Last week I was away at a conference for most of the week and then was able to fit in a lightning visit to Devon to see our eldest daughter at the weekend so unfortunately missed my blog deadline in case you were wondering why there was no Red Letter day last week.
I’m not really a ‘conference’ person, this is probably a result of the excruciating training conferences I used to attend many moons ago when I was a junior printing assistant at a franchised high.street printers (All your printing needs are just one Kwik Call away – yes that is how we spelt it) I still have shivers when I recall the break out groups to discuss how we can improve customer service after watching Peter Purvis on video act out how bad service is as an expensive farce!
This is clearly my own issue that I need to deal with, as I must say the Baptist Union’s Larger Churches Network Conference was excellent and certainly one I will return to next year. RBC are counted as one of Britain’s largest Baptist Churches in terms of membership and staff size and it was hugely beneficial being able to spend time with fellow church leaders and swap learning points and experiences of how our churches function and flourish. You may be interested to read the linked article Larger Churches Network
The mistake many of us make is implicit in that last sentence, it’s not ‘our’ church, actually it’s ‘His’ Church. Jesus commanded us to go and make disciples and Jesus assured us ‘I will build My Church’
We are to make disciples and through disciple making – He will build a church so strong and powerful that all the powers of evil and darkness will not be able to stand against it. Our job is to make disciples and from good discipleship the church grows. But if our practice is to build church without discipleship then however good, strong and well organised our organisation may be, it may not be church as Jesus intended it.
Rather than get hung up on a definition of church we are encouraged to focus on developing our intentions of discipleship, so since last week in between my visits and meetings I have been thinking through what that could be like at RBC. Here’s where I am getting to…
Many similar sized churches to RBC use clusters or huddles to encourage discipleship (The name is not so important, and as Mairi pointed out we don’t want to be holy huddles!) This is roughly how they work:
I have a group of 4 people that I meet, talk, pray, learn and am accountable with.
As this group becomes established each member of the group is encouraged to form their own ‘cluster’ that follows the same pattern. And so the clusters grow. One church leader told me that this led to much improved communication, better pastoral care and quicker inclusion of new people!
Maybe you’ve been in similar types of groups before or are in one now. Maybe there’s a more Redhillian way to look at this. But I hope you agree that a greater emphasis on discipleship would be hugely beneficial for you, for us and for His church.
As usual I welcome your ideas and comments so please keep them coming in.
The speaker of the conference, Karl Martin, has written an excellent book which I highly recommend to you. Its called ‘Lead’ and it’s one of the most refreshing books on Christian living I have come across for a long time. Why don’t you treat someone to an early Christmas present?
See you on Sunday
Graham
Redhill Letter Day 