I’ve used this loads of times for small groups in the dream network.

Spend the first half of the evening catching up with each other and discussing a project or initiative you’re all involved in. Then…

-Light a candle.
-Put on some chilled out music.
-Use a compline liturgy (severely pruned down if it’s as long and wordy as the common worship compline).
-When you get to the ‘intercessions’ part allow time for some sort of open prayer for one another and the stuff you’ve discussed.

btw I wasn’t a fan of the daily office at college, but I love this approach.

Excellent talk here by Mike Frost on what it really means to be the “missional” church

(ht the forgotten ways)

This is as simple as it gets, but easily overlooked. Telling our own story, while others listen attentively, and hearing those of others, builds trust and community. So find some ways to hear each other’s stories. For example…

1. Have simple questions like “what would a snapshot of you when you were thirteen show us?”

2. Each time you meet, set aside up to an hour where one member of the group tells their own story. They could bring photos or other props. Then the whole group does some sort of simple creative prayer for that person. Keep this going, either each time you meet, or periodically, until everyone has had their turn. New people may join and therefore have missed some of the process, but they’ll still pick up the level of trust and openness in the group.

Jonny Baker’s recent post highlighted the need for creative resources for small groups.

We’d like to use this site as a place to share ideas in a kind of “gift economy”. So we’re starting a series called “community chest” where we’ll post simple worship or group activities that have worked in cells or small missional communities. Feel free to adapt and change them, and email your own ones in to add to the collection.

One of the most helpful insights into team/cell dynamics is knowing the typical cycle that groups go through. There are various versions, the most popular being ‘forming: storming: norming: peforming’. It certainly helps me to know that ‘storming’ is an important and inevitable part of the process rather than a sign of failure (storming is the honeymoon ends, and we stop become disillusioned, simply because we’re not maintaining the illusion of pretending to be nice to each other all the time.

I’ve also found the Belbin team roles which, I teach on regularly, really useful.

Over the past eighteen months though, I’ve found an even more helpful framework from a gem of a book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. It’s a ‘must read’ for anyone leading a team/cell/missional community.

It’s a management/business book which comes in the form of a simple fictional (and slightly cheesy) story through which he gives a framework for understanding five issues that most often hold teams back. Each ‘dysfunction’ is caused by a failure to address the previous one.

They are
1. Lack of trust: We’re working together but I don’t share anything vulnerable of myself in the process.
2. Lack of conflict: We don’t genuinely say what we think as issues are discussed, feeling free to disagree vigorously.
3. Lack of ownership: Because I didn’t express my reservations, I don’t fully buy into the process and decisions.
4. Lack of accountability: We don’t hold one another accountable to follow through on the things we are each responsible for.
5. Lack of commitment to team results: To use a football analogy (painfully current!) a player finishes a match elated that he scored a hat-trick even though his team lots 4-3.

Lencioni’s writing here and in some of his other books on conflict as something not just good but essential is particularly helpful. (In Death by Meeting for example he reckons that lack of the right sort of conflict is the reason most meetings are boring).

Go buy.

by David Keen

From the end of 2008, construction work will begin in 2 of 3 new estates planned around the edge of Yeovil. These 3 ‘Key Sites’ will each house 1500-2,000 people. Each will be a brand new community, with a primary school and some community facilities. These estates are part of the planned expansion of Yeovil which will add 300 new houses a year to our town over the next 20 years.

At present our churches are concentrated in the centre of the town, and along various main routes. But increasingly, areas of Yeovil are growing up that have no local church. We face a ‘doughnut’ scenario, with Yeovil ringed by a circle of neighbourhoods with no local Christian witness or presence.

Leaders from 9 local churches, representing 6 denominations and streams, have agreed to work together to establish a Christian presence on these estates. We are not talking church buildings, but rather the presence of a community of mission-minded disciples. That, after all, is what the church is supposed to be.

As they move house, many people are open to new friendships and a new approach to life. At the same time, there can be loneliness and a desire for community and a sense of place. All the means that the new estates will be a fruitful place for mission, and will need a Christian presence to help them grow as healthy, stable communities.

Our vision is to see teams/cells of Christians moving in to each estate, as they are built, to be the nucleus of a new Christian community for each new neighbourhood:

-We are looking for mission team members now….
-Who can start training and praying together in 2008…
-Who can start moving in from 2009…..
Who can love their new neighbours, listen to God, and live as disciples in the new estates, embodying the reality of the life of Jesus as a community of normal people.

The ideal figure would be one Christian household per 100 new dwellings – i.e. teams of 6-8 people/households on each estate, which would come together over the 5-6 years the estates are built.

We will be using the ‘Mission Shaped Ministry’ course, which is running in Taunton from February 2007. This will help potential team members think through what is involved, learn together about church planting and culture, and give a period for discerning calling and gifts.

Other resources are coming from the local Methodist circuit, who may be able to put a significant amount of money, generated through the sale of houses and redundant chapels, into buying 2 houses on the estates. These could be used as interim community centres, to house specialist workers, or as community houses.

Each estate will have a new primary school, and we are working to get 2 of these designated as church schools. In the third estate, there will be a community centre. This would mean that there is a decent sized public meeting space on each estate.

