The six of us in our huddle were excited and nervous about our first missional community night. We were not sure who would show up or how they would take to the idea but we were excited about what God was doing in our own lives and we were ready to share.
Katy and Jon's made-for-Oikos-backyard.
Almost everyone from Common Ground showed up. We even had some new faces. On that first night we laid down the ground rules. We told everyone this is family so we have to contribute and that meant to the food as well as the cleanup. We said house closes at 9. We said have fun. And that is what they did.
We had let them know about our yard sale. We had decided to wait until October to do the first one because we wanted to give time for the group to gather things to put out. Things started coming in rapidly. Katy and Jon had a full garage before our first yard sale.
The general consensus from the group seemed to be that they liked the idea of what we were doing. Consistency was a little lower than it had been with Common Ground by the end but most of the core group showed up to everything.
The other big thing that happened in September was the 3dm global pilgrimage in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Jarred and I were the only two who could make it out of either of our huddles. The pilgrimage was pretty for much anyone who had heard of 3dm from someone who had heard the name through a church leader mentioning it to people who had paid thousands of dollars over a couple of years for a learning community where they learned the material and plugged into the movement relationally.
While we were there, Jarred and I started to realize that most of the conversations were about leading a church into being more missional. Although we got a lot out of that angle, we also noticed that that was not entirely our goal. We sat down with Eric (whom I had met at the workshop at the beginning of the year) and his wife to mention that we were feeling like we might be out of place. We asked what 3dm had that might be a step beyond transitioning a church. They told us that what we might be looking for was The Order of Mission. Eric told us to get in touch with David because he and his wife led exploratory huddles to learn more about TOM.
We got in touch with David and signed up for the exploratory huddle. We also got in touch with a man who planted a church using missional communities in Compton, CA. Jarred got his contact information because he was starting a coaching huddle for church planters in urban areas that wanted to use missional communities.
After the conference, we were leaving with a more clear vision of what we wanted to do with missional communities, namely plant a church. We had also done more networking than we had anticipated and that was where the seed was planted to come into relationship with as many people in the network as possible.
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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