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What is your theology of community and discipleship?
By elaineb | August 11, 2008
Whoa, yes, lots of big words in here, but I know we’re all up to the challenge. This post is a discussion of this very question.
To summarize: Evergreen Church has a vision and a mission (read them here). How do our small groups fit into that vision and mission? How do our small groups facilitate and promote what Evergreen is about? We need to think about our definition or picture of discipleship and community, and how that is applied in the groups. Is discipleship best promoted in smaller settings, like the covenant groups, or in the larger, more teaching setting of the journey group? Is community only available in the groups which share meals (or dessert)? Or is community available in a number of different ways? If that’s the case, how do our various group offerings match the ways community can happen? Are we doing small groups simply because we didn’t have a building when we first started out, or are we doing them because of the unique way that they match our vision, mission, and philosophy? Now that we have a building, how can we use that resource to enhance our community and discipleship?
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August 16th, 2008 at 1:31 am
Wow… lot’s of questions. I think people attend small groups for different reasons, thus small groups should differ in their mission statement. Additionally, existing groups my change their mission statement periodically. It is a living organism so to speak.
August 18th, 2008 at 8:56 am
That’s a good point. But we as group leaders still need to define our own mission statements, if this is the case.
It’s also important to remember that at Evergreen, our emphasis is on a holistic journey: we encourage people to pursue God along all 5 Pathways. So even if our group has a more narrow purpose, we want to make sure we are not too one-sided in that purpose.