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[This blog post is written by Doug Paul, the Director of Content for 3DM, based on some discussions we've been having on our team in the last few weeks and and some teachings I've done on it in the past.]

More and more people have heard about the discipling vehicle of Huddle, either through word-of-mouth or reading the book Building a Discipling Culture that we put out two years ago (which, by the way, is on it’s 5th printing and will be available soon.  It’s become so popular we can’t keep them on the shelves). These are two of the more common questions or possible confusion points people hit about Huddles:

1. – What’s the difference between Huddle and a traditional small group?

2. – Am I suggesting that Huddles replace small groups?

First, let’s talk about the differences. The easiest way to highlight this is through describing exactly what a Huddle is.

A Huddle is:

1. – A place for leaders to receive investment, training, imitation and accountability (in other words…discipleship!). Here’s the big thing to note on this one: It      is for current and/or future leaders. The people accepting an invitation into a Huddle should know they are expected to lead something (and maybe they already are, but if they aren’t, the expectation that they will start leading something). This is the principle at work: If you disciple leaders in how to disciple people, everyone in your community will be discipled. Why? Because you’re instilling in your leaders the Great Commission principle that “every disciple disciples others.”

2. – By invitation only. A Huddle is an invitation for 6-12 leaders to regularly receive intentional investment by a discipling leader. But it is      more than that. It’s also an invitation in that person’s life, not just a 90-minute-per-week gathering point. You have access to the life of the      discipling leader outside of just the Huddle time. As we know, the principles of discipleship at work are often better caught than taught.

3. – Something that is reproduced. Rather than adding people to a Huddle, we multiply the discipling culture that is created with the expectation that every leader start their own Huddle at some point. But this isn’t something we spring on them. They should know that by accepting the invitation that this is the expectation. So rather than growing your Huddle to have 10 people instead of the 8 that it started with, we ask that the 8 people you started with all start Huddles of their own. It’s growth by multiplication that eventually leads to exponential growth.

4. – A place for invitation and challenge. The discipling leader, as they invest in the lives of the people in their Huddle, will invite them into their life, their rhythms and have access to their Spiritual capital. But they will also, from time to time, be challenged (gracefully) to live more fully  into the Kingdom when their way of life is different or out-of-step with the things we read about in scripture and the Kingdom.

5. – High commitment. For all the reasons stated above 

And while I realize every church does small groups differently, here are some differences from the way most churches use small groups:

So those are some key differences between them. Notice, however, that I didn’t point to any negatives in small groups. I just defined what they are in juxtaposition to a Huddle and said what they can do and can’t do.

Here’s the thing I hope people understand who are trying to implement Huddles into their existing church structure (or even a church plant): For people who already have small groups, there’s a good chance you’re still going to need small groups.
So don’t go killing them off because you think you’ve found something that really works with the vehicle of a Huddle. Understand what a Huddle is great at and what it does, and what a small group does well and does in your spiritual formation process.

Huddle focuses 100% on leaders. It’s got to be leaders. If you Huddle a leader and disciple them, invest in them, give them an easily transferrable and portable discipling language, teach them how to disciple others, teach them how to calibrate Invitation and Challenge in discipling both individuals and groups…they can do this in any sort of spiritual formation vehicle. You can use small groups, triads, one-on-one mentoring, sunday school, etc. The essential question is do you have a leader who has been trained to disciple people and can they import that into any setting? Investing in a leader through Huddle does that for you. Simply by putting in a leader who knows how to disciple people like Jesus did, it almost instantly makes any discipleship vehicle more effective in discipling people.

Are some vehicles better than others? Of course. But every church community is different and utilizes different vehicles. You must evaluate those vehicles in your church and city context. Every church truly is different. So let’s say the current discipleship vehicle you’re using in your church is small groups.

Here is what we’ve noticed with small groups and Huddles:

Huddles need to be high challenge and very high commitment. Out of the gate that excludes a lot of people in your community who may not be ready for that kind of commitment. Do we want them to be ready? OF COURSE. But we have to live in the reality that people are in different places in their spiritual journey. If you try to simply replace small groups with Huddles, I can almost guarantee a few things will happen:

1. – You will dilute your Huddles. They will become a mixture of leaders and non-leaders; people up for actively spreading the Kingdom, and people who aren’t willing to take that step. When this happens, Huddles become frustrating and/or VERY VERY BORING. Why? Because Huddle is for leaders who are seeking training, investment, discipleship and accountability for the Kingdom work they are leading people into. If it’s just information transfer, the potency is lost. They have to be out there doing something. It usually only takes about 6 months for “boring” to kick in if you’ve diluted your Huddle.

2. – A good chunk of the people in your community will become displaced. They aren’t ready for the commitment of Huddle, but now their small group has been removed. Suddenly, outside of organic relationships, their principle tie to “church” is the Sunday morning service. Well, that’s the exact opposite direction we want things to go, isn’t?! I’m not saying we coddle and pacify lazy consumers, but I’m saying we don’t have to see mass carnage in the transitions we’re making either. I’m saying we need to have an simple and effective spiritual formation pathway for people, regardless of where they are at.

