The 7 Connections of Organic Ministry Structures

I’ve been involved in an effort to do some restructuring of the ministry framework in our local church. Keep in mind that we are a very organic community that has resisted much hierarchical organization in the past. We have long held the philosophy that the best ministry ultimately is organically initiated ministry. But, in most cases, we also found there are only a few people who self-initiate reproducible ministry. So we realized (we are slow learners) that some organizational framework actually can help people find where the Spirit has equipped them to serve in the Body and help sustain ministry over the long haul. I know some of you are thinking, “no du!” But understand we are a newer church start that has found many long-held church practices don’t hold water when held up to biblical principles and practical experience. For that reason, we have not embraced many traditional church structures and practices, rather, we have started from a more primitive standpoint and tried to find out whether specific practices really serve to further the mission of the church or not.

With that in mind, we initially started out trying to organize ministries around our mission statement - Simplified our mission is to Make, Mature, Mobilize and Multiply disciples for Christ. But we found it very difficult to organize teams around these goals because every ministry really has these goals. Think about it. Our small groups have a make aspect to them as well as a maturing aspect. They hopefully mobilize at the same time and if they don’t multiply we say out loud that’s not good. Same with our personal lives. Same as a family or as a larger congregation. So to divide into teams around our mission statement means everyone is thinking about everything all the time—not a bad thing, but not very efficient for getting ministry done.

So, we found the best way to organize our teams was around the natural relationships we observe anyway. A framework that’s been very helpful to us is thinking about our relationships in terms of 7 Connections.
Connection 1: Our personal connection to God.
Connection 2: Spouse and closest friends.
Connection 3: Our family.
Connection 4: Our small group or inner circle of relationships.
Connection 5: Our larger local church.
Connection 6: The Kingdom worldwide (other churches, ministries, etc.).
Connection 7: The lost world.

It’s easier to think about building teams around those connections because we generally only do one at a time. We are either connecting in our small group or we are connecting with our worldwide missions. So, it makes sense to build ministry support teams around each of those efforts separately. Likewise, we have teams that are supporting efforts for families to do home devotions and teams that are supporting setup at our weekly worship service. Both teams function with the same “big picture” mission and vision, but the task sets, gifting, and passion uniquely required for each team help people serve more in their “sweet spot” and with less feeling of conflict between ministry areas. We don’t put ministry areas on life-support. If the ministry team isn’t there, then we don’t do that ministry.

We might occasionally be able to do two or more connections at the same time, but for ministry organization, using the 7 Connections simplifies the org chart and makes ministry task accomplishment more practical and keeps it organic at the same time. It’s not perfect, but it’s where we have landed and we think it can work!

Lifestyle, Meetings, or Both?

This month’s ezine at SmallGroups.com takes a look at how to shift from a meeting-focused paradigm (seeing Sunday worship and small group meetings as the center of church activity) to a lifestyle-focused paradigm (where the center of church activity is focused on relationships). In my article 10 Paradigm Shifts Toward Becoming Lifestyle Rather than Meeting Focused , I suggest 10 paradigm shifts that need to be made for our relationship with God and others to be the center of our church activity. I would love to hear your thoughts about other paradigm shifts and ideas you have found important in helping a church or a small group change their focus. Let us know what you have discovered by entering a reply below in the comments section?

Balance?

Summer, here in North America, seems like an exercise in regaining balance. Balance from a busy schedule, balance from an abnormal routine, and balance from erratic small group schedules. But lately, I’ve been wandering whether balance is really all it is hyped up to be?

A couple of weeks ago I returned from a trip to a third world country. We interacted with people in the most desperate of situations. They truly had needs in most basic areas of living and they frequently approached our group of Americans to help meet those needs. When folks are in a position where they feel compelled to beg for money or food, to sit down with them and try to say, “you know your problem is not really that your dying of malnutrition, your problem is that you don’t have any balance in your life--this begging for food all the time is taking all your time, why don’t you take a self-enrichment class or something.”

