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How to start a Missional Community
Working at 3DM, it should come as no surprise that I am often asked the question, “How do you start a Missional Community?”
As such, I thought sharing my own story in the past 6 months would be helpful. You see, after passing on our church plant and moving to Pawleys Island, SC to work with 3DM full time, this was the first time in about a decade I haven’t been in vocational ministry - specifically meaning that local ministry wasn’t my JOB.
So we were having to answer the all-important question that anyone sitting in the pews do: “How does this work when I have a regular 9-5 job?”
And remember, this is in a rural beach town that has about 15,000 people, in a place that would be traditionally thought of as “The “Bible Belt.”
Here is what we did.
When we landed, we asked God two questions:
- What people group (network/neighborhood) are you calling us to reach/ minister to/ disciple in this season?
- Who are Persons of Peace (POPs), in whom you’ve already started preparing their heart — who will help us accomplish this work? (a POP is someone God has already prepared to be open to you and the Gospel)
In our case, it was the 2nd question (a POP) that answered the first question.
My wife met Erin, a young mom who lives on our street, the very first day we arrived. They started walking our kids together a few times a week. She invited us to her son’s first birthday party, where she introduced Elizabeth to a dozen or so other young moms who were networked together informally. She was the gatekeeper to a group where God wanted to move.
Elizabeth specifically started building relationships with the moms in a low key way. Lunches, playdates, dinners, pumpkin patch. Nothing formal. Just building relationships. But all of the people we were meeting in this network who didn’t know Jesus were young couples with kids in diapers.
That really gave us a clue as to where our focus should be. That’s what these Persons of Peace opened up for us.
Next, we prayed for a group God wanted us to start discipling, using the vehicle of Huddle and he sent us 3 couples who were dedicated Christians, but not actively plugged into a local church. A couple months later we met a 4th couple who wanted to join, so now we’re up to 10 of us in the Huddle. We started meeting every other Thursday, teaching them the basic principles of Jesus’ life, inviting them into a deeper level of accountability and relationship with the Father. That started in August.
Without explaining what a Missional Community was we started forming an extended family on mission by celebrating birthdays and baby showers, doing meals and life together. And after a couple months we added an MC dinner on the alternate Thursday nights (in October, about 2.5 months after starting the Huddle). This dinner consisted of the same people in our Huddle, plus we all invited people we knew who we felt were Persons of Peace.
The only spiritual content at those dinners, at least in the beginning, was going around and saying what we were thankful for, then blessing the food. At the last one in December we read the Christmas story and sang carols, then helped the kids decorate Christmas cookies. At this point, a little more than half of the people in the group we probably wouldn’t call “Christians.”
Here’s where it gets really interesting.
You see, up to this point, all we’ve done is create a welcoming family that is functioning like an extended family, make it crystal clear our lives are oriented around Jesus, and do some regular and rhythmic things that point to Jesus.
Shortly before the break, between Christmas and New Years, three of the couples who had been coming asked about plugging into something with more spiritual content. While there wasn’t a lot of “structured” spiritual time at our first season of family gatherings, obviously they’ve gotten to know us over the course of these months and we’ve been open about our relationship with God — so they see things we post on facebook and twitter, as we thoughtfully, but actively use language about what God might be saying to me (in contextually appropriate ways). Another woman read a blog my wife wrote about what God was teaching her about marriage and emailed her saying that she was really glad I was in her life.
There’s obviously something going on there, right?!
Notice that we didn’t have a 27 point plan of exactly how everything we going to go, but we have been taught to see how the Holy Spirit is working and how to engage with Persons of Peace and cultivate those relationships within the context of a family.
So starting next week we’re shifting the focus of those Thursday night dinners.
- 5:30-6:30 its dinner and anyone can come even if they don’t want more spiritual content.
- 6:30-7:30 is a simple bible study and discussion (where we will always conclude the dinner by having each person answer, ‘What is God saying to me and what am I going to do about it in the next 7 days?’).
- In between we’ll continue to have broader, family “events” (corn hole tournaments, running a 10k together in town, baby showers, etc.) where more people can plug in without the pressure of the bible study group.
So what you’re seeing is us forming a family on the continuum of the ORGANZED and the ORGANIC. There are some things with structure, regularity and are scheduled. But there are some things that are organic, unplanned and sporadic. Why? Because that’s how all extended families function!