We’re fully aware that planting onto estates this small isn’t something that normally happens. Most stories of church plants in new housing areas are into neighbourhoods of 5,000 or so. However, Yeovil isn’t going to grow that quickly, and we need to find a way to reach these medium sized new communities as they arise. With that in mind, we are not setting out to ‘church plant’. The ‘mission cells’ (we’re still not really sure what to call them!) will be given support, resources and training, but will be encouraged to develop naturally in their own setting. We may end up with something looking like a ‘normal’ church, or with something completely different – whatever it is, it must be a form of Christian community, discipleship, worship and mission which is shaped by the context.

Finally, since 2 of the new estates are on Greenfield sites in neighbouring rural benefices, it may be appropriate to use the new Bishops Mission Orders in at least one of these, to give the time and space for the new venture to grow and find its own shape.

Participating Churches
-Anglican (4 parishes/benefices)
-Methodist
-URC
-Yeovil Community Church
-Birchfield Church (Independent Evangelical)

David is leading this exciting initiative as ‘Anglican Deanery missioner’, a half-time post specifically tasked with leading the response to housing development in the area. He would love to hear from anyone who has been involved in similar work, or who might be interested in being part of the team. David blogs at http://davidkeen.blogspot.com.

by Jonny Baker
In small mission communities or cells part of the adventure is finding ways to pray and fuel one another’s faith. But many of the ways of worshipping in a larger congregation simply don’t translate. Hopefully through Anglican Cell UK we can share ideas and resources for prayer, worship and spirituality that do work well in smaller groups.

Conversation, sharing bread and wine round the meal table, listening to a music track, informal prayer, taking part in a simple creative activity or ritual, using liturgies, drawing on the practices of contemplative prayer, watching a video on a tv, and pinching ideas from alternative worship groups are some of the things I’ve found work well. Unless you have a particularly musical group, singing always seems to dive bomb in a small group!

Proost is a small creative company that I set up about ten years ago with two friends. It began as a record label but this summer we gave it a total revamp branching out into publishing short movies and books as well as music. And we have shifted so that the content is all downloadable from a new web site.

There’s lots that could work really well in a small group. The movies are short films of 3-4 minutes. Follow Jesus’ journey into the wilderness with Si Smith’s 40 or Jesus’ journey to the cross with Jon Birch’s manga style Twelve Stations animation. The quality of the artistry is superb and several have an appeal that runs across all ages. The latest addition (we add new content each month) is 25 comic pages telling the Christmas story with accompanying digital advent calendar and cardboard cut out models for each day of advent. These are great fun.

The Pocket Liturgies series capture the liturgies of communities such as Grace in London or Sanctuary in Bath and lots of the prayers and reflections will translate well. Mark Berry in Telford has written one of the books Navigatio, all of which has come out of their small group gatherings round the meal table on a Thursday night.

There is a media player integrated into the proost web site so that you can listen to samples of all music tracks and watch clips from all the movies. The content is now fully downloadable. You can access it and buy it when you see something you like but the simplest way is to subscribe. It’s incredible value at £60 a year which gives you access to all the back catalogue as well as new downloadable content which will be added each month.

When you subscribe, enter the coupon code PRSUBACUK and you will receive a 10% discount!
Visit proost at www.proost.co.uk

Sally Gaze is organising a Norfolk cell training day with Paul Bayes (National Mission and Evangelism advisor) on 26th Jan 08. You can download the flyer and booking form here as a Word doc or contact Sally for more info.

Samson and the Pirate Monks by Nate Larkin is a fascinating and challenging book on a number of levels.

At first glance, it’s yet another book on discipling men. Larkin tells his own story of growing up as a preacher’s kid and then his serious sexual addiction while in church leadership himself. He’s a good story teller, who’s style reminded me of Donald Millar in Blue Like Jazz. He isn’t one of the stories of someone who was found out and “fell” publicly, but rather he gave up ministry as his addiction became more and more desperate. Eventually he found himself at an AA type group, aimed at recovery from sex addiction, where his healing began. In the process he discovered levels of community, spirituality and openness amongst his fellow recovering addicts that had been utterly lacking in his experience of church.

The journey leads to Larkin and others setting up the ‘Samson Society’, which is explicitly Christian and for any men, not just addicts, who are willing to courageously face their own issues together. They seek to become more like Jesus, as they recognise that they tend to be “loners, wanderers, liars, judges and strongmen”.

There are parts of the book and the Samson society which are very tied into American Evangelical culture, but there are others that are challenge and even subvert it.

Three in particular…

1. It deeply questions the assumptions of Western individualism, where my personal “quiet time/devotional” is the basic building block of discipleship.
2. As the Samson society grows and multiplies it goes for a totally decentralised (starfish) form of leadership and control. Along with many others I’ve been fascinated by the starfish idea in recent months and this is the clearest example I’ve come across so far in a Christian movement.
3. Larkin powerfully exposes the temptation for church members to want to see their leader/pastor as their “father” and the ways that many of us collude with that.

I’d very strongly recommend reading the book. Like any book it has its own cultural baggage, but it challenged parts of me that other books didn’t reach. It certainly asks some big questions and offers some powerful insights that the cell movement can benefit from.

Richard White