July 2014

After all the wedding work, we were ready to get back into the swing of huddles.  Robert’s huddle felt significantly smaller with two less people.  It also felt more intimate and like more people were able to share and work through their plans for change in their lives.  Although the other couple was missed, we realized 12 might have been too many people.

There was one day that was pretty defining in July for the huddle that we were leading.  We were discussing the fact that we wanted to have a mission for our group but that we did not really have a clue as to what that would be.

Jarred had just read that finding a mission can sometimes be as simple as just looking out your window.  So, we sat in Katy and Jon’s living room, looked out the window and prayed.  Then we split up into two groups to walk around the neighborhood and see who was out and see if we might see a need.

I went out with Christopher and Courtney and Jarred went out with Katy and Jon and one of their dogs.  My group ran into some interesting characters.  Most notably, we stopped in the parking lot of a shabby strip of stores because we saw people selling some things.  

We walked up to them and started asking them questions about what they were doing and why.  They were collecting money for an organization called “The Stone the Builder Rejected.”  The organization was helping homeless vets get housing in the neighborhood.  They would collect items for donations so they could turn around and sell them to get money to fund their project.  We really connected with them and prayed with them before we left.

On our walk back to the house we discussed the possibility of our mission being connected with them.  We could have our group collect items to donate to them and since the vets were being put up in our neighborhood, we could then start relationships with them.  

We were excited when we got back to the house because we had it all worked out.  It turned out that so did the other group.  They had come across a neighbor who had TONS of things in his front yard.  He told them if they ever needed anything, they could check with him and he’d give it to them.  They had realized the need amongst the neighbors for such household items.  Their idea was to connect the two groups of neighbors, the haves with the have nots.

As we prayed about it, we decided that what we would do would be a rummage sale once a month.  We would have our group collect things to put out for a free yard sale.  If people wanted to donate money we would give it to the organization The Stone the Builders Rejected. We also tossed around the idea that people would bring stuff to exchange so that they could replenish the stash and feel like they were contributing.  What we knew for sure is that we did not want someone to feel obligated to give.  We wanted to bless the neighbors and start to meet people to dig further into what our specific mission would be.

Our new family headquarters. 

As always, we would love to hear about what you are doing with missional communities in your context. Please feel free to share in a comment below. Also, if you have questions about anything we are doing, feel free to ask and we will get back to you as quickly as possible! Thanks for following along. 

Love, 

The Irby's

June 2014

June was a month off from both huddles largely in part because Jarred and I were getting married at the end of the month.  With our new found group of 14+ people that were integrated into our daily lives, we had a lot of people willing to help out which meant that it wasn’t just the two of us that were busy.

Our homework for the month from Robert’s huddle was to do a personal inventory to see if being in the huddle was still something that we felt like God was telling us to do.  He reminded us that he still really felt God had told him to ask each of us to be in the huddle so he was not expecting anyone to leave but allowing for us to step out if we felt we should.  Jarred and I knew pretty early on that God still wanted us to be a part of the huddle.

One of the things that had started to sink in is that if we were just reading about missional communities and life shapes and not applying any of the principles to our lives, then nothing was going to change.  For that reason, in the huddle we were leading, we were going to redo the shapes we had already learned once again when we got back in July so our only homework was to reread the chapters we had already read.  

Largely because of the fact that we were working with the people in both of our huddles on our wedding, even though we weren’t meeting regularly, we were still seeing each other often.  We were still able to do life together.

One of the many photos of our big day. 

*Jarred and I were on our honeymoon at the end of the month so this story is second hand*

One of the couples in Robert’s huddle decided that the huddle was not panning out the way they had anticipated in starting out.  They still really liked the idea of missional communities and huddles but were finding it hard to “do life” with the people in the huddle.  They were excited about the prospect of starting a missional community in their area.  Since there were many people from the church that lived near them, they could see doing life with a little more easily because they would have more access to each other.

                       * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Rick, the husband of the couple that had started to become really good friends with my parents, had wanted to leave the huddle as well because his desire was to pray for people so he was more excited to see how a missional community could allow him to do that than trying to start one or be in a huddle for one.  He didn’t feel God releasing him to leave quite then but eventually phased out.

The couple that left as well as Rick (and his wife) are now part of the group that my parents are leading that is preparing to launch a missional community.  They are working on creating their rhythms and finding out what their mission-vision is as well as what people are peaceful within the church to the idea of missional communities.  

As always, we would love to hear about what you are doing with missional communities in your context. Please feel free to share in a comment below. Also, if you have questions about anything we are doing, feel free to ask and we will get back to you as quickly as possible! Thanks for following along. 