As we think about Missional Communities, we want them to reflect the fullness of the life of Jesus, because we are the Body of Christ. So we want the MC to have an UP dimension (time together spent with the Father), an IN dimension (time together each other as Christians, the members of the family of Jesus) and an OUT dimension (time spent on mission together, stepping into the brokenness of the world).
- So our UP times constitute our bi-weekly Huddles (people helping us lead the Missional Community) and biblical teaching after the dinner group with a few worship songs on an ipod so we can sing and the little kids can sing and dance together.
- Our IN times are the dinners, but also the informal meals and things we do to feel like family, as well as cornhole tournaments, bbq’s, play dates, football games, etc. Also, Elizabeth and I have a family tradition of going to a local diner each Saturday morning with our two kids and we’re constantly inviting people into that family outing with us.
- Our OUT will be a relatively new concept for them, so we’ll be helping them understand why it’s important for them to invite friends who don’t know Jesus. Also, we’re going to pick an OUT that serves the disenfranchised. In the case of this group we’re going to go to a nursing home once a month, with our kids, to visit and spend time with lonely, elderly people. Most of them don’t have family living by them and they’ve got no one visiting them. Plus, older people simply LOVE having babies and toddlers around.
Because of that we’re going to call the group the Pawleys Pampers Brigade (because both the babies and the old people might be in diapers). 
I think the big thing to notice is that this Missional Community was started amongst a group of people we didn’t know. We parachuted in. We just moved here. It has grown because we’ve attended to the different seasons of development:
- A season of finding a few key Persons of Peace who opened up a wider network to us. Then, getting to know these networks and building relationships with them, finding out what people were really open.
- A season praying for people who were already Christians and open to investment from Elizabeth and I, who might want to help us lead the burgeoning Missional Community.
- A season developing these people while we started doing more extended family dinners with light spiritual content.
- A season diving deeper into spiritual content and a higher commitment to being family.
This happened over the course of 8 months.
These things don’t happen over night, and I think it’s important to realize that. It takes time to see where God is working, finding the people he’s placed out there for you and then to cultivate those relationships and enter into a new network of relationships because they’ve been gatekeepers.
There are many ways to start a Missional Community from scratch and allow it to grow. Hopefully this proves to be one helpful example.
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29 Responses to How to start a Missional Community
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Very helpful and encouraging. Thanks, Doug!
Doug, VERY help for us (my wife and I) as we are at the beginning seasons of a missional community. I’m curious…how did you connect with a few other Christian couples who were not connected with a local church? Did you go through the Lifeshapes in the first huddle? Was that more structured/without kids?
A few of the Christians we met were just random people we became friends with. One was on the 3DM team. One was a couple we met through friends of friends.
For the Huddle we just worked through the first three shapes (Circle, Triangle, Semi-Circle), but are still slowly going through them as we continue the HUddle and launch the MC.
Excellent, helpful, insightful post. Thank you!
Doug, it sounds like you were/are not connected to an existing church at all, and not aiming to draw anyone away from churches if they are really involved in one. From the little bit I’ve learned about 3dm’s model - that’s the more common approach to take?
I’m expecting to leave the Lutheran church I currently serve (as pastor), in about 6 months, for another. I’d really like to take a 3dm approach into this new congregation. Is it incompatible? Can one do this organic Missional Community within the context of existing church? I’m thinking any Huddle would likely draw in people who are not currently part of the church, since friendships often cross all kinds of denominational lines. (I’m a little nervous about being accused of stealing people, but hope we might make more connections with people who are not members of any church.)
Eric, we’ve found that Huddles and Missional Communities are compatible in pretty much every context because they are so flexible. They are more principle and practice based than formula based (which is both a gift and a curse).
At 3DM, we’ve probably worked with more than 50 Lutheran churches already, so we are very familiar with the challenges and opportunities for this particular tribe. My big encouragement in starting a Huddle would really to only ask who God is asking you to invest in and disciple, to think who might be missional leaders with you and your family in the future? If that includes people from the current church, so be it. If not, then great! Again, each would provide unique challenges and opportunities. Make sense?
Thanks, that’s helpful - as was your response to Daniel below.