The notion of that type of conversation happening in the slum of a third world country is pretty ridiculous, would you agree? And yet, we put such emphasis on balance in our middle-class culture. It seems like the problem is that “balance” becomes the objective or the goal that we strive for. Unfortunately, this quest for balance just contributes to a tendency to compartmentalize our faith. As John Ortberg has said well in his book “The Life You’ve Always Wanted”: “Often a balanced life is pictured as pie chart with life divided into seven or eight slices, one labeled financial, vocational, spiritual, and so on. This paradigm encourages us to think of matters as spiritual and non-spiritual. It blinds us to the fact that God is intensely interested in our every moment and activity. Another problem with the goal of balance is that it doesn’t allow much room for people in desperate situations--those in crisis or the poor or the oppressed. What does it mean to tell someone with a terminal disease or a street person or a single mother with a physically challenged child that she needs more balance?”

However, de-emphasizing balance does not mean that we can ignore areas of our life either. To give ourselves to vocation, even if that vocation is ministry at the expense of our family and vital relationships, would be wrong. Also, if our small groups only focus on the same thing week after week, we are not going to be fulfilling the mission of the church.

So, what do we do?

The answer, partly comes from Col. 3:17 “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

You and I have to seek out, in our lives and in our Christian community, how to do “all things” in the name of the Lord Jesus. I would love to hear any stories you have experienced about “doing it all in the name of the Lord Jesus” and how it relates to your life being in balance or out-of-balance this summer.

Calculated Risks?

I am preparing to leave with a team from our local church for a week in Haiti, working on several projects with a trusted missionary friend. We’ve done this type of thing several times in the past. Yet, out-of-country mission trips are among those ministry experiences that bring about risk-benefit thought processes for many, including me. Is giving up some vacation time, risking health problems, and dropping a significant amount of money worth it for making a small, but bright dent in the kingdom of darkness? Would it be more worthwhile to invest my resources in other ways to bring God’s redemptive power into another culture in desperate need of Him? Those are questions that don’t have easy answers. Sometimes all we can do is follow our best understanding of how the Spirit is leading us and regardless of our decision, give all our efforts to the Lord. And, of course, the Lord promises that our efforts for Him are not done in vain.

These types of short-term mission trip experiences are becoming more and more common for small groups to take together. Many of the members of the team I’m going with next week are also part of my small group.

Beyond all the evaluating of the cost-benefit of these trips, there almost always is a life-change factor that happens for individuals and groups that you can’t put a value on. It makes these types of experiences defining moments in people’s lives. That’s why few groups ever regret going. Even in bad experiences, God works the journey for good.

But, I think, most of the hurdles groups have in getting involved in mission experiences, is simply how they view the world they live in. Regardless of who you are, there will be things that you won’t do because of the perceived danger in doing them. Although, others will walk right into those same experiences without a second thought. I don’t believe the amount of perceived danger or risk reflects our level of faith as much as it reflects our level of familiarity. We don’t perceive as much danger in things that we are familiar with. That’s why it is important for individuals and groups to continue practicing going into unfamiliar territory--putting our faith into action, so we can become familiar with God’s ways of taking care of us and using us in unfamiliar territory. It might be birthing a group, or reaching out to new people, or going half way around the world. Although, going into unfamiliar territory doesn’t have to be a mission trip.

I read an interesting article about this idea from a business perspective. One quote from the article that illustrated this well:

“For example, driving in good weather on a 12-lane freeway in a well-maintained car is something that a trained driver would not hesitate to do. Yet it could be near suicide (or murder) for someone who had never been behind the wheel of a car, or who was driving a vehicle without brakes. What is curious about human nature is that we sometimes seem unable to translate knowledge from such everyday examples into our workaday life.”

There have been many examples, including short-term mission trips, where I had a heightened sense of danger because I was in unfamiliar territory. But once I learn I can trust God to take a risk in reaching out in a mission experience, it should help me take a risk to reach out in my everyday life as well.

The same can be true of any small group experience, including leading a small group gathering in your own living room for the first time. We should never discount the feelings of apprehension that people have when doing something for the first time, even though we don’t feel the same apprehension because we are already familiar with it. This applies to even the most routine small group tasks. Every first time experience is a big deal, but worth it in most cases, because it sets the stage for us to go more “places” with God. Let’s encourage and support those who are going into uncharted territory!

Pew Survey of America

There has been quite a bit of media attention this week about the just released
Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey . Of the many findings of the survey, one stood out to me. In America, researchers found near-unanimity on belief in God -- something espoused by 92 percent of Americans -- however, just 51 percent said they were both absolutely certain about that belief and view God as a person (not some kind of impersonal force) with whom they can have a relationship.

