If you are a pastor struggling with small groups, we get that.  We’ve wrestled with it too.  How do we effectively engage the Great Commission, to go and make disciples?

The idea of small groups is not very old.  Basically unheard of in the seventies and much of the eighties, the idea of gathering people together in some form other than church began making its way into the Christian cosmos during the early nineties.  This transition was made possible through the work of Ralph Neighbour.  And much of that work centered on the idea of gathering people together for what essentially became Bible studies. Affinity groups, or people who have a lot in common, would gather together with the intention of going through some type curriculum.

And what typically happened was that people would learn the “right” answers to the questions the curriculum provided.  The assumption being that the right information would change people.  And there is valuable insight in these right answers.  But what would often get lost is the real answers that people were wrestling with and having very little wiggle room to deal with what it meant to be a broken human being.

The Alpha curriculum broken new ground by beginning with neighbors and friends, integrating the meal, asking fundamental questions that people have about the Gospel, and allowing people to actually talk about their answers in a safe environment.  But where did people go after Alpha?  Back to the small group.

And as pastors, or even well meaning leaders, attempted to gather people together, what often started strong with lots of participation, would die a slow death as people dwindled in numbers.  Lots of people would get interested in the beginning but over time someone would miss a meeting or two.  Others would get frustrated and stop coming because so and so wasn’t there.  And the inertia and momentum that had flourished in the beginning was lost.

Great leaders would give countless hours to the start and stop process hoping not to succumb to the burnout.  Occasionally a bright spot would emerge…but it was typically the exception, not the rule.  And when a pastor would step into a group, just to participate, people would grow strangely quiet, waiting for him to talk, assuming he knew all the right answers already.

When the Reveal study came out, people began to realize that our systems are not always designed to teach people how to grow to a healthy independence and ultimately interdependence.  And when people were growing they often reached a place that often left them frustrated.  Most were feeding but not learning how to feed themselves.

We believe that it doesn’t have to be this way.  We believe that Jesus modeled a very simple context for the small group, creating a missional context that engaged people in their own restoration and of the world around them.  It wasn’t about learning the right answers but also about participating in something intentional, meaningful, and ultimately designed for growth.

It was a small group of people who wanted to follow Jesus and engage God’s mission in the world.  It was active and living, dealing with real world and present problems.  It has purpose that was larger than the individual motives of the participant’s.  It was deeply rewarding, creating love and joy, peace and patience.  It engaged people in some of the fundamental problems of what it meant to be human and led them to the answer: love and trust.  It invited people to be Jesus because this is what we were designed to be.

If you are a leader or pastor looking for a way to transform your small groups into something intentional, missional and wholistic, we would like to talk with you.  Contact us today for a free digital copy of our leadership manual.

What would it look like to transform the word “church”?

When we started Thrive, it was our desire to discover not just what it meant to participate in a Sunday service but what it meant to be the church.  For many of us, church was something we went to, not something we were. This was the pattern we had grown up in.  Many of us had participated in this exercise for most of our lives.

But what often emerges from that experience is just the opposite of what it intended.  We learn to compartmentalize our relationships.  Sunday is for our church group and Monday is for our work group.  Nights and weekends are for our family group.  In some circumstances, we learn to mix the three through events and programs such as small groups.  But as much as we try, these experiences don’t seem to transform our world.

What our hearts are looking for is a way to integrate what we traditionally did on Sunday into the rest of the week.  Deep down, if we’re really gonna do this thing called following Jesus, we want a way to actively participate in transforming our lives into something that looks like Jesus.

And this isn’t just a small group.  It’s an intentional group of people who are looking to participate in something bigger than just themselves, in something divine.  It’s participating in something that can have a tangible impact on our whole life and the lives of those around us, our neighbors and friends, our coworkers and the strangers we meet on the street.  It’s discovering what it means to be Jesus to people.

This way of living doesn’t just happen.  It’s an intentional process of following Jesus. And Jesus knew that it happens in community, a tribe if you will, of people who are looking for and working towards the same thing.  This missional context is so simple yet so revolutionary.  Jesus got it right.  We needed people to follow with.  We need our tribe.

And over time, as we began sharing life together in our tribes, we discovered that what each of us were really looking for was a way to be the church together, to reflect God to each other.  But we needed a safe space to practice in.  We needed a shame free environment to be broken human beings working towards our own restoration.  We need people around us who can help us get back up when we’ve fallen, to reflect love when we really need it.  We needed time to heal, and to restore, and to practice working through our own brokenness.  We needed to see what was possible in others so we could do the same.  We needed a place to be “real” before we ever got the “right” down.

At Thrive, our desire is to help you discover what it means to be the church, and provide you with a context for doing that.  We’re charting the path so you don’t have to. We’ve developed a process for what it means to participate together in His mission of restoration and reconciliation.  We’ve develop curriculum that walks through the grand story of God in Scripture.  We’ve developed practices, exercises and assignments for stepping into the footsteps of Jesus.  We’ve created leadership materials that help guide the group but allows the Holy Spirit to speak clearly.  We’ve develop processes for engaging conflict resolution, forgiveness and reconciliation.

If you are looking for help in what it means to be the church, we can help.  Contact us today for a free digital copy of our Leadership Manual to begin evaluating what that looks like.

Sometimes the journey of following Jesus is doing the same thing over and over again.

About a year and a half ago I wrote what it means to learn to love.  This step into the footsteps of Jesus has been a deeply important part of my faith.  It has taken it out of the realm of what I call my chalkboard period of faith, or the time in my life when I simply talked about Jesus and into the playing field.