Love, 

The Irby's

May 2014

In May, we started hosting Common Ground at Katy and Jon’s house.  Everyone loved being back together in a big group.  We were finishing up our study that had lasted over a year on Romans.  We gave everyone the heads up that after we finished Romans at the end of the month, we would be taking the summer off as a time of rest.  We told them that in May we were going to do things a little differently and that it was a taste of what was to come in the fall.

On a typical night of bible study up to this point, we would have an ice breaker, read a passage and then ask around 10 questions pertaining to the passage from the simple, “What happened in the passage?” to the more complex of “What does this mean for your life?”  We would spend around an hour on the discussion and then pray for each other.   Then we would sit around and talk, sometimes until all hours of the night. 

With our hybrid bible study/missional community we had an ice breaker.  Then we would have someone read the passage out to everyone.  Ahead of time, we had come up with a discussion question or two that was meant to get to an application of the passage.  We broke up into small groups with each of us from the huddle in charge of a group. We would spend about an hour discussing and making a plan to hold each other accountable to for the next week and praying for each other.  Then we had time to hang out.

We were very open to questions about what we were doing.  There weren’t many questions probably because we did not give (or even know) enough information about how differently things were going to be.  Everyone seemed ok with it though largely because they were all able to meet together like we had before we split into two houses.

One thing we did know was that our plan was to not call the missional community “Common Ground” so as to differentiate it from the bible study we had done before.  By the end of the month, it was bitter sweet because we knew God was calling us to deeper relationships with him, each other, and non-believers but we also realized it was the end of a successful gathering for young adults that had been a space for meeting and making many friends.

There was a lot of fruit from Common Ground.  Four couples began to date and three of those couples are now married.  We had six recovering addicts that were regular attenders.  We had several people come back to faith and get baptized at their home churches.  A young man came through for a year and we started a non-profit with him called Testimony House that is working as a Christian development organization in the city.  The Goldsteins started a non-profit with people from Common Ground called Lock and Key to promote Godly-centered marriages.  God had definitely been moving and we were grateful to have been a part of something that had such an impact.  It was the end of an era and we were excited to see what more God was going to do with and through us as we sought to do missional communities.

A common Ground night out.

The marriage support organization that Katy and John started with folks from Common Ground.

The not-for-profit Christian growth organization that Jarred and I helped start after meeting the founder, John, at a Common Ground worship night.

As always, we would love to hear about what you are doing with missional communities in your context. Please feel free to share in a comment below. Also, if you have questions about anything we are doing, feel free to ask and we will get back to you as quickly as possible! Thanks for following along. 

Love, 

The Irby's

April 2014

God is so gracious.  We could not have been less prepared to ask Courtney and Christopher into a huddle if only because we barely knew what we were asking them to be a part of.  When we asked Christopher three of us, Katy, Jon and Jarred took him to another room after bible study and said something to the effect of, “Hey we want you to be in a huddle because we think you are a leader and you get to learn about shapes like this circle!”  Luckily, they both said yes and were very excited to be a part of what we were doing.

At this point in the huddle that Robert was leading, we were learning about the shape of the semicircle.  This shape helps discuss the rhythm of rest and work.  The takeaway that Jarred and I had with this shape is that the further back into rest we go, the further forward we could go into fruitfulness.  We realized that meant we would have to take some sort of rest from Common Ground so we could really see God’s desire for the group and push forward on His path instead of our own.

We discussed what this would look like with Katy and Jon.  We decided that what we would do is start the huddle with the (now) six of us.  Then in the following month, we would combine all of Common Ground to meet at the Goldstein’s house for a taste of what we would be transitioning into.  Then we would take the summer off.  During that summer off, we would be continuing the huddle and learning more about what a missional community looked like so that in the fall, we could launch our missional community with Common Ground.

We promptly started our huddle, again starting from the beginning since Courtney and Christopher were new.  As had happened with each person before, the two of them quickly realized how helpful these tools would be in their own individual lives as well as for the group at large.  Soon after, Courtney bought the 3dm curriculum for the Youth Group she led at Hope and Christopher had given “Building a Discipling Culture” to his pastor to read.

One of the things we were learning was the strength of language.  Jarred and I were now in a community with 14 other people that spoke a similar language to us when it came to discipleship.  It was powerful in that we could efficiently communicate our thought processes with one another.  The struggle that all of us were noticing was that we would try to use a similar language with other people outside of huddles.  We only had long, laborious definitions of terms and ideas that we knew how to use to explain ourselves to those people.  It was more confusing than clarifying.  This started to turn off people because they would see themselves as outsiders to our mysterious huddle language.  In God’s continued graciousness we have stayed in relationship with most of those people.  Through several late night conversations with them, we were able to adjust how we said things to make them clearer, less exclusive and more accessible and desirable.   Several of those people are now part of our missional community or on the team for the missional community that is starting within Hope Vineyard.

