Missional Community Primer

Missional Community Primer We are excited for the journey God is going to take you and your community on over these next six weeks. This primer was created for two possibilities: 1. For those of you who are new to the Missional Community experience, this simple tool can help you start a Missional Community with a few friends and family members. Even though this missional lifestyle can be challenging, we are confident you will see it’s what you are created for. 2. For those already in a community, this primer can help you refocus and renew your commitments as a group. Whatever your situation, we encourage you to meet weekly for these six weeks, have fun, and work hard!

Weekly Schedule Review 5 min

Briefly go over the notes from the previous session.

Introduction 5 min

Read aloud the introduction for the week.

Conversation 30 min

Facilitator: Work to include everyone in the conversation and keep it moving along. Note Taker: Keep simple notes for review. Email them to those who were not present.

Practice 30 min

Practice what you are learning as a community. If you are an existing missional community, you may need to modify or replace these practices with others that will better serve your situation.

Pray 15 min

Take time to listen to the Holy Spirit. Then respond in prayer.

Action 5 min

Based on your conversations and practices, encourage everyone to choose one or two action steps for the following week.

Understanding Our Identities

Week One

Our identity as a people is founded on who God is and what he has done. Who is God?

What has he done?

Who are we?

Father

Created us in his image and adopts us as his children (Galatians 4v4-7)

Family

Enables us with love and power to be witnesses of the gospel (Acts 1v8)

Missionaries

Came to us as the right image of God and leads us to become the same (Hebrews 1v1-3)

Disciples

Holy Spirit

Jesus the Son

Conversation 30 min

Briefly unpack each of these passages as they relate to each identity. Spend only 10 minutes on each identity. Family: Romans 12v9-15 Missionaries: Colossians 4v2-6 Disciples: John 15v5-8

Practice 30 min

Share brief stories by completing one of the sentences below. Use these stories to better understand what it looks like to live out God’s purposes for us as his people. Family: One of the great things I remember about my own family is... When I was growing up, I remember this one family... Missionaries: I really began to understand how much God loves me when... I invited someone to begin following Jesus by... Disciples: I have seen God turn my life around in this one specific way... The person who has most influenced change for good in my own life is...

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We are... the family of God, on the mission of God, making disciples of Jesus.

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Week Two

The starting point for all significant works of God is prayer. When we pray about the larger community in which we live, work, and play, we step into a conversation with the one who knows and loves that community. When we pray, we partner with the one who is already rescuing and restoring everything around us.

Praying & Listening Conversation 30 min

1. The Apostle Paul tells us to ‘pray about everything’ (Philippians 4v6) and ‘pray without stopping’ (1 Thessalonians 5v17). How can we practice these ideals in our community? 2. What is hindering us from these ideals? 3. How can we overcome those hinderences?

Practice 30 min

1. Ask for the Holy Spirit to speak with everyone as you walk through this practice.

Believing that prayer is an authentic conversation with our own Father, it’s good to let him do some of the talking. We believe that God speaks to us through the scriptures and directly to our hearts and minds by his Spirit.

2. While listening to the Spirit, have everyone write down the first names of at least two or three people that they are particularly burdened for who don’t yet follow Jesus.

For this reason, we encourage you as a community to begin your prayer together by listening. Ask your Father to speak first. Let him provide direction and clarity as you build your community.

3. Move into smaller groups of three or four people and separate. In these smaller groups, have one person share briefly about one of the people from their list. Then pray for that person from their list.

“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’”

Move on to the next person and do the same until everyone has shared and one person from each list has been prayed for.

—Matthew 6v9-13

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Week Three

We believe that through Jesus we have been adopted by our Father in heaven as sons and daughters. “While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, ‘Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.’ He replied to him, ‘Who is my mother, and who are by brothers?’ Pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’” —Matthew 12v46-50

Living as a Family Conversation 30 min

1. What does it mean, tangibly, to have God as our Father? 2. How can we create relatioships with each other that feel like family? 3. In our own histories of family life, which habits (eating, praying, sharing life) have been the most effective for deepening relationships?

Practice 30 min

1. Take 15 minutes to brainstorm the kinds of events that would create and deepen a sense of family in your Missional Community. 2. Decide which of these events you will do in the coming year and how often you will do them. Create a calendar for these events. 3. Identify a person, couple, or small team who is willing to take the lead on the family identity in the coming year.

From the beginning of our story, God has revealed himself as a Father building a family. Though we were separated by sin, his only Son’s life, death, and resurrection has brought us back—no longer belonging by the blood in our veins, but by his very presence in our lives. We are his children and it is within our Father’s family that we give and receive the fullness of God’s love and display the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Because of our adoption, we live in a new family with new family lifestyles and practices. We sum up these practices in three simple actions: eating together, praying for each nother, and sharing our lives and stories.

