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I meet a lot of people who are so tired of change.  I get that.

Following Jesus is a journey.  It means stepping out of oppression into some form and engaging a more wholistic life.  And initially that feels like change.  But often what I see happen is that people are resistant to growth because they assume it just means more change. They confuse growth with change.

Change is shifting from one thing to another.  It’s the idea that if we just change this or that, life will be different.  And it is different, but it isn’t necessarily better.  We change outfits, or diets, or even churches expecting a different outcome.  The subtle, embedded promise in change is that life will get better.

But often what happens when we institute change on our own, we end up with something different but no better.  We’ve changed the scenery, the information, the process, or even the paradigm, but our lives aren’t really different.  Once the aroma of new wears off, we realize that it’s actually more of the same with different lipstick.

And what often happens is that we learn to assume change is just more of the same.  So we eventually resist it because we’ve been there, done that.  We’re tired of trying…and failing at change. And so when we stumble upon the footsteps of Jesus, we’re so tried of change that we miss the possibility that is before us.

The call to follow Jesus offers us something much different than simply change.  It offers us growth.  And at first this growth looks like change but it is radically different.  We didn’t institute it.  We just surrendered to it.  We yielded to the work of God in our lives and watched it happen, which at first doesn’t make sense.  How can it be this simple.  We’re supposed to earn it, aren’t we?

Change is shifting stuff on the outside.  Growth is shifting stuff on the inside.  It’s becoming more of what we are already designed to be.  And that looks like Jesus. Change requires our own energies.  Growth requires the work of Holy Spirit moving and changing us from the inside.

In many ways growth requires actually doing less than change.  Change requires a lot of activity.  Growth requires very little activity. It only requires the act of trust.  Doing less then is actually doing more.  And the cool part is that we get to be the space where growth happens.  We get to participate in something wildly good.

If you are interested in change that leads to growth, we’d like to invite you to consider following Jesus. Contact us today to get a free digital copy of our leadership manual.

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Jonathan Brink is the Managing Director of Thrive Ministries. He is all about change that leads to growth.

We’re in the process of updating the Leadership Manual to include a section on the content of the teaching, called the Teaching Map.  So over the next couple of weeks I’m going to be posting the teaching summaries of each workbooks to give you an idea of what the teaching sections look like.

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Y1 | Q1 – Come Follow Me: An Orientation To The Journey

1.01 – Missio Dei: This week begins an overview of where the group is doing over the next three years.  It’s called Missio Dei and it means engaging God’s mission of restoration. This week also discusses the gift of participation and why we should participate.

1.02 – Communitas: This week explores the concept of Communitas as a context for the group meetings.  Communitas is a deeper form of authentic community and sets the table for effective mission.

1.03 – Good News: This week we begin to look at the grand narrative in Scripture.  What is the big picture look like and what is God trying to accomplish.

1.04 – Four Relationships: This teaching explores the nature of the mission and what is being restored.  The fall was a loss of relationship and the mission is about restoring them.  There are four that we will specifically look at in this teaching.

1.05 – Love: This teaching explores the nature of love and wholeness and what abundant life looks like.  Love is central to the mission of God.  It is through the truth of His love that we are transformed.

1.06 – Redemption: This teaching explores the role redemption plays in the journey.  Redemption is the process of trading in what we have created and leaving it at the cross.  When we trade it in, we are now able to receive what God has for us.

1.07 – Restoration: This teaching explores the cost of our brokenness and the value of the examined life.  What does it mean to step into restoration and wholeness?  The call to follow is to step into that space of exploration.

1.08 – Reconciliation: This teaching explores the role of reconciliation in the mission.  Reconciliation is central to community and yet is often avoided because of the conflict.  This teaching sheds light on the process groups use to practice reconciliation.

1.09 – Voices: This teaching explores the nature of what it means to listen to God’s voice in our lives and how we can learn to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.  Learning to follow means working past hearing and listening and engaging what His voice calls us to.

1.10 – Two Kingdoms: The teaching looks at the two opposing kingdoms. God kingdom is primarily defined by love and restores us.  The enemy’s kingdom is defined by fear and control.  We are born into the enemy’s kingdom.  Following means coming over to the winning side.

1.11 – Enemy: This teaching explores the presence of the enemy; it’s history, how it works and how we destroy its work in our lives.  The primary work of the enemy is through lies.  Restoration comes from removing those lies.

The other day my tribe had a very deep conversation about how valuable our experience together has been after two years together.  We were recognizing that we had reached a space of shared trust that was unique in our lives.  And I commented to the group that this authentic community we were experiencing was earned.  It came BECAUSE we had taken the risk to journey together.  It came because we had done the hard work of relationship.  The valuable was made possible because we were willing to face our fears.  We had discovered that those fears did not define us.  We had discovered that authentic community really was possible.