Do you think you could do what you’re doing now (in your leadership role for your huddle & missional community) while also serving as a full-time pastor of a church with 200 or so active/worship attending members? I don’t quite follow, from your post, how separate your day job (with 3dm) is from your ministry role. You’re doing 3dm type ministry in your free/personal time (unpaid) while your day job is desk work/management/etc for 3dm the organization?
I should add, that I get that there would be natural overlap - if I should even call it ‘overlap’. Your role within your huddle & MC, if it were me working with folks from my congregation, would simultaneously be an aspect of my pastoral ministry. But my question remains, because I’m wondering if a weird dual identity might develop - or maybe it’s not so weird, but still like serving two different churches.
Eric,
I don’t want to speak for Doug, but I’ve heard your question spoken to.
You can (and should) do both - your work as a vocational minister and leader of a missional community. There may be a bit of overlap, but there should be much distinction so you can model leading a MC for others. I assume you will be calling people in your new congregation to be part of MCs, and you can help lead them in that as you model what it looks like to lead a MC primarily from your “free time” since that’s the only time your congregants have to use (they’re working 9-5 jobs).
I hope that makes sense, Eric.
Great thoughts. It is so easy to fall into only organized or organic spiritual activities. Either we are “off duty” unless we are in a meeting. Or we do everything organically but miss a lot of needed intentionality. I’m glad to hear that God is bless you all.
Hi Doug, just came across your post as we look into Missional Communities in our current church context.
I wonder if you could give me some more information (either here or by email).
Would you say what you now have is a church? In which case was the work over the past 8 months a church plant, albeit unconventional and perhaps unintentional?
If it would not be considered a church, how do you currently see your association with the church (the body of Christ, not a denomination)?
Daniel, I think the the ecclesiological sense of the word, what we’ve started is a church. However, I don’t know that we are currently intending for it to have all of the big gathering functions as MC’s multiply, etc. I think we will regularly cycle into another church’s worship service (we are in relationship with that church and the pastor) and aren’t looking to start a new thing that might be seen as in anyway competitive. Almost always, competition between churches happens through Sunday morning service comparison, which, at this point, we have no intention of getting into. So is what we have started a church? Theologically speaking, I think so. Would it be determined a church by what most Americans think a church is? Probably not.
Doug
I am new to the MC paradigm. I’m on staff at a Mega Church with multi-site campuses. We are considering launching another site and are negotiating the purchase of a building. I’m thinking of starting with a Huddle of 8 - 10 committed believers as the seed for planing other MC’s that will meet weekly for our celebration service. My idea is to limit Sunday morning programming so as not to compete with the rhythm of the MC’s tomaximize involvement or “Out” in their community. Your thoughts please - Art
I don’t know that there is a “right” answer on this. You really just have to read your context, your leaders and your own current abilities, listen to the Holy Spirit and determine what the right course of action is. I’ve seen churches continue weekly services from the start and having MC’s go “OUT” one to three weeks a month, while others stayed in more. Part of it is the missional context your MC’s are reaching out to. If it’s for people they couldn’t reach on a Sunday morning, doing an “OUT” then wouldn’t necessarily make sense. The biggest advice I could give is for you to start a Pilot MC for 6 months with the leaders you are hoping launch the first wave of MC’s so they get to experience everything you’re teaching them. So you give them the information, then they get to imitate what you’ve showed them and then, finally, innovate in their own context.
Doug, I’m so intrigued by this post and the conversation in the comments thread. One of the challenges of the institutional church is that it leaves little time or space for flexible/organic opportunities for growth. Church people are so darn busy with all those meetings and committees!
I’m thankful for the glimpse into how you’re living life there, intentionally, and encouraged that it doesn’t have to fall into any particular pattern - only that designed by the leading of the Spirit!
thanks…very helpful. We’re working with a team in the UK near London and we are earlier in the process but have seen some of the same things happen. So, your story keeps me going and praying. God is building his church!
Hey Jeff, where abouts? We are in Eltham, SE9. Would love to hear what other people are doing in the London context - email me if you want - danieljbull[at]gmail[dot]com
Hey Doug,
Thanks for the helpful, tangible post. Really helpful for us. A few questions as we try to figure out our own rhythms in a very difficult cultural situation:
1. When you first invited the PoP to these regular dinners, did you have any indication that they were spiritually open? Or were they just people you were becoming friends with?