As always, we would love to hear about what you are doing with missional communities in your context. Please feel free to share in a comment below. Also, if you have questions about anything we are doing, feel free to ask and we will get back to you as quickly as possible! Thanks for following along. 

Love, 

The Irby's

March 2014

In March, Robert started a coaching huddle.  This huddle was led by a man who knew how huddles and missional communities were “supposed” to look.  He knew the life shapes that 3dm taught well enough that people paid him to be coached.  Since Robert was now getting more official training on how a huddle flowed, he had our huddle restart.  We took about a month to learn a new shape so we were not too far in for a restart.

            At the same time, Jarred and I decided we should give Katy and Jon a taste of huddle so that we could decide if that is what we wanted to move Common Ground towards.  We felt pretty confident about starting a huddle because we had essentially been through the start of one twice with Robert. 

            Also at this time, the other twenty-something couple in the huddle was wanting to start a missional community for the young adults in the church since there was not much going on for that group at the time.  Since there were a few of us in the very early stages of multiplying with little to no experience in doing huddles and missional communities, Robert started coaching us after huddle.  This was a time where we could talk through our strategies and struggles and Robert would give us input and help us hear direction from God.

            At the end of the month we did a couple “huddles” with Katy and Jon and they were able to see what we saw when we first started getting into the material: Common Ground was a cozy culture.  We were very inviting to people but we had very little challenge for growth.  We desperately wanted people to grow but we had no tools with which to help create a more empowered culture, one with a balance of invitation and challenge.  The 3dm books were giving us tools that we could see as pertinent and useful for our group.  Katy and Jon were on board with trying to transition Common Ground into a missional community.

We felt very passionately that we wanted to be making disciples.  We knew that in order to make disciples, we needed to first be disciples that had something worth replicating.  We saw huddles and missional communities as the most efficient way of having that desire realized. 

Since we still had very little understanding of what a missional community looked like, we knew we would have to take it slowly (which for us meant a couple of months instead of a couple of weeks).  We also realized that we would have to bring up new leaders so it would not be the Irby and Goldstein show but that we would really be discipling new leaders of the group.  We decided that our next step should be praying for at least two more people (one from each house of Common Ground) that we could bring alongside us and be in our huddle. 

After some prayer, we all came up with two names, Courtney from our house and Christopher from their house.  We decided that in the next month, we would ask them to be a part of our team.

As always, we would love to hear about what you are doing with missional communities in your context.  Please feel free to share in a comment below.  Also, if you have questions about anything we are doing, feel free to ask and we will get back to you as quickly as possible!  Thanks for following along!

Love,

The Irby’s

Zion

  This is my first blog post!  I'm excited to share in a project with my beautiful wife.  For now, she will tell a story of our lives over the last few years.  Periodically, I will give a more "topical" blog post, dealing with a concept or idea.  I may also share a personal story!  Essentially, my wife likes structure and I don't!  We'll talk about life mostly and how we are growing and changing.  Occasionally we'll allude to things we care about like education, Jesus, holistic living, sports, and beer.  Today, it's my birthday, and I'll talk about living life close to the center of national news.




It's been a year since Michael Brown Jr died after an altercation with Police Officer Darren Wilson near the Canfield Green Apartments in Ferguson, MO.  Brown, a teenager, was black and Officer Wilson, who was white, is not much older than myself.

Now, issues aside, the saga that unfolded with the actions that week in Ferguson, months later, and now a year late, resonate with me for two important reasons.

First, this saga took place in what I consider home.  Not just St. Louis, but the city of Ferguson was where I went to school from grades K-12 (and some of college).  It is where I attended church much of my life, and it is where a multitude of my family lived and still lives.  Even my parents were married at the intersection of Chambers and West Florissant, where businesses were affected by looting and arson over the last year.  My memories of Ferguson were numerous, and now, millions of people around the world will have memories of this town as well.

The second reason it resonates with is is that it happened on my birthday.  Every year, I expect a bunch of people I am close with, and not so close with, to celebrate another year of my life.  However, some of these same people will take part in events to remember the life of a teenager, with services and marches of mourning!  These events serve not just a purpose of mourning specifically this teenager, but also what it represents for people who are desiring a change.  A change that will lead to a different future.

