Tuesday, April 18, 2006
There is no baking powder in the Kingdom of God
Prototype
I often hear God most clearly in my waking thoughts. Maybe this is what people in the bible meant when they report that God spoke to them through a dream.
This morning, as clear as a bell I knew that we need to run a “prototype” cell with a few people who really have the vision and values of the Kingdom of God. This little group of radicals will work out how to do nothing except what the Father tells us to do (John 5). We will seek first the Kingdom of God and not worry about the church buildings or be distracted by the church’s internal squabbles.
When we feel confident that we know what it feels like to be dead to self and alive to Christ we will invite a few others to join us and become two or three cells. In the new cells disciple making will take place. The new members will also need to discover what it feels like to be totally 100% dedicated to following Jesus. If we don’t get this we will never see multiplication. There are no passengers in the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God is like the yeast working its way through the dough. It starts small. At first it is slow. At the second and third stages it will be slow. But if the DNA is right it will multiply. There is no instant way to leaven the lump. There is no baking powder in the Kingdom of God.
Values are caught, not taught.
About 3 years ago I tried retraining all my cell leaders. We closed down the cell groups. We held meetings all together in the church building for about 6 weeks to go over the values together. We called this “Shining Brighter” and it was attended by about 35 people. I was a bit disappointed at the time that some of the potential cell leaders did not attend. In the Autumn while the cells were not running I led two cell groups, each with 10 members. We worked our way through the Cell Leader Training booklet produced by Cell UK.
By Christmas when we finished the training I was not convinced that we had the values, so I kept the two groups going and between Christmas and Easter we went through the “Breakthrough Course” which is based on Neil Anderson’s Breaking Through to Freedom in Christ. The idea of this was that it could be used for disciple making as it teaches things like: how to believe the truth; how to forgive; how to resist temptation; how to deal with anger etc.
Easter arrived and we re-launched the cell groups. But I knew even then that we were not ready. I knew that we did not really have the values fully embedded. So here we are two years later. The cells have mutated. We have not multiplied.
So why did the retraining not work?
This is not well thought through, but here goes:
1) The groups were a bit too large and so interaction was limited
2) Some people were present because they felt obliged to be there because the vicar said so
3) We were more focussed on the content of the training than developing genuine community
4) Because the group was expected to last for just 10 weeks some folk only saw it as a meeting and did not do the work necessary to become a community
5) I was also running an Alpha course on another evening of the week and preaching etc etc
6) As cell leader of two large cells I did not do a good job of pastoring the members in between meetings.
7) I did not have an assistant since everyone in the two cells were going to be either a leader or an assistant.
8) I did not spot the failure of the groups to form genuine community until too late
9) I became depressed when I realised the re-training was not working and that we were going to re-launch cells without the values fully embedded
10) Bill Beckham said “never try to change a structure until you have changed the value” but I was too impatient. He was right. And that, dear friends, is why we are still in The Big Red Circle. But soon, I am not sure quite when, I will be looking for recruits from within The Big Red Circle to join the prototype cell. Maybe this time we will get it.
I often hear God most clearly in my waking thoughts. Maybe this is what people in the bible meant when they report that God spoke to them through a dream.
This morning, as clear as a bell I knew that we need to run a “prototype” cell with a few people who really have the vision and values of the Kingdom of God. This little group of radicals will work out how to do nothing except what the Father tells us to do (John 5). We will seek first the Kingdom of God and not worry about the church buildings or be distracted by the church’s internal squabbles.
When we feel confident that we know what it feels like to be dead to self and alive to Christ we will invite a few others to join us and become two or three cells. In the new cells disciple making will take place. The new members will also need to discover what it feels like to be totally 100% dedicated to following Jesus. If we don’t get this we will never see multiplication. There are no passengers in the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God is like the yeast working its way through the dough. It starts small. At first it is slow. At the second and third stages it will be slow. But if the DNA is right it will multiply. There is no instant way to leaven the lump. There is no baking powder in the Kingdom of God.
Values are caught, not taught.
About 3 years ago I tried retraining all my cell leaders. We closed down the cell groups. We held meetings all together in the church building for about 6 weeks to go over the values together. We called this “Shining Brighter” and it was attended by about 35 people. I was a bit disappointed at the time that some of the potential cell leaders did not attend. In the Autumn while the cells were not running I led two cell groups, each with 10 members. We worked our way through the Cell Leader Training booklet produced by Cell UK.
By Christmas when we finished the training I was not convinced that we had the values, so I kept the two groups going and between Christmas and Easter we went through the “Breakthrough Course” which is based on Neil Anderson’s Breaking Through to Freedom in Christ. The idea of this was that it could be used for disciple making as it teaches things like: how to believe the truth; how to forgive; how to resist temptation; how to deal with anger etc.
Easter arrived and we re-launched the cell groups. But I knew even then that we were not ready. I knew that we did not really have the values fully embedded. So here we are two years later. The cells have mutated. We have not multiplied.
So why did the retraining not work?
This is not well thought through, but here goes:
1) The groups were a bit too large and so interaction was limited
2) Some people were present because they felt obliged to be there because the vicar said so
3) We were more focussed on the content of the training than developing genuine community
4) Because the group was expected to last for just 10 weeks some folk only saw it as a meeting and did not do the work necessary to become a community
5) I was also running an Alpha course on another evening of the week and preaching etc etc
6) As cell leader of two large cells I did not do a good job of pastoring the members in between meetings.
7) I did not have an assistant since everyone in the two cells were going to be either a leader or an assistant.
8) I did not spot the failure of the groups to form genuine community until too late
9) I became depressed when I realised the re-training was not working and that we were going to re-launch cells without the values fully embedded
10) Bill Beckham said “never try to change a structure until you have changed the value” but I was too impatient. He was right. And that, dear friends, is why we are still in The Big Red Circle. But soon, I am not sure quite when, I will be looking for recruits from within The Big Red Circle to join the prototype cell. Maybe this time we will get it.
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Well, we didn't do a prototype as this would have been a big discouragement to the existing cell groups. Instead we have replaced cell leaders meetings with "Huddles" using a model that we learned from St. Thomas in Sheffield. The idea is to sharpen up the leaders character and disciple making skills.
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