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