The social issues of the Canfield Green apartments are not just confined to the area between Lucas and Hunt Boulevard, Chambers Road, Halls Ferry, and West Florissant.  These issues speak to a whole multitude of issues people face in different contexts and places.  Race, class, division of resources, struggle for power, the breakdown of family, this list goes on, and you may be able to come up with more ideas.  Most people will agree, change must happen, but that change is daunting.  As my life and the lives of others become almost "hyper-aware" of the issues, not many people can agree on a solution to these issues.  Even if we were to come up with a solution, some may balk at the idea of whether it will work or not.

I believe we need a solution.  I would be willing to take a stab at what this solution may be to boost my election ratings, but I do not believe that is the first step.

Could our first step be just to hit reset on our lives?  That seems like a good startup company!  It is as if our lives are a PC, and we just go through life browsing away accumulating junk we didn't even know we had picked up!  Does the Geek Squad come out and fix the hard drive of our lives?  I would consider that warranty on my next purchase.It almost seems comical to imagine changing all the wrong things in one's life all in an instant.  But on this birthday, I had a paradigm shift.  As I look to the past, and dream of the future,  I realized that I have the greatest opportunity, even if the possibility of seeing the change I dream of today or anytime is slim. 

"Zion" is a name used in many contexts throughout history.  Geographically, it can refer to a place known as Jerusalem across the world from me or here in the states, it's one of the most beautiful parks you could imagine.  In the Matrix trilogy, it's home base for the resistance and for Lauryn Hill, it was the name of her first child, when many encouraged her to abort the pregnancy to focus on her career.  Zion was something special for black slaves in America.  As they were oppressed, they still held to the hope that God would liberate them as he did the Hebrews under Pharaoh.  They longed for Zion, when they could arrive free in their homeland, as they believe that was what God intended.

As hope fades, I want to encourage others to not lose sight of the great opportunity to change, in spite of the circumstances.  We can still learn from the past, and we can grow, and we can try to be the change in our lives and in the world around us, even if not much changes that quickly.  Even if failures still outweigh the successes we see, and discouragement sets in, we still have the best opportunity.  At any instant, we may not be able to see the change, but we can start to be the change.

I realized this year, that at those moments when I decide that I have seen the past, and I want to change for the future, at that instant, my life starts to reset and have some of the change it needs!  This shift begins to become a catalyst towards more change, and small steps become exponential growth.  It might just take some time, but eventually, the battles we win start to add up in the wars we are fighting.

When we realize that a change in us is needed, the world around us immediately begins to change.  The future we dream of starts to become a reality.

So this year, as myself and others look back over the year and see crying of people needing a change, I want to stop and take a moment to celebrate.  Because I see a change happening.  And also it's my birthday.

I turn another year older and I see how much I have grown for the better. The earth turns 2016 soon (I'm kidding of course) and it might be better or worse, I'm not an expert!  Regardless, I still believe we can make it better.

Change is a process, and change takes time.  I may seem premature in my thoughts of being excited when so much work needs to be done.  Could we possibly think of the process as more like a marriage, where we enter into a lifetime commitment to see our world become better?  We can celebrate the beginning of the new life, one in which our lives are different from this point on.  We also get to celebrate the milestones too!    Cheers to that!

Every opportunity we have to realize that a change is needed, and we start to act in the new belief we have now acknowledged, the "Zion" we dream of, seems a tad bit closer.

February 2014

In February, Robert and Kim started a huddle with us and four other couples.  At the time, we barely knew what a huddle was.  What we did know was that a huddle was discipleship for leaders.  We decided we would give huddles and missional communities a good college try for a year to see if they were worth doing church wide.

The huddle was Jarred’s introduction to the 3dm material since he did not have time off to go to the workshop the month before.  After reading a few chapters of one of the books as “homework” for huddle, he quickly dove in to the 4 books that 3dm has discussing their model of missional communities and that’s when he was hooked.

We were meeting every other week for huddle and trying to pilot a missional community on the off weeks from huddle.  We were pretty naïve and had very little idea of what we were trying to do but we were building relationships within the huddle and we were starting a rhythm of living life on life.

One of the couples in the huddle was my parents (whom I was living with at the time) and they were becoming close friends with another couple in the huddle, Rick and Ananda.  This meant they frequented our house and we frequented theirs.  They lived 30+ minutes away but loved hanging out and eating together and playing games with us so we saw them at least twice a week.

Robert and Kim were doing premarital counseling with us.  We were also the couple that they knew least within the huddle so they were opening their lives to us in other ways so that we could build a deeper relationship.  They would be frequent visitors to the house and we would go out for dinner often with them.