Jesus said, in Matthew 22:36-40 that the essence of how we are to live life involves loving God and loving people. 1 John 4 further talks about how loving God and loving others are inseparable -- you can’t have one without the other.

Studies show that most people’s conversation experience involved a loving relationship with another Christ-follower. And that because of that loving relationship to another Christ-follower, there was an understanding of what it meant to love God and be loved by God. One thing the Pew survey implies is that while there is a high percentage of belief in God, there is a significantly lower percentage of those who have a relationship with God. One could also assume there is also a low percentage of lost people with loving relationships to other Christ-followers.

That seems to raise some “red flags” for the church and for small groups. Perhaps one of the reasons more don’t know how to relate to God is that His followers are not relating to them? What are your thoughts? How is the process of loving God and loving others (even the lost) going in your small group? Do these survey results surprise you?

Small Group Worship

I recently sat in on Buddy Owens’ small group worship workshop at the Purpose Driven Small Group Conference . Small group worship is arguably a challenge for most small groups. Buddy Owens commented that he has led worship at a Promise Keepers event for 50,000 and it is much more difficult to lead a worship experience in a small group of 6 than it is to lead a group of 50,000 in worship! I think this is a good reason to look carefully in our small groups for those who have gifting in the area of leading worship and utilize them in your small group community (see this month’s ezine on Spiritual Gifts ).

Another way to get over the worship boundary in small groups is to start framing our paradigm of small group worship differently. There are many ways to create worship experiences in small groups beyond just singing. SmallGroups.com features new ideas every month in our Worship Works area. Also, here are several ideas that came out of our time together in the workshop:
-have a good reader read the words of an old hymn
-play a music CD and just listen, then get responses
-dedicate a prayer time to only thanksgiving (what God has done), and adoration (who God is)
-share a favorite scripture and then share why
-after sharing a scripture or song, have some quite journaling and then group sharing
-share your “story” or testimony
-do communion together as a group
-do a sing along CD or DVD, turn it up loud if your group are not great singers—it works!

What are some of your ideas for small group worship experiences?

Eliminating Dangerous Routines

Rock climbing, like small groups, is an activity that is risky enough that it should be done in community. If you are not familiar with rock climbing, typically, someone is climbing while another is holding the safety ropes. The person holding the safety ropes is called the “belay.” When the climber is ready to proceed up the rock the procedure is to communicate with the belayer. "On belay" means that the belayer is operating the belay device, ready to "catch" the climber in the event of a fall. "On belay" essentially means "I've got you, it is safe to proceed." "Off belay" means the opposite: "I am not manning the belay device, so exercise extreme caution." Many climbing accidents happen because of poor communication between the climber and belayer.

As a recent BusinessWeek article recently noted: “Can you think of two phrases that sound more alike than "on belay" and "off belay?" While they might be distinguished easily in an indoor climbing gym, put two competitive, adrenaline-filled people on a sheer cliff with the wind whistling by, a waterfall in the distance, gear clacking against the rock—and it's not difficult to see how such errors occur. Why on earth, I wondered, would climbers continue to use the terms when they are obviously not the best signals for the task? "I guess climbers have always done it that way," was their uneasy answer. The terms are remnants of a stupid routine.”

This article made me think about our small groups. How many stupid routines are we doing in our small groups that, at best, are creating ineffective Christian community, and at worst, creating dangerous spiritual situations in our groups? Things like breaking confidentiality, gossip, being more focused on curriculum than relationships, running out of time for prayer, and the like.

One way to eliminate dangerous routines is to start talking about our routines regularly, meaning more than just once a year. With Spring morphing into Summer in the Northern Hemisphere, many small groups are moving into a breaks or variations of their current routines. What better time to evaluate our routines? The BusinessWeek article suggested some questions to ask the group. I have adapted them to a small group setting:

>In the past 90 days, what were our three most important accomplishments together? Push the group to not settle for answers like "we finished the curriculum." Instead, teach them that accomplishment is about life change.

>In the past 90 days, what were the three most important ways we fell short of our potential? Here, you are tapping people's intuition about important things the group ought to be emphasizing, but isn't.

