From a form to an essay
Our small groups are grouping into clusters. So people know who we are, we've been asked to fill in a form with a bit about ourselves. My initial problem with this was the fear that I would have no idea where to start. Having actually filled it out, discovered the real problem is that without a great deal of care, your form will turn into a huge essay. I'm only glad that I haven't gone onto continuation sheets.
Labels: musings
posted by Martin at 23:08
3 Comments:
Small group "clusters" seem to be a very "now" idea. I think it's a great idea too. Our old church in London had them years ago, but dropped them: the then vicar went around the world looking at successful churches and found that none of them had such a model. Shame - I guess it turns out that his original idea was just ahead of its time :)
How do the "clusters" work in your church?
Our vicar found the idea while visiting churches slightly bigger that ours during sabbatical. They aim to give us a group of people that we know better than tends to happen in a larger congregation, and to allow the group to work on mission/community projects that are too big for a small group. I think the target size is about 4 small groups, and that the cluster would do something formerly perhaps monthly. One of our monthly church prayer events is being cut to termly to make room for this, as it is felt that the clusters will take on much of what this does.
This was successful in a trial cluster, so more are being set up, including the one I'm in. We are having a cluster social next week, to get to know the people in our cluster. I expect I'll see how they work "from the inside" over the autumn term, as my cluster gets into the swing of being a cluster. I hope it will work well though.
I also imagine that they could be helpful as a church plants (which seems to be coming out from prayer as part of our vision - as it appears to be from other churches across Leamington), as a cluster could be a plant that remains supported by the parent church until the plant grows large enough to be independent.
I hadn't thought of the link with planting, but that seems a really good idea. You must spread that idea around (if you haven't already).
The idea of meeting monthly was just like it was at my church in London, and a great idea it was too. Apart from anything else, it was an excellent opportunity for worship leaders, teachers etc. to make the step up from leading in a small group to leading in a bigger setting without it being the whole church.
Interestingly, at the church in London, they replaced the "cluster" meetings with a monthly central prayer meeting. But after a couple of years, they came up with the idea of having one in three of these meetings in smaller groups - effectively, the old clusters. You can't keep a good idea down, I guess ;)
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