Our attempt at a missional community was pretty much a bust if looking at how one “should be” done.  We were not inviting many people in besides the households that were represented in the huddle.  We had no mission-vision of a network or neighborhood that we were reaching out to.  We did not have any rhythms or predictable patterns that allowed it to be integrated into our lives as opposed to added to our plates.  But we were still learning, growing as Disciples of Christ, and becoming a close knit group because we were opening up our lives to one another.

All the while, as we were learning about this new way to do discipleship, Common Ground was taking place at our house and the Knox house (Katy and Jon had moved to Holly Hills but Katy’s brother still lived in the original Common Ground house affectionately named the “Knox House”).  

The Knox House group. 



We had let Katy and Jon know what we were doing with Robert and that we were excited to talk about how we could take what we were learning and apply it to Common Ground.  We had very little practical understanding of what it would mean.  We did know that while learning about becoming a disciple and how Jesus did discipleship, an itch was being scratched for the stumping questions we had encountered in Common Ground.  

As always, we would love to hear about what you are doing with missional communities in your context.  Please feel free to share in a comment below.  Also, if you have questions about anything we are doing, feel free to ask and we will get back to you as quickly as possible!  Thanks for following along! 

Language

Throughout this blog we use some very particular language. We believe that language creates culture and we want to share what we do in the context of that culture. Here you will find a quick definition of some of the reoccurring words or phrases that are specific to our culture. If there are other words or phrases you come across that you'd like defined, please let us know and we will do our best to make our language accessible!

3DM - stands for 3-Dimensional Movemends. This is the organization that wrote the books we used to learn about missional communities. For more information visit their website at weare3dm.com 

Huddle – a small group typically devoted to processing individual Kairos Moments.  This is usually a vehicle for discipling leaders into spiritual parents of an oikos.

Kairos - Greek word for opportune time (see Mark 1:14-15). In a Kairos Moment, God's Kingdom is breaking through in some way and we stop to process what He is trying to tell us. 

Life Shapes - shapes used by 3DM to teach discipleship concepts. 

Missional Community (MC) - about 20-40 people with a specific mission for who they want to reach. The group also has a rhythm and balance of relationships up (with God), in (with each other) and out (reaching out).

Mission-Vision - a specific target network or neighborhood of a missional community. 

Oikos – Greek word for extended family.  The early church was spread from Oikos to Oikos.  Missional Communities are a vehicle to get to living life as an Oikos.

January 2014

            In the beginning of the month, we had a lot of work to do to inform our group of who they were supposed to be meeting up with and confirming with the people that were supposed to be doing the accountability that they were in fact available for the commitment.  A few weeks in, we were realizing, very few people were following through.  We were stumped.

            At this time, there was a three day discipleship and mission workshop being held at a Lutheran church down the street from the church Jarred and I attended, Hope Vineyard.  Our pastor Robert was going along with his wife and four other couples that had been reading books put out by 3dm.  He had invited us to come to the workshop because he thought it fit with what we were doing with Common Ground.  The workshop was Wednesday through Friday so we weren’t going to be able to go because of work.  Somehow, I got three snow days on those days and I was able to attend every session (there wasn’t even snow on the ground that Friday, but God wanted me to be there so he made it happen!). 

            The workshop was all about doing missional communities and how to do discipleship.  It struck a chord with me because of everything we were trying to do in Common Ground.  My biggest take away was the idea that discipleship is not behavior modification but rather character formation.  This is what we needed for Common Ground.

            A major component of 3dm is the life shapes that they use to help create a common language that facilitates a discipleship culture.  I walked away with three shapes that I immediately started using with the women I was holding accountable. 

The first two shapes were triangles; one described our covenant relationship to the Father God and the other described our kingdom relationship the God the King.  The “ah-ha” moment came from realizing that we obey out of our identity that God gives us instead of striving to prove ourselves to God.   I used this shape to help us get to the core of issues we were having asking questions like, “What do you believe about yourself that is contrary to what God says about you that is causing you to act in this way?”  It was a new way of looking at sin issues that allowed for us to rely on God’s truths instead of our strengths.

The third shape we looked at was a circle that helped us process “Kairos” moments, or moments when the Kingdom of God was breaking through.  This shape got to two core questions: “What is God saying to me?” and “What am I going to do about it?”  This helped us to make a plan that was centered on what we were hearing from God about how to move into agreement with His plan.

We were novices with the shapes and we know so much more now than we did then about how to use them.  However, it was exactly what we needed at the time and we felt such a burning in our hearts to do something different that was more impactful so we had to take that first step.

As always, we would love to hear about what you are doing with missional communities in your context.  Please feel free to share in a comment below.  Also, if you have questions about anything we are doing, feel free to ask and we will get back to you as quickly as possible!  Thanks for following along!

Love,

The Irby’s