2. Were the dinners with or without the kids?
3. Was it the same couples/families who came each time?
4. How did you ‘pitch’ the dinners? As friends meeting up? As hanging out with our Christian friends? As a ‘named’ activity?
5. Did the PoP know it was a regular dinner to put in their agenda? Or did you invite them afresh each time?
6. Did the dinner discussions often move on to spiritual content or not so much? If so, how would this happen?
7. Practically, why do you think the PoP asked for more spiritual content?
8. Are these non-Christians best described as ‘de-churched’ or ‘un-churched’? In other words, are you helping them rediscover faith or introducing them to Jesus for the first time?
Sorry for all these quite precise questions! In the suburbs of Paris (France) where we are, we have built relationships but are trying to figure out the next step. There are some similarities but many differences from your context but these questions would help me process things a little bit more.
Many thanks, and God bless your mission work and all you are doing with 3DM,
Richard
1. They knew Elizabeth and I were very active Christians, who prayed regularly for them and for others. Our base assumption is if they know that and still want to hang out a lot, they are spiritually open.
2. Dinners were with kids.
3. Most of the time it’s the same families coming each time, though there were some people who can’t make it every time or revolve in and out.
4. We just pitched it as something we felt God wanted us to do. We wanted to have regular family dinners with the people we were friends with. We told them we were excited to introduce them to new people they’d really like.
5. They knew it was a regular thing, but we always sent reminder texts/emails
6. As the dinners started, we didn’t introduce spiritual content other than having every person share something they were thankful to God for.
7. I think the POP’s wanted more spiritual content b/c God was working in them and because they saw the life we were living and wanted more of that
8. It’s a combination of de-church and un-churched.
Hi Doug- This blog post was so very helpful to me as you walked us through what this actually looked like in the life of your family….the discernment, being intentional, all while just living life for Jesus around other people then eventually with them. How exciting to watch God move through your experience in establishing this MC. Your wife Elizabeth was my huddle leader at the 3DM workshop this past week and is a total God-gift. I’m quite sure you already
know that. You mention “bi-weekly” huddles in your post. I remember someone mentioning that huddle was most often weekly or sometimes every other week at the conference. How did you determine how frequently you would huddle?
I determine it by the availability of my schedule and the schedule of the people I’m huddling. I will NEVER go longer than 2 weeks and would prefer every week when we start out, but you also try to be realistic.
I was very interested to read the history of your MC. I have been asked to write a short history of the MC that my wife and I have been involved with over the past 10 months. Our MC was started by two families and has grown to around 20 families connected. We grew our MC by connecting families who were on the fringes of church life. The main connecting point for the members of our MC is young children.
Doug, just to say thanks very much for this blog post! Found it very helpful. I used it as an example of an MC with our church the other night which sparked some very interesting discussion. I also found out that another church we’re linked to used your blog to spark discussion in the same way! Thank you.
What are ways that I as a young man apart of a church doing the model of missional communities can engage in mission, and help our people engage in mission? What are some of the ways you would do that?
Do you try to encourage everyone to join the mission by organizing things? Or do you try to make it an organic thing?
I’d just experiment with Missional Communities and don’t try to make it a part of a program or anything like that. If I were you, I’d find 10-15 other people who are up for trying something fun with you with no expectations. It’s all about doing it together and following the vision the Lord gives you for this missional community. I’d probably have everyone read the book “Launching Missional Communities” and then commit to being a MC for 6 months, allowing yourself the space and grace to try new things, fail, evaluate and review and try again. Just have lots and lots of fun with it! Eventually…you’ll get good at it!
Thanks for the post, Doug…really helpful stuff here! I’m a South Carolina native - grew up about 30 miles west of Pawley’s Island. I currently live in Minneapolis and have been engaged in the missional movement for about a year now.
Do you have any sense of how MC’s work in multiethnic and/or predominantly minority contexts? I’d love to hear any thoughts that you might have!
Thanks!
Honestly, it works in very similar ways. The key in these situations is finding the right Person of Peace. Who is the gatekeeper to this wider group that brings people together, that everyone trusts, who will give you (and thus the group) their trust? If you haven’t met Jo Saxton yet, she and her husband Chris just moved to Minneapolis. Some of the most experienced MC practitioners in the world!