Crossroads Church Kansas City

City groups: the church has left the building.

Actually, “reloaded” is an exaggeration. (For background on City groups, go here.)

However, we’re adding a little structure to help us live out our identity as families of missionaries more deliberately. We want to Listen, Eat, Serve, Celebrate and Rest in distinctly gospel-centered ways. As you may remember, when we debuted City groups at Crossroads Church Kansas City, we effectively blew up a typical “small group” structure and started from scratch.

We did this because we did NOT want to create Bible studies, therapy groups, social clubs or activist circles. We wanted groups that would help us live as families of missionaries in our chosen mission field, downtown Kansas City, Missouri.

Having taken steps in that direction, it’s time to add a little structure to our groups…because being spontaneous all the time isn’t a recipe for success. Here are the structural tweaks we’re making.

Week 1 of each month will be reserved for First Friday or other informal get togethers with friends (Celebrate, Rest…).

Weeks 2 and 4 of each month will be set aside for meeting in homes, eating together, applying some Bible, and praying (Listen, Eat, Rest…).

Week 3 of each month will be another unscripted opportunity to spend time with friends and/or volunteer in our community, perhaps both (Serve, Celebrate…). No need to go it alone, though. Collaboration would be ideal.

“Two In, Two Out”
The gospel changes from the inside out in ways that affect our families, friends, and communities. We want our City groups to reflect this dual focus of discipleship–both inner change and outward gospel focus. As Jesus’ people, we need to both care for and encourage each other and extend grace and generosity to our friends. Thus, our monthly calendar: two weeks “in,” two weeks “out.”

Our goal in “programming” these times into our calendar is to give us all a chance to be more intentional in how we plan and include our friends in our community. If we can combine “light on our feet” with “deliberate,” we’ll be that much more effective for the gospel.

If you wonder what I’m talking about, flesh out details with your City group…or get involved in a City group. Let’s run with this and see what God does.

Tags: church, city groups, Kansas City, kansas city church

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 at 3:02 PM and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.