How Missional Communities

We discussed why Missional Communities are the road we are pursuing in planting City Campus Church here.


Now the practical question of HOW we do that in C3.

The key is replication.

On a micro level...it is disciples making disciples who make disciples. Life on Life investment. Planting the Gospel. This has somehow been lost in translation in our culture. Now the onus for making disciples is on the charisma and winsomeness of the preacher and the efficiency and effectiveness of our programmatic mechanism. We get someone to come on Sunday morning and the atmosphere/teaching has to lead them to Christ and lead them to deeper waters.

Or if we just get them into small group, they will learn enough information to stumble their way into transformation. It's just assumed that enough acquired information will make a disciple. (Fascinating to think of the mentions in the New Testament of how God used uneducated people to spread the good news!)

So leading people to intentionally invest in relationships with people of peace rather than indoctrinate themselves with Christian groups and relationships is the key ingredient to see disciples make disciples who make disciples.

It's also Leaders making leaders who make leaders. Your movement/organization will only go as far as the capacity of it's leadership. If you try to lead a missional movement by yourself, it will never grow beyond one or two communities. Replicating a leadership culture is critical. The first thing I did when we got a critical mass of 20 people in City Campus Church was identify two guys to huddle and pour into. Those guys would eventually launch our second and third communities. And along the way, they identified people to apprentice with them and Shaina and I invested in those leaders and apprentices. Now we have 4 communities and 4 leaders and 4 apprentices (actually mostly couples so we have 15 people we are investing in. When the next four communities are launched, we will identify other apprentices and invest again...The leadership culture of replication broadens your capacity to catalyze a movement. And your primary role as the leader of this movement is to make sure your leaders and apprentices are being invested in and challenged and that the vision isn't leaking. We call this ACCOUNTABILITY.

Then on a macro level, it's communities making communities who make communities.

It's a hokey tradition, but every time we launch a new community, we have a birthday party for that community with cake and party hats and noisemakers. And during that celebration we give them a birthday present...namely a cake mix, candles, party hats and noisemakers...because we want it to be clear from the beginning that they will launch another community.

Replication on every level.