Remembering the Alamo

From Dave Treat

This week the Willow Group Life team gathered around 40 of the best and brightest ministry leaders in North America to talk about the current state of Group Life. It was a remarkable setting, within a stone's throw of the Alamo compound in San Antonio, TX.

Each year our Group Life Advisory Team gathers for a couple of days to talk about the latest ideas, trends, and best practices available to facilitate spiritual formation through small groups. We chose San Antonio this time and learned some interesting facts about one of the most notable historic sites in the country. It was here in 1836 that fewer than 200 patriots held off more than 6,000 troops led by self-proclaimed Mexican dictator Santa Anna. As Bill Donahue pointed out in one of our sessions, the vast majority of the patriots were volunteers. After thirteen days, nearly all lost their lives. It was a reminder of sacrifices inspired by passion.

Some who attended our gathering paid their own way, their churches lacking the funds to send them. Some are anxious (but not worried) about what personal changes may be in store for them as the economy continues to gyrate. As we met, the Dow dropped below 6800... yet all were optimistic about the future.

One of my favorite moments occurred during a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the current state of Group Life. The team I was facilitating took virtually no time to assign "economic uncertainty" to the square labled "Opportunities." As with the Alamo defenders, it will be volunteers who carry the bulk of the load during upcoming battles. Duties previously accomplished by paid staff will have to be picked up by unpaid volunteers. Structural changes will need to streamline Group Life frameworks to make them more organic and decentralized. We will re-discover some lost arts of disciplemaking and personal leadership development that rely on creativity and frugality. We'll shed some plans and practices that aren't essential to our core ministry... and learn that we didn't need them as much as we thought we did.

Whether you were with us in San Antonio or not, we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Comments

March 8, 2009 09:21 AM #

Thanks to Greg and Bill for letting me crash the party last week. It was a great group of co-laborers for the cause of Christ and the community expression of His Church. I look forward to wrestling through the SWOT implications for present and future group life realities with the team.

I do think there is a cosmos between the concepts of organic, decentralized, creative and disciple-making. Someone once mentioned that "in the organic world over 80% of living organisms die due to random forces, so the odds aren't so great," and yet there is definitely a living, breathing dynamic that needs to be released within community. Economic forces are going to force our cards on decentralized models of both support and leadership structure, yet the need for vigilant leadership will also require centralized focus. Creativity and the freedom to innovate at the group or ministry level is a unique virtue to effectively obtain and really rests upon the successful execution of a balanced organic/decentralized/clearly-led context.

I'm grateful for Willow's willingness to be a transparent partner in the journey of group life and over-arching disciple-making imperatives. It's great to get to learn from shared mistakes, benefit from shared strategies and everything in-between. Adaptability and relevant potency are such fluctuating ideals that can hopefully be more effectively traingulated as we collaborate out of our own in-process insights.

I know from my own context, being 2 years into a groups-based discipleship model, the clarity of identity, driving relationships and outcomes is critical to success. Where we've struggled the most is when we have an unclear vision of what groups will and won't be, how discipleship will be facilitated and towards what "end" things are running towards.

Similar to Willow, we're using short-term courses on campus as a supplement to group life learnings. We're tying that to groups by having group leaders be the primary voices behind the criticality and themes of courses offered. We're in the middle of implementing a new one-on-one discipleship equipping venue to drive back into groups and relationships. It's one of the logical evolutions of realizing certain programming elements are still remnants of a highly centralized model and those often times high excellence platforms can still create lag in group-based development and the intentionally organic replication of disciples. Partially stimulated by REVEAL, partially by the increasing reality that if a congregation is missionally effective in their locale, the long-term success of that congregation will greatly depend upon it's ability to disciple and replicate with agility...and many of the things we were doing were not adequate for a growing need for decentralized learnings towards central truths.

The same goes for leadership development. We're reviving a group-based leadership development process to further ready frugal and unrestricted capacity to hone leadership.

The church has most gloriously prevailed during adverse times and relentless pursuit of an abiding life in Christ. I'm stoked to see how God uses these times to shape and fashion a more lovely Bride, and to see what aspect of that work will be experienced through groups/community. I don't think this worldwide band of ministry volunteers will face the same outcome as the Alamo brigades!

Mike Sharrow