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Week Four

All of human history is the unfolding story of God the Creator working for the restoration of all that he has created.

Living as Missionaries Conversation 30 min

As missionaries, we want to love, serve, and share the gospel with people who don’t yet follow Jesus. 1. Who are each of us and our households currently loving, serving, and sharing the gospel with? 2. What group of people could we, as a Missional Community, love, serve, and share the gospel with? 3. What are some tangible ways that we, as a community, are uniquely gifted to serve this group of people?

Practice 30 min

1. Take a few minutes to pray for the group of people you identified in your converstion above. Ask God to show you how you can best love and serve them.

From the moment Adam and Eve followed Satan in rejecting God’s governance, God initiated a mission to rescue and restore all that he had made.

2. Write down the ways you will serve this group of people as a community. Be specific.

At the climax of this story of rescue and restoration, God sent his son, Jesus of Nazareth, as the hero and the first of many newly restored humans. Now we can be rescued and restored.

3. Decide how often and on what days you will be working together in these specific ways of loving, serving, and sharing the gospel.

As a result, we follow this hero and King into every area of life and identify ourselves with his mission. We are missionaries.

4. Identify a person, couple, or small team who is willing to take the lead on the missionary identity in the coming year.

We work to fulfill this identity of missionary by loving, serving, and sharing the gospel with family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and classmates. “Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” —John 20v21-22

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Week Five

The Holy Spirit and the scriptures have been given to us in order to lead us in an ever-transforming life as disciples of Jesus. “When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’” —John 8v12 “You are the light of the world... Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” —Matthew 5v14,16 Jesus came to live a life that constantly displayed the goodness of God the Father. He then passed this fantastic purpose for living on to all of his followers: “You are the light of the world.” In 2 Peter 1 the Apostle explains that God’s provision and our own relentless effort must be combined to produce this kind of life. With the strength of the Holy Spirit and the wisdom of the scriptures, we must always be reaching for a life that is looking more and more like Jesus everyday.

12 / Disciples

Living as Disciples Conversation 30 min

Read 2 Peter 1v3-11 aloud to the whole group. 1. What has God provided in order for us to live lives that resemble the life of Jesus? 2. What is our part in building these effective and fruitful lives? 3. How can we work together, as those who love each other, to become these kinds of people?

Practice 30 min

1. Send the group into two seperate rooms as men and women. 2. Identify one brave volunteer in each room to model this disciple-forming practice. 3. Ask the volunteer to provide one answer to this question: “What is one way that your life is not yet in line with the scriptures?” 4. As a group, discuss what truth the volunteer is not yet fully believing that keeps them from living in line with the scriptures. 5. Have the volunteer confess this unbelief and commit to believing instead. 6. As a group, come up with a simple plan of action for the volunteer to practice a life that is in line with the scriptures in the way identified. 7. Have two people in the group pray over this volunteer, that the Holy Spirit would confirm and enable this new belief.

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Week Six

Our Commitments to One Another as a Community We believe that we are created by God and called by Jesus to live out the gospel in community. Because of that, Missional Communities are the primary way we “do church.” In the A Jesus Church Family, we are committed to living out the identities of family, missionaries, and disciples in tangible ways through our weekly routine—ways that get on our calendar and then into our lives as a whole, more than just a time slot one night a week. We believe in this so much that we desire to make commitments to live this way for the next twelve months, understanding and practicing each one of these identities in the following ways... We Are Family. We have been adopted into the family of the Father by Jesus. That means we are brothers and sisters. We’re called to care for, provide for, and protect each other. Here are our commitments as a family: we will eat together, pray for each other, and share our lives formally (once a week or twice a month) and informally throughout each month.

We Are Disciples. We are invited to follow and learn from Jesus in order to increasingly become the people we were created to be. Here are our commitments as disciples: we will meet together (weekly, twice monthly, or once a month) in small groups of the same gender to share what we are learning from the scriptures, to consider how to live out what we are learning, and to hold each other accountable. As a community, We commit to do all this for a period of one year. Our one hope for fulfilling these commitments is the presence of God’s Spirit in us providing us with the love, wisdom, and power necessary to be faithful and fruitful in all that we have here committed to do. We need not swear or make oaths because God will keep us faithful. Therefore we take our “yes” to mean “yes” as we sign our names to these commitments. Signatures:

We Are Missionaries. We are given the Holy Spirit and sent by Jesus to love, serve, and share the gospel with those who don’t yet follow Jesus. Here are our commitments as missionaries: we will love, serve, and share the gospel with... Who: How: Where: When:

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Notes

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