Matt Carter is pastor at The Austin Stone Community Church in Austin, TX.  He led a main session at the RightNow Conference.

Transitioning “Small Group” to “Missional Community”

The more and more people get on mission, what you have to be careful of is that your people will love their mission more than they love their Savior.  Because the more this happens, the more you’ll find Jesus leaving your mission.

Don’t love your calling for Christ Jesus more than you calling to Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 4:11

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers

God gave the saints to do the work of the ministry.  What causes the body of Christ to grow?

The American Church is declining exponentially.  What causes the body to grow?

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. – Ephesians 4:16

When each part is working properly.

The American church isn’t growing because it’s built off of an attractional model churches: Sunday is the starting point, as opposed to a home based/cell based model, starting church at that level.

We shouldn’t necessarily chuck the attractional model of the church.  Because that model still has a place, where these larger attractional churches can do some things that smaller churches can’t do.

But the attractional model alone is incomplete, and isn’t the answer to turning the tide of our church away from lostness in our country.

What prompted Matt to think that the attracional model alone not work?

1. The track record doesn’t show it.

Bob Roberts poses this question:

What if, in an attempt to see the United States come to Christ, that over the next 10 years, we were going to start 1000 megachurches?  Would we reach America?  No.  We could not.  Because that’s what we just did over the last 10 years.  We in America have launched that many megachurches over the last 10 years.

2. A growing sense of restlessness in the American church.  18-30 year olds aren’t ok sitting on the sidelines of ministry, especially if they’re walking with Jesus.  They’re hard-wired to be a part of something bigger than themselves.  They want to be a part of world-change.  For far too long, the church has placed the burden for mission on clergy, and there’s a growing tension from the everyday person in the pews, wondering why the church in Acts is so different than the American church.

3. Austin Stone is at a crossroads, because they’ve outgrown their current location.  They could continue launching more sites and build bigger buildings.  But these strategies do not change the city of Austin.  What if, instead of taking the extra effort to grow an additional 3,000 people…what if we equipped and trained those additional 3,000 people to go out and live on mission?  Everything changes in the city of Austin.  Jesus would’ve made a horrible American megachurch pastor, because he purposefully ran people off.  He instead took 12 ordinary guys, poured his life into theirs, and released them to go.  And these 12 men changed the world.

What do we do from here?

Is it possible to do both?  To attract people by the hundreds and thousands…and release them by the hundreds and thousands?  Yes.

Through missional communities.

The Transition: 3 ways

1. They changed the definition of success for their small groups.  Here’s success now: is the group gathering, having Bible study, meeting each other’s needs…and has the group moved beyond just gathering?  Have they found a pocket of lostness in the community, and found a way to engage that lostness?  Have they lost community?  No, because there’s nothing on earth that fosters community better than mission.  When we aimed for “community” alone, we rarely got community.  When we aimed at mission, we got mission and community.

2. They changed how they trained their leaders.  They began to teach them how to think and live like missionaries.

3. They’ve created a system that encourages people to teach the Bibles themselves.  So that they can leave The Austin Stone and, as a group, go to another country, and teach the Word there.

4. They have raised the bar on what these groups can do.  The people in your church can do more than you would ever dream they could do.  Do you truly believe that?

People are hungry to be used by God.

Challenge them.

Train them.

Release them.