And this moment really stood out to me.  It was the recognition that authentic community is not cheap.  It must be earned.  If it were easy, everyone would experience it.  But it’s not easy.  It’s hard.  It means facing our fears in relationships and working through our salvation in a meaningful way.

And the hardest part in sharing with people about Thrive is that this awareness of authentic community cannot be given.  It can be shared but it must be earned. And as much as I want to just give this to people, I can’t.  I can’t reach in, pull it out and place it in other people.  It is an experience that must be worked for.

And then I came across this short video by author and pastor Shane Hipps explores the four necessary ingredients for authentic community.

Shared History: It helps establish a sense of identity and belonging.

Permanence: Something fixed or consistent.  It is how you get shared history.

Proximity: You have to be with one another over time to create a meaningful connections.

Shared Imagination of the Future: A sense of we’re all going in the same direction.

And I realized that these were keys ingredients in the context of Thrive.  Each was a critical part of what we were doing together in our tribes.  We didn’t invent any of these ingredients.  We had just discovered them as part of what we were doing.

Shared history only comes through time and trust.  We needed a space of sharing our histories, our lives, our struggles in a space of honesty. We needed a space in our lives to deal with what is really happening in our world and in our heart.  And unless we actually stepped into a space of trust and shared our stories, we missed one of the key ingredients.

Permanence comes through having something consistent.  We use a protocol that helps foster dialog about our own restoration.  We stick with God’s narrative as a story of what God has already done and what we get to participate in.  This consistency creates a trust in the process because we know what we’re getting into on a regular basis.

Proximity means gathering together consistently.  We have to be together in the same room on a regular basis.  We have to be in the same room to hear the stories and experience each other’s work, struggles, joys and restoration.  When we don’t show up we miss those stories that just might have been what we needed to hear.

Shared Imagination for us in Thrive groups is engaging God’s mission of restoration and reconciliation. It means following in the footsteps of Jesus and participating in what God is already doing.  Many call this communitas, or community in mission together.  We are in essence designed to look like Jesus.

Hipps commented that a Shared Imagination of the Future was the hardest of the four.  I wrestle with that in some respects because our future is found in Jesus.  The image is there.  But gaining an understanding of what that truly looks like in our lives from experience is the hardest, because it first means going through our brokenness.  It means stepping out of our comfort zones and protective mechanisms.  And we hate doing that.

But I would offer that the journey together is worth it.

If you are looking to create this type of space, we can help.  Contact us today to get a free digital copy of our leadership manual.

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Jonathan Brink is the Managing Director of Thrive Ministries.  He digs exploring what Jesus is doing in today’s world and reveling in that.

Lately I’ve been getting the same question.  What’s Thrive really about?

It’s really a great question because pastors and leaders typically want to know if we’re just like everything else they have seen.  Are we simply a Bible study for small groups?  And the answer is no.  We’re actually very different than what people are used to.  Our primary mission is not giving people the right answers as much as it is in helping them discover what it means to follow Jesus so they can discover the right person.  So then what is a Thrive group?  What do you do that makes you different?

And the answer is love and trust.

Central to the story in Scripture is this idea that the footsteps of following Jesus leads to a very different way of being human, of transformation at the very basic level.  And that way of being human is summed up in the two practices of love and trust. Jesus modeled a very missional way of life, of engaging something bigger than ourselves.  He invited people to participate in what God was already doing, the Missio Dei.

As we begin to follow Jesus, He immediately leads us back to the Father, which addresses the fundamental disconnect that happened in the Garden.  And as we embrace this relationship, he empowers us with the Holy Spirit, who then transformed us inwardly to become like Jesus.  This being loved process allows us to love.

But how often do we have a space to work out the tension inherent in the restoration process?  How often do we really have a space to work out our questions, and doubts and wounds that cripple even the best of us.  Where do we go to find healing?

So Thrive groups are about working out love and trust in a Tribe.  It’s about working out the junk that gets in the way of our own restoration, in an authentic community that is willing to be love in the process. And not the sticky sweet kind of love that rescues someone from facing the chaos, but the kind that walks through the chaos together, so we can reach the other side.  It’s engaging God’s mission of restoration together in communitas, or community in mission.  And a long the way we discover that this is how Jesus did it.  Three years together in mission.  It was a natural leadership development process through experience.

And when the three years were over, each tribe was ready to go outward and lead others in their own restoration.  They had practiced love and trust in a very trust setting.  They had practiced engaging mission.  And they went out not because they had to, but because they saw that their own restoration was intimately tied to helping others through their own restoration.

So that’s what makes us different.

If you are looking to create this type of space, we can help.  Contact us today to get a free digital copy of our leadership manual.

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Jonathan Brink is the Managing Director of Thrive Ministries.  He lives in Folsom, Ca with his wife and three kids.  He loves Sharks hockey, Peets coffee and good sushi.