Unfortunately, the Cubs were out of the running for the World Series very quickly into October. That allowed us to stay focused on family, church planting and investing in some key people.
Most of the energy of the month went to my new fourth grade class. Because of the staple rhythms we had in place, we were able to help a friend in crisis, prepare a sermon, cast vision for our family, do the Residency + intensive, and continue to build covenant with new people despite the class being one of the highest priorities.
October ended up being a time of God really continuing to build into us. We realize that as pioneers within our context, we are going to be looked at and to by people wanting to learn more about and/or do missional lifestyles. Since we are not doing it great yet by any stretch of the imagination, our strength will be in transparency and relationship. God is continuing to bring avenues for us to build relationships that are also making us more visible.
Our missional community is getting ready to move into a new season in which we will be raising up new leaders. With Katy and Jarred foreseeing a lot of energy going towards the bakery in the coming months we are looking for the next group of people the we can start a huddle with to bring up leaders that can continue breaking ground in the community.
Katy and Jon handing out candy to the neighbors. We over doubled the amount of kids we handed out candy to from last year (up from 10 to 25). We are counting it as a measure of growth!
Robert decided that Hope Vineyard would take part in a Learning Community. We have realized that this is still the best way to get connected with the 3DM movement. Because of the current nature of the LCs, I personally won't be able to go to the immersions. Jarred will be able to go. Besides the people in Robert's huddle, there are two more people going, one out of personal interest and another to observe.
As we look to getting into the swing of the holiday season that is upcoming, we are excited for a few things. First, we will be completing the first quarter of Residency + which is exciting because the next quarters will be more hands on as far as church planting goes. Second, we will be doing some covenant time with the people in our family that we will start huddling in the next season. Finally, we are looking forward to our annual time of retreat that happens in this season.
This is the final post that we will have about our story for the foreseeable future. Our purpose in writing this blog was first and foremost transparency. We also wanted to share with people who wanted to start doing missional communities how our start looked. We still have a wealth of knowledge/access to knowledge about starting missional communities so we would like to offer the upcoming season of the blog up to those of you that are desiring to start missional living in your own lives. So tell us, how can we be supportive? What questions do you have? What information do you need? What strategies can we help you with? We will be looking to have guests writers and the more direction we get from you our readers, the more applicable it can be! Thanks for your input!
Love,
The Irby's
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