Community, Pt. 2: Witness
Take Communion
Leader: Begin your gathering by taking communion together, whether as a full meal together or some version of the bread and the cup before or after dinner. If you don’t already have a Communion plan, have someone read these words from David in Psalm 133:
How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robe.
It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.
Review the Last Practice
During the last Community Guide, we talked about setting aside intentional time to pray for our Community, asking God to guide and guard us as we work through this series together. Before we talk about tonight’s Practice, let’s take a moment to talk about how this went.
If you spent time praying for our Community, what did you ask God for? If not, what would you want to ask God for?
Read This Overview Aloud Together
Throughout history, the rhythms of prayer and justice have functioned as a sort of inhaling and exhaling for the church: we inhale the presence and life of God through prayer and then we exhale justice, being pushed out of our living rooms and onto the streets. And in this process, as we become more like Jesus, we begin to see God’s presence in our city, especially among places, spaces, and people we once considered too dark or broken. Over time, we become our prayers.
One of the primary rhythms for a Bridgetown Community is to be sent by the Spirit to serve Portland in the same way that Jesus did his city: by becoming proximate to the poor. So one of our Community’s goals is to practice a monthly rhythm of mission. But we don’t make ourselves proximate to those on the margins in order to feel good about ourselves. Instead, with Jesus as our guide, we aim for kinship: for the kind of relationships in which time and space eventually creates family. We want to invite people to become part of our family as we are invited to become part of theirs.
Tonight, we are going to spend time exploring how our Community’s current rhythm and Practice of mission has been going, or working to build one if we don’t yet have one.
Do This Practice Tonight
Whether or not we have a regular rhythm of mission or justice, our goal tonight is to work towards establishing one that is intentional, simple, and repeatable. Since the goal is to have a monthly expression of mission that makes us proximate to those on the margins in our city, we will need to have sustainable rhythms in place to make that happen. But, since there are many ways in which a Community can practice mission, there is freedom in what we pick together. Before we get to the brainstorming, let’s take a moment to talk about where we’re currently at.
To begin our conversation, let’s discuss our Community’s current rhythm of mission.
What does everyone understand our Community's mission rhythm to be? Do we have one?
If we have one, how does everyone feel like it is going? What is going well and what could use some tinkering?
Leader: Pause for people to explore your Community’s current rhythm.
The following part of the Guide is aimed at helping our Community establish or shore up our Mission Practice through 3 discussion prompts. Each provides a few of the most common options Bridgetown Communities choose. So we’ll spend some time with each prompt and the options, making sure not to move on until we have returned to answer each question.
1. What matters to us? When we consider our monthly mission, each of us carries a number of values and desires. While we won’t be able to fulfill each of them, it is important to take some time to name them. In Communities, some of the most common are:
Including kids: Most Communities have kids in them. If ours is one of them, do the parents feel a desire to find a mission in which their kids can participate?
Availability: Most of us live pretty full lives, so it’s common to have a desire for our Community’s mission to happen on particular days or times (e.g. the same night our Community meets, Saturdays, etc.)
Max participation: Another high value is to pick a mission that works for the majority of people in a Community.
A particular focus: Many Communities or people in Communities feel a strong inclination to serve a particular population (e.g. kids in foster care, refugee families, incarcerated adults, the houseless and homeless, etc.). Are there any such hopes or desires that any of us are carrying?
What values are we holding as individuals or a Community that will be helpful to guide our conversation tonight?
2. What are our limitations? Another helpful category to guide our conversation is one of resources. When we consider engaging a mission, it’s important to be honest about what we really can offer together. As we go through the following list of common limitations, let’s engage in conversation about how we want to address each limitation.
Time: One of the most common roadblocks a Community has in picking a mission is their collective availability. With so much going on in our lives, we need to find a balance between what we want to do and what we can do. If we haven’t already, let’s talk about everyone’s monthly availability and come to a consensus. It’s ok if not everyone is able to attend every monthly mission. It’s better to have a mission that most people participate in than never picking one because we can’t find one that works for everyone.
Money: Another common hurdle is money. Some missions may involve financial contribution (e.g. getting background checks to work with kids in foster care, helping support a vulnerable family, etc.), so let’s keep this in mind as we explore mission options.
Group size: Some organizations can only host groups below a certain size. If there is a value for our whole Community to engage at the same time, this is good to keep in mind as we look for a mission.
Commitment: A number of mission opportunities require a time frame commitment (e.g. 6 months, a year, etc.). So it’s good to know whether or not we’re able and willing to commit for an extended period of time, or if we’d prefer to find a mission that doesn’t require commitment.
As we continue our conversation, what limitations should we keep in mind?
3. Who can coordinate? It is crucial to have one or two people coordinating our Community’s mission. Usually, these are people who have a strong desire to serve a particular population. The role is to be the liaison between the Community and the organization or area of service. These individuals would help coordinate details like making sure people know when and where to be each night we serve. The vision is for these people to not be the Community Leader, as they are already coordinating so much
Does anyone feel interested in stepping into this role? Let’s take some time to talk through this. The truth is, without someone keeping this at the front of our mind, we’re not likely to follow through.
Finally, with all of this in mind, let’s take a moment to look at a few of the current options available to serve with organizations that Bridgetown currently partners with. We don’t have to do one of these, but they’re great places to keep the conversation going.
Before we move on, can someone recap what we talked about and what our next steps are?
Note: If we weren’t able to land on something this week, let’s commit to talking about it again next week. And if our Community hasn’t ever served before, rather than trying to discern, just pick something to try for 6 months! Some great first options might be to serve with The Feast (a monthly meal hosted for our neighbors before the 5 PM gathering at Bridgetown’s downtown gathering space), Night Strike (a weekly opportunity to serve the houseless and homeless population every Thursday evening under the Burnside Bridge), or The Neighborhood (wrapping around and supporting a foster family in our city for 6 months).
Read The Practice for the Week Ahead
Before we close in prayer, let’s talk about the Practice for the week ahead. We would be missing something massive if we don’t talk about prayer. We believe that more than just good thoughts or feelings, prayer changes reality and moves God’s hand to action. So as we move closer to our neighbors through mission, let’s also commit to holding them before God in prayer. Let’s ask that God would move our hearts to compassion and action, that he would raise up people of God in our church and city to do justice, that he would dismantle unjust systems, and that we would be the kinds of people to pursue healing, kinship relationships with those on the margins of our city.
Finally, with the goal of helping families at Bridgetown engage the core Practices in their homes, similar to how we do in Community, there will be one Family Guide for each teaching series that connects to a Practice we are engaging together in Community. These Guides are written to be conversational and to include all members of the family. The first Family Guide will be on what we discussed tonight: Witness. That Guide can be found by clicking the button below or on the teaching page for this series.
End in Prayer
Leader: Close in prayer, asking God to send you all out to be a people of love to a city in need. Ask that people would come to know God’s love as your Community serves them, and that your service would be aimed towards kinship.