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
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