Most of the churches we have seen be very successful at discipling people well and who are missional sending centers for Missional Communities and other missional vehicles tend to have small groups (and/or other discipling vehicles).

Why?

Because they see them as a kind of developmental fishing pond. If every small group is led by someone in a Huddle with all the skills and know-how of discipling people like Jesus, there’s a good chance that, over time, person by person, the people in those small groups will be formed, shaped and see massive breakthrough that would get them to the place where they are starting to live in the Kingdom differently.
In other words, they might be open to Kingdom leadership. Then, people in Huddles looking to disciple future leaders by starting a Huddle of their own have a place to look to. Suddenly, instead of being a “spiritual holding tank”, small groups become a key place in our spiritual formation paths for future leaders development. Small group leaders (all of whom are in a Huddle) are some of the most important leaders in your church; they are spiritually investing in and preparing the leaders of the future.

You could argue that it could be one of the most important places that spiritual formation happens in preparation for mission. However, the other important thing to note is that small groups don’t typically need to meet as often with the churches we are working with because, 1) People are functioning well within Missional Communities, and 2), Many MC’s have small groups meeting within the group itself. But it depends 100% on the leader of that group. If they are in a Huddle, that’s what can happen.

USING HUDDLES TO DISCIPLE PEOPLE OTHER THAN LEADERS

What many people do is take EVERYTHING they might do in a Huddle and start a group with people who are on the fringe; unchurched, de-churched, apathetic, cynical, etc. This works AMAZINGLY well in discipling people AND in seeing people come to faith (in effect with these types of groups, many times you’re discipling someone in the ways of Jesus before they’ve even become Christians yet). This is outstanding. JUST DON’T CALL IT A HUDDLE. Call it anything you want. Call it a small group, LTG group, call it a water bottle…just don’t call it a Huddle.

The reason for this is the language quickly becomes very confusing for people because you’ve said Huddles are for leaders and suddenly there are groups happening with the same name, doing some of the same things, but some of them don’t even have Christians in it and the dynamics and expectations are very different.

Trust me on this one. You’ll see amazing fruit in using all the same principles with people who aren’t leaders when discipling them, just use a different name and change expectations accordingly (because they aren’t expected to lead things from the get-go). You want the language of Huddle and the expectations of what it is to be in one crystal clear for people. Make it as clear as possible by not muddying the waters with groups with the same name doing sightly different variations of similar things. (Hopefully that makes sense.)

To close, here’s a helpful diagram we often use to help explain this visually. For churches that have all of the 4 sociological spaces at work (Public worship service, Missional Communities and Small Groups), it can often look like this:

Resource from  -  Mike Breen

…

The story of St. Thomas’ Church – Sheffield

In 1994 Mike Breen became the Rector of St. Tom’s. Mike developed small groups, groups of people who live out their lives together in a visionary way. Small groups are based around people seeking to reach out to those outside the church rather than just doing ‘churchy’ activities. They also began to meet together in ‘Clusters’ of small groups, which were more like extended family (maybe 30-50 adults) and provided a place of belonging and shared vision within the larger church. Mike also introduced some significant discipleship tools which we now call ‘Lifeshapes’, and fostered a culture of ‘low control, high accountability’, where members of the church are encouraged to come up with their own ideas and sense of vision about how to live out their Christian life, holding each other accountable about how they put this into practice. (….)

On one remarkable Sunday in January 2002, St Thomas’ planted 17 new congregations (called ‘clusters’) in venues all across Sheffield. Some clusters met in homes, others in cinemas, bars, community centres, unused church buildings and even a pub. For a year, the city centre church had no regular weekly gathering, only meeting once a month in a hired venue to worship together. But for most weeks, the church met as clusters across Sheffield, working out what it means to be church without walls, meeting among the different communities of Sheffield. (…)

Since 2004 we have continued to develop our vision to be a church for the city and people of Sheffield. Particularly, we have sought to develop our work in some of the more deprived areas of the city. Children’s work based around ‘Kids Clubs’ have now been established in several areas and also groups of young adults have moved onto some of the more socially-deprived estates to serve and help the people there. This work is really about community transformation, seeking to build well-functioning communities where people feel safe and there is a sense of hope for the future. Our work with addicts and other marginalised people has continued to develop and we currently have a regular Sunday service on Campus called ‘Streetwise’ for this community. All of this work has grown dramatically over the last few years, so that we now have over 1,000 under-18’s meeting each week and more than 50 of these local outreach groups in place.

An extensive network of ministries has grown up around our church, working with students, families, children, youth, underprivileged groups and many others. The ‘Lifeshapes’ tools have also been increasingly used by other churches both in the U.K. and across the world, with thousands of people using them as a way of effectively engaging with the Christian life.