>In the past 90 days, what are the three most important things we have learned about our routine? This is the toughest one--asking people to learn and apply what they've learned to life in church community.

Media Training Helps

Media-based small group curriculum is widely available and being produced by publishers and even in-house by many churches. While media/DVD-based curriculum has been available for some time, I haven’t seen a multitude of media-based small group leader training tools...that is, until more recently. Frankly, I’m more excited by media-based small group leader training tools than I am about media-based small group curriculum, so I’m glad to see more and more media-based tools available for the training and support of small group leaders and small group coaches. Here's a few that I’ve seen lately...

SmallGroups.com eTraining – (OK, selfless plug here) introduced at SmallGroups.com over a year ago, an interactive online training experience covering basic group leadership skills

ReGroup – a DVD and participants book package that lays out a complete pathway to group process and small group leadership

Simple Small Groups – video channel on YouTube.com dedicated to training small group leaders

Leadership Coaching – a DVD and book resource to help church leaders and small group leader coaches be more effective

Not to mention the many local church websites that are putting their training online. Of course, my opinion is that media-driven training can never replace relationship-driven training, nor would I want it to, however, I’m excited by what’s becoming available to help supplement relational small group leader training!

What are some other media-based training tools that you have used?

Raise or Recognize or Both

This month’s ezine at www.SmallGroups.com explores the issue of developing small group leaders. There’s a wide variety of philosophies when it comes to “setting apart” leaders for the local church in general. In some cases, they are appointed or elected. In some cases they are apprenticed. And in some cases they volunteer without qualification based on some type of announcement. But, in the case of small group leaders, how should they be set apart? Once again the variety of philosophies varies greatly from “If they can breath, they can lead” (or if they can read a study guide or press a DVD button, they can lead) to requiring hours of training and on-the-job experience before they can lead. Regardless of the philosophy of leadership, one important aspect of leading is not how we funnel people into leadership, but what becomes of them once they are in the process. We’ve all had the experience where we’ve known a person who didn’t carry the title of leader, or wasn’t elected or appointed to the position of leader, but we would say without hesitation, “they are a leader.” If we’ve been around ministry long, I suspect we all have had that experience. The real question for me is how we get to the point where the people we elect, appoint, apprentice, or set apart, are the people which we also say, “they are a leader?” The key is figuring out who those people are early on in the process and then building our leader development process in such a way to stimulate their leadership gifts. If the people of whom we say “they are a leader” are not the people we are regularly setting apart as leaders, then I believe something is terribly wrong with our leadership development.

Does that mean we should avoid selecting unproven and inexperienced people as small group leaders? No, I believe we should be raising leaders from the inexperienced (if they can breath, they can lead), but one of the filters we use in our selection is to identify those whom are already gathering a spiritually healthy relational following. Do you agree? What has been your experience?

Online Community 2.0 (part 2)

A term that has been used to describe the current use of the Internet is Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is not a software version, rather it’s a term that refers to the ability for users to create, upload, and publish their own conversations, media, and creative ideas, rather than just download and view “expert-created” content (Web 1.0). Based on research noted in my last blog entry, the church’s use of Web 2.0 tools has been limited. The questions I raised were: Is this due to the typical technology adoption lag in the church? Or, are these tools not contributing to the making of disciples and the building of Christian community as much as hoped?

I don’t have the complete answer to these questions; however, I know that as culture is utilizing online tools, the church will need to utilize online tools as part of the strategy for carrying out our mission as time moves forward.

Interestingly, I have been seeing some online reports lately that Web 3.0 is coming. What is Web 3.0? It’s not well defined yet, but an interesting trend of Web 3.0 is that more emphasis is being placed once again on “expert-created” content. All the user created tools and technology are still there, but the ability for someone to lead, guide, and moderate the flow of content is once again expected to be emphasized more and more. What does this mean? In general, most of us may continue to use the internet more as an information source, rather than as a relationship platform. It also may mean that online community and online relationships, while very important, may not have been as effective at taking the place of face-to-face relationships as previously thought. Facial expressions can’t be completely replaced by emoticons and, body language can’t be completely replaced by avatars .

What’s your experience? What are some ways you utilize user generated information as compared to "expert-generated" content? Is your online experience better described as one way communication or relational dialog?