What's Going On?

Hey everyone,
First and formost let me apologize for this extended period of radio silence. We've been busy, sure, but there's actually no real good excuse.  On the upside, the lack of posts on the blog do not in any way reflect a lack of movement on the front of our planting/gathering process. Allow me now to explain what we're up to.

As most of you know, Melissa and I attended Pilgrimage 2011. The "visitor's week" and conference held by (and at) St. Thomas' Anglican/Baptist Church in Sheffield, England.  St. Thom's is largely responsible for pioneering the "Network of Mid-Sized Missional Communities" style of church, through the hard work of their people, their staff, and their leaders past and present including Mike Breen, Mick Woodhead, Paul Maconochie and others.

I've written a lot about what a Missional Community is, and I'll surely do quite a bit more, but what's important to take away from what I've written is that we see the MC as the primary expression of church.  If church is the body, then the truest way to express the body is living together as Christ lived. Christ, it should be noted, lived in more ways than simply attending temple... and so we see Sunday Gatherings (not referred to as services here, btw) as AN important element of church life, but not the only or the primary element.  This is perhaps different than the more commonly recognized model of doing church in America. An hour a week, Sunday morning.

These missional communities are groups of 25-50 people held together by a unifying missional vision.  You join up, you stay, and you have fellowship together because you are together acting as missionaries towards a specific people group, or geographic location.  This mission is engaging, and the work is worth doing, and so even folks who don't believe in Jesus may come along side us for the sake of seeing our goals realized. Good for them, and what a great opportunity for us to talk to them about why we're doing what we're doing.

So, the first missional community in Cleveland Heights is starting... well, now!  Melissa and I have been meeting with friends as often as we can manage, and we're looking to get together a base of 6-14 people who have an understanding of the gospel and want to get on board this method of doing church.  We'll spend some time together in Bible study, to see how all of these principles we're using are actually found in places like Acts, and we'll work on developing a discipling culture together.  As soon as we feel like we've all started to get a sense of things, though, we're throwing the doors open.

Contact me if you'd be interested in getting involved in this first cell group.  In my next post I'll elaborate some on what's next.
God Bless.