The development of these networks, and of ‘3DMinistries’, the resource and training organisation associated with Lifeshapes, continues to grow at an incredible rate.

MORE INFO

A more detailed story you can find at the blog of Mike Breen – How I chose movement over mega

Both locations of St Thomas Sheffield – Crookes and Philadephia – dubbled in numbers in the last 4-8 eight years.

St Thomas’ Church Crookes, Sheffield

St Thomas’ Church Philadelphia, Sheffield 

Below a video impression of the Philadelphia Campus

Triades zijn een vorm, waarin mensen bij elkaar komen om te groeien in hun geloof, die geweldig stimulerend is. Het vraagt een goede commitment, maar de uitwerking is dan ook verbluffend.

Je kunt er meer over lezen in het boek “Discipelschap met IMPACT” van Greg Ogden uitgegeven door Navigators.

Boekrecensie – Vergadering.nu

Bestellen – Boekwinkel

Ik verwacht dat Missionaire Communities een belangrijke kans bieden aan kerken om meer missionair te worden. Deze principes zijn ontwikkeld in St Thomas Church in Sheffield onder leiding van Mike Breen. Het werd en is de snelst groeiende kerk in de UK. Ook in andere landen zijn hier nu goede ervaringen mee. Er ontstaat nu een beweging onder de  naam 3DM.

3DM ondersteunt wereldwijd deze beweging. In Nederland wordt deze beweging ondersteund door “NEDERLAND ZOEKT“. Ze organiseren ondermeer “Learning communities”  voor kerken en communities, die met deze principes aan de gang willen.

Van 11-14 juni 2012 bezochten 17 leiders uit NL  de conferentie “The Pilgrimage 2012″ van St Thomas in Sheffield. Hieronder een paar impressies.

MEER INFO – Nederland zoekt

17 Dutch leaders visited St Thomas in Sheffield where 3DM started with missional communities.

There were exited about what they discovered …….  in Dutch ;-(

More information – St Thomas Crookes - Church for Students in Sheffield (UK)

Op 9 juni organiseert de EA in samenwerking met EZA en NZR een studiedag met Dr. Chris Wright en Prof. dr. Stefan Paas als sprekers. Wright is internationaal directeur van Langham Partnership International. Hij was ook een van de hoofdsprekers van de Lausanne conferentie in Kaapstad (2010) en voorzitter van het voorbereidende comité.

Stefan Paas heeft ruime ervaring op het missionaire vlak. Hij was onder meer evangelisatieconsulent, missionair opbouwwerker en docent missiologie. Op dit moment is hij universitair docent missiologie aan de Theologische Universiteit Kampen en bijzonder hoogleraar ‘Kerkplanting en kerkvernieuwing in een seculiere context’ aan de VU.

Het thema van de dag is: To be or not to be: HIS Church. (HIS staat voor humble, integer and simple). In zijn lezing zal Wright ingaan op de vraag hoe de Kerk het evangelie geloofwaardig uit kan dragen in een geseculariseerde, postmoderne context en daadwerkelijk missionair kan zijn. Het gaat daarbij om de identiteit van de Kerk. Stefan Paas zal in zijn lezing vanuit praktisch theologisch oogpunt ingaan op het thema. Daarnaast zijn er workshops voor concrete inspiratie die aansluiten bij het thema.

Workshops o.a.:
- Missionaire identiteitsvorming (met Matthijs Vlaardingerbroek)
- Loopbaanadvies Missionair Pionieren (met Stefan Paas en Martin de Jong)
- Images of Leadership (met Bert den Hertog)
- Missionaire Communities (met Rudolf Setz en Jelle Jongsma)

De studiedag is erop gericht om kader van kerken en gemeenten die er naar verlangen om hun missionaire roeping gestalte te geven en zich daarop willen bezinnen, toe te rusten en handvatten te bieden.

De studiedag sluit aan op het jaarlijkse EA-deelnemerscongres op 8 juni waar Chris Wright spreekt over het thema ‘The Mission of Gods People’ (naar zijn boek met de gelijknamige titel).

Locatie: De Passie, Zwarte Woud 211, Utrecht
Kosten: €39.95 incl. lunch, koffie en thee (studenten € 19.95)
Tijd: 9.30 inloop met koffie, 10.00 uur start programma

U kunt zich hier AANMELDEN

The DNA of a healthy church

- Divine Truth – Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength

- Nuturing Relationship – Love your neighbour as yourself

- Apostolic Mission – Go and make disciples of all the nations

More on their website Above Bar Church – Southhampton

Missional Communities are mid-sized groups (normally between 15 and 50 people) which share a common passion to reach a particular area or group of people. They are vibrant communities where God’s love is shared and experienced, with a clear focus on mission.

Missional communities come in three types:

- Networks: growing with others who share our passions. See what we do »

- Neighbourhoods: caring for the places we live in. See where we live »

- Needs: looking out for those in real need. See where we serve »