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.
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!
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