating vision.

Each article contains six points which can serve as a reminder to anyone in leadership that just telling people what to do doesn't quite cut the mustard.

Regarding the first point of communicating expectations, Maxwell writes: A primary responsibility of leadership is to communicate expectations, both with words and actions. When leaders carefully and consistently set expectations, they engineer a flourishing work environment. However, when leaders abdicate their duty to communication expectations, chaos ensues. Here are six rules of thumb to follow as you set expectations in your organization.

And in relation to the second he has this to say: Nothing motivates an organization like a clear and compelling vision. But it can be tricky to paint a picture of what's in your mind so that others can see exactly what you're seeing. As a leader, how do you enable others to glimpse your vision and how do you inspire them to adopt it?

Immigration Paper

VisionNetwork publishes short papers on a regular basis, and has just produced by written by Dr Andrew Butcher & Dr George Wieland. Butcher is the Director of Policy and Research at the Asia New Zealand Foundation, and Wieland is a lecturer in New Testament at Carey College, NZ.

The Introduction states:

Immigration has played a significant role in the making of New Zealand. However, the growth in immigration from Asia since the mid-1980s onwards has significantly altered the ethnic composition of New Zealand society. This has, in turn, presented significant challenges for how New Zealanders respond to these changes, for how socially cohesive New Zealand is and could become, and for how churches in New Zealand respond to these changes as reflected in their congregations and parishes.

This paper seeks to identify and address some of these challenges as well as present implications and actions for the way forward. To begin, this paper provides a brief overview of immigrants and immigration policy in New Zealand. This is followed by a discussion of immigration and immigrants in the Bible. To conclude, we discuss the implications for Christian attitudes towards immigrants and immigration today.

The paper is available online here.

Mission/Innovative/Monastic/You Name It

A busy week on the National Mission front, with work started on enabling Supervision to become more of a reality for ministers and laypeople around the country. ('Supervision' as in the process where a person goes, about once a month, to discuss their work and life with someone trained to listen and enable them to keep moving forward.)
That's my excuse for not having posted much on this blog this week - it hasn't been for want of trying (!)
Anyway, just 'discovered' Urban Vision. No doubt they'll be happy to learn that they've been discovered after some 13 years (they 'began' in 1996). As they state on their website:
Urban Vision is a group of households and ministries in Wellington, Porirua and the Kapiti Coast who focus on building life-giving relationships with those on the margins of mainstream society, and doing justice in the midst of urban poverty. We’ve come to realise we’re a local expression of a global revolution of hope and transformation, worked out in the neighbourhoods of need we’ve relocated to.
You might consider it a church without walls, but in fact its members belong to a number of different churches and denominations. In the last couple of years however, Urban Vision has taken on a new form:
In 2007, we took the imaginative step of becoming a contemporary Order, following Jesus on the margins. In making this step, we’ve recognised Jesus is doing new things right now in Aotearoa/New Zealand (contemporary), and that we have some things in common with some of the monastic and missionary movements of old, specifically a spiritual rhythm to life (order). We have been students of history and experience: we wanted a durable structure, enabling the continuing vitality of our pioneering, prophetic and Jesus-centred threads.
There's more on their site, as you'd expect, and they're even debating how people outside Wellington can connect with their form of contemporary Order. And they're advertising some opportunities for those who are in Wellington.

Night Vision

Church for the Night.
St Peter’s Church is slap bang in the middle of the club scene in Bournemouth, and is usually closed during the night. However, a group of club chaplains (by which I presume they mean they’re chaplains to the clubs) decided to open up the church for a night, with decorations, mince pies, music, lights, visuals and heap more. Before they’d even got the doors open at 11 pm, a young girl sitting on the steps with a group of teenagers was desperate to get in, and kept on asking if they could pray with her. As soon as the doors were opened, a stream of people, including bouncers from the clubs, came in to look around, to ask for prayer, to seek counseling and help, and to show a host of other needs. The chaplains were constantly busy, and couldn’t even close at the time they’d decided on.

Since then the church has been opened on other occasions, with similar results.
There’s a full version of the article here, and a website with more stories here, plus there’s a book, Night Vision, that was published in February this year.
Here's the blurb:

Jon Oliver was involved in mission to the club scene long before anyone thought up the term 'mission-shaped'. Here he reflects on the kind of mission that everyone is now talking about - the church going out to where people are, in this case to the clubs and city streets in the early hours, when most churches would be locked up. Part One: looks at the changing face of mission among young people, asks whether clubbing has a spiritual dimension and makes the case for mission and evangelism in places that are about as far removed from most people's idea of church as you can get. Part Two: tells some great stories from the front line by others working in mission to the club culture, e.g: Turning a typical parish church into a 'Church for the Night' - a spiritual oasis for dehydrated clubbers, bottled water and pastoral care, how to be a Christian and a clubber or DJ, engaging with young people who have no contact with the church,and more.

Looking at vision

John Sweetman makes a useful distinction between vision and core values, and the way in which leaders can often mix the two. If the vision becomes a core value, as it often does once it's achieved, then the church may stagnate through having achieved its vision.
John goes on in a later post to discuss the way leaders get vision. He suggests four ways that are just the beginning to finding/creating a vision: prayer (a kind of an of course suggestion); being brutally honest about the strengths and weaknesses of your team; talking to other people; and dreaming. Too many leaders get bogged down in doing, and forget the dreaming. It's an essential part of 'acquiring' vision.

John has a number of other posts on the subject of leadership, under various headings such as character, relationships, teamwork, and equipping. Check them out here.

More from Rick Warren on Leadership

You never lead by yourself. You always do it in context of a team. All great leaders are great team builders. In fact, if you don’t have a team, you’re not a leader. You’re a loner. The test of leadership is whether anyone is following you.

Jesus modeled this kind of ministry. He never did ministry alone. Mark 3:14 says, “He appointed twelve – designating them apostles – that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach.” Jesus enlisted other people to serve the cause with him.

If God gives you a vision for your ministry, he’s going to bring other people with the same idea together with you. If nobody agrees on your idea, guess what? It’s not from God.

Vision

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new. 2 Cor 5-17 (NKJ)

Dan Southlerland says that in many churches this verse is presented in the 'Modern Church Perversion'. That is, it goes something like this:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is an old creation; new things have passed away; behold, all things have become old.

Southerland says that this version is 'especially liked in those churches who cling to the seven last words of a dying church: "We never did it that way before."

However, he goes on to say that churches who are vision-driven have a 'present-tense version of the verse':

Therefore, is anyone is in Christ, he is a renewed creation; old things keep passing away, and all things keep becoming new.

From Dan Southerland's book, Transitioning, leading your church through change, Zondervan 2000.