August was a time when rhythms started to click. Robert’s huddle had been going on long enough for us to have a grasp on what we were trying to do. We had restarted the shapes again and now had a groove for how to teach the most in depth concepts.
Typically we would learn a new shape by Robert teaching about it in depth for about 20 minutes. Then we would go around and share our Kairos about that shape. Since we were down to 10 or even 9 most nights, we would have time for 2 or 3 people to share what their plan would be for the week to implement what they had learned.
The following huddle Robert would review the shape for about five minutes. Then we would go around and update each other on our plans or talk about a new Kairos that we had from the homework. We had a little more time this night to flesh out a couple more Kairoses or pray for one another.
On the third huddle of a shape, Robert would pick someone to teach the shape. The goal was to practice teaching the shape in a safe place because ultimately, we wanted everyone to be capable of leading their own huddle when we multiplied.
Robert didn't make up that structure. Imitating before innovating.
Since the huddle was no longer trying to do a missional community, we met every week. We started rotating to each house to have dinner before huddle to make up for the loss of doing life together without a missional community component.
After most huddles, we would stay after with Robert and Kim and Kyle and Robyn to do some coaching on our huddles. Robyn and Kyle had just started their huddle. They had a group of nine that said they would come and be in the huddle. Their struggle was getting time for that group of people together for a huddle because of their busy schedules. Our struggle was preparing to do missional community with a group of people who had not quite signed up for it but were ready to follow us into whatever we asked of them.
In our own huddle, we had discussed what we wanted our monthly rhythm to look like. We were meeting once a week for huddle. We decided at the beginning, we would do a large group meeting every other week. We were planning on doing a dinner and we wanted it to be lightweight so we figured it would be easier to plan a meal every other week instead of every single week. We would start doing the yard sale once a month which would be our big “out”.
The other thing we knew we needed was to have lots of unstructured hang out time to detox from the over-structure that had been Common Ground. The only thing we wanted to be hard and fast on was the end time. We knew our tendency for hanging out could lend to us spending all night together and we realized that was not quite the point.
With our plans and coaching in place, we prepared for the launch of our missional community. We sent out the invitations and we were off.
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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