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The Essentials of any Huddle
Sometimes I think we can overcomplicate things.
Particularly things that were never terribly complex but we feel like couldn’t possibly be this simple.
In working with people to train them how to disciple leaders through the vehicle of Huddle, I sometimes think we might fall prey to this in our Huddles. The 90 minutes we spend in Huddle doesn’t need to be a magic show or really that complex. It’s simple, but hard. Not complex, but easy.
In essence, these are the four ingredients in any local Huddle I’m leading:
- REVIEW. Take between 2-4 minutes for people to share how their plans went from the week before. At the end of every Huddle, the participants should be able to articulate “This is what God is saying to me and this is what I’m going to do about it.” Well…are you actually holding them accountable to following through on their plans? You don’t need to spend long doing it. Write down what their plans were, read them back the following week, and simply ask if they did what they said they were going to do. Some huddles you might want to hear how things went, but the most important part is making sure they follow through. This is what spiritual partnership can look like.
- KAIROS. Introduce a Kairos. You can do this in any number of ways. Here are a few examples: (1) A mini-teaching with content you want them to wrestle with (never longer than 10 minutes). (2) Take them out on mission as a huddle. Trust me. They will have a Kairos! (3) Have them read something ahead of time and bring their Kairos to Huddle. (4) Have them bring a Kairos from their own life to process. (5) Give a quick synopsis of the weekend teaching and have each person share their Kairos from it.
- LEARNING CIRCLE. Take people through the Learning Circle, making sure you give time for people to observe, reflect and discuss, as well as giving some of your own reflections with the discipleship tools you’ve learned via LifeShapes.
- TWO QUESTIONS. At the conclusion of every Huddle, participants should be able to clearly articulate an answer to these two questions: What is God saying to you? What are you going to do about it?
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2 Responses to The Essentials of any Huddle
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Doug Paul
Doug Paul serves as the Director of Content at 3DM, where he works alongside Mike Breen developing books, blogs, webinars, whitepapers and other content initiatives. Before moving to Pawleys Island, SC, he served as a Teaching Pastor and Director of Multi-Site at a church in Richmond, VA. He went on to plant a church using Missional Communities and Huddles while participating in 3DMs first Learning Community.
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Hey Doug,
Just curious as to how this looks in a more organic discipling relationship as opposed to a leader huddle.
Brett, great question! I actually think it’s almost the exact same thing, but you’re doing it in a conversational way. It’s just organically guiding the conversation. How’d things go last week? (REVIEW) What’s the big thing that’s happened this week? (KAIROS) Organically walk through the Learning Circle (I’m 100% positive you already know how to do this). So what does this next week look like? (PLAN). You just weave these kind of ‘marker questions’ throughout the discussion. I can almost guarantee that you’re already doing this organically because the tools just become part of how you think through these relationships as they are happening in a more informal, organic setting.