Each step forward towards living out love is a new step.  Being human means being in relationship.  It means interacting with people who can make me laugh but also make me cry.  With relationship means the potential for both joy and pain.  I am grateful for the joy.  As I learn to love I find myself being removed from a perpetual isolation that I can so easily be drawn into.  It is in the relationships that I see the face of my Father.

But I am also learning to be grateful for the pain.  As Tracy so aptly puts, “But it is the difficult people in my life that cause the most growth in me. It is in conflict and hard times that I grow the most in the truths and trust of God.”

Each moment that I encounter the difficult periods, my Father asks me, “Do you want to learn to love again?”  It is this consistent practice that renders something deep in my soul.  It chips away at my defense mechanisms I’ve carefully constructed over the years and replaces them with a renewed sense of wholeness.  And what is interesting is that after I step into love, I am always grateful for the sense of becoming, for the sense of relationship that has been renewed or restored.  The obstacle has been removed and is now behind me.

Each time I practice love, when I essentially surrender to what the Spirit wants to do in me, it gets easier.  Yes, there are moments that make me want to run or fight back with my best judo move, but in calmer times I don’t really want that.  I want to be love.  It just makes sense to me.

Thrive is an intentional missional discipleship process that actively engages God mission of restoration. This mission is historically called Missio Dei or the Mission of God.  It is the idea that God is actively working to restore his creation to wholeness. This wholeness looks like Jesus and is our intended expression as human beings. Thrive groups seek to engage and fulfill this mission by creating an authentic community where each person’s heart can be restored, actively participate in God’s Kingdom activities on earth and learn to live missionally by practicing the restoration of the world around them through the act of love.  We believe that this is what it means to follow Jesus.

When Jesus chose to announce his ministry at the age of thirty, he selected a passage from Isaiah that confirmed what God was doing throughout history.

“The Spirit of the lord God is upon me.  For he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted.  He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord.” (Luke 4:18-19)

His declaration assumes that humanity is broken and in need of restoration.  The fall in the Garden of Eden created a separation between God and His creation.  Without a deeply abiding connection with the Father, humanity was left with an endless search for validation, often referred to as, “the observations” or “curses”.  These observations show up in our lives and ultimately reveal our brokenness as human beings.

Jesus restored our capacity to be in actively relationship with the Father by removing the hindrance.  His death on the cross became the ultimate act of love and validation to restore humanity.   And by restoring this relationship, humanity was given access to the very Spirit of God who transforms the individual from the inside out.

But God’s design for restoration includes an active, intentional relearning process called discipleship, and often referred to as, “the journey”.  Jesus modeled this process in a small community of common people constantly inviting them to mimic love.  The central practice of Jesus was love through the recognition and restoration of dignity. He constantly invited people to see themselves as God saw them, his beloved children.  He also modeled a process of trust with the Father and brought reconciliation through forgiveness.

For those who are engaged in this restoration, it ultimately shows up as an expression of the fruit of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  These fruits become the fullest expression of our intended humanity as designed in the image of God.

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Occasionally we are going to publish excerpts from Thrive Materials. Below is an excerpt from the Thrive Leadership Manual, p12-13.  For a free digital copy, send us an email.

Do you know who your tribe is?  A tribe is that group of people you know you can trust.  It’s that group of people who know your story and love you anyway.  Your tribe is that group of people who have stood by your side as you discover what it means to stare your fears in the face and say, “No more!”

We get asked all the time, “What do you really do?”  The simple answer is, “We help people engage a mission of restoration and reconciliation by following Jesus.”  But a large part of that journey takes place in the context of a tribe, a collective group of people working towards the same mission.  It’s a group of people who have made a significant step in their faith to take Jesus up on his invitation to, “Come follow me.”

At first a tribe is simply a possibility.  We step into the space of trust with a trepidation that says, “I’m willing to give it a shot if you are.”  And suddenly there are twelve people who have gathered together to discover what it means to be human.  But over time people begin to share their story and we realize that no matter the differences in skin color, hair style, education, or beliefs, we are more similar than different.  We’re all broken, hoping for a better life, and wondering if this person named Jesus really can change the world.  Our world.

But over time, as each of us takes a risk to trust, to explore our own humanity, we discover that these people sitting next to us desire the same thing we do: restoration.  We laugh and cry and knod our heads in empathy as each of us explore our stories, our wounds, and our dreams.  We smile as we begin to see that restoration is possible.  Jesus shows up in profound ways that reveal a God more real than we could possible imagine.

An somewhere a long the way we’re struck with the sudden reality that these people sitting next to us are no longer strangers, but fellow travelers with the same intention.  “These people” becomes “my people.”  They have become a group of people who we can trust.  They are our brothers and sisters who have taken the risk to follow Jesus with us.  They’ve made the decision to practice love and trust in an intentional community.  We trust them with our stuff, our garbage, and even our dignity.  And they hold it.

We trust our tribe because together we have worked through the chaos of what it means to be human. We’ve found the space that exists on the other side of an argument or misunderstanding, and the relationship has become stronger because of it.

Most people are looking for a tribe.  We talk to people all the time who want to participate in something that is bigger than where they are currently at.  They like the idea of a group of people who they can trust and are working through their faith in an intentional, yet safe environment.  They want to connect with people who really want to follow Jesus.  For some reason they just don’t make it known.

So how do we find our tribe?

The simple answer is we ask. We find those people we know who want to follow Jesus like we do.  We take the first step and say, “I’m thinking about starting a group that wants to follow Jesus.  Are you interested in joining me?”  You’d be surprised at how people will respond.

And what we have seen is those people who are willing to take the risk, are the ones who end up in a tribe.  It just happens.  They take the risk to discover something better.  They invite people, assuming they want to participate.  And suddenly their creative energy makes it happen.

If you are one of these people, we want to talk to you.