NLCC Discipleship strategy: Neighborhood Groups.

By Jonathan | June 9, 2016

This is the second blog in a series that explains the disciple-making process for New Lisbon Christian Church.

Our Discipleship ministry is designed to help the church meet and operate under its mission statement, to Love God, Love Others, and Make Disciples. To do that, I want to talk to you about the first program we created to help foster a culture where Disciples making disciples can take place. We call it NeighborhoodGroups .

This is a different style of group that many people may not be used to. Let me start by saying this; typically when Christians meet together in a group setting they assume there will be some sort of Bible Study or curriculum to work through. NeighborhoodGroups break that mold.

Before I explain any further, let me take you back a few years to where I originally got inspiration for what eventually became NeighborhoodGroups. In the winter of 2011/2012 I had the fortunate opportunity of going on a 12 day leadership retreat called “Bootcamp” for new ministers and students recently graduated from Bible College. This Bootcamp was sponsored by the International Conference on Missions and put on by Christ’s Church of the Valley in Phoenix Arizona. All I had to do was pay to get there and every other expense required for my stay was paid for by the church. While there, I got to learn a lot about how a church of 17,000 operates and how they do groups. They have Neighborhood Groups. These groups are broken down by neighborhoods (go figure, right?) in Phoenix and the surrounding areas. They have this giant map that outlines where people are to go if they wish to be in a group. Now, since they are a ginormous church, they can afford to have a minister over each community. The idea (or philosophy) of the Neighborhood group there is that your group is your church, where you study and commune with and Sunday morning is the collection of all the neighborhood groups coming together for worship.

Here is how this impacted my understanding of the group. I really liked the idea of meeting with people where you live and not having to come to the church building every week. I also liked that the neighborhood group was also for shepherding. Those in the group take care of one another’s needs both spiritually, physically, and financially.

Now fast forward a few years to a meeting I had with Mark Lomison, Senior Minister of NLCC. It was just a few weeks before I started on the job and I was on my way to the International Conference on Missions being held in Columbus, Ohio. I shared with him an idea for groups that meet, not at the church, but in the local communities where people live and a timeline for implementing these groups. He thought this was a good idea based on the Church’s past experiences. He then shared with me the success of the small group series NLCC had a couple years prior when people met near their local communities to study The Story, a comprehensive study of the Bible in 31 weeks. Knowing that it had already been tested out and successful at NLCC, we decided to move forward with this style of small group.

Now, the hard part came when trying to figure out how this new style of group would play out in relation to the other ministries that were already in existence, speaking primarily of Sunday School.

I’ve never understood the motivation of many discipleship/groups ministers to cut adult education for the sake of small groups, but you can read more about why I think that here. We are committed to teaching adults the Bible, and we do not want to create a situation where that ministry suffers because of a new group program. So that lead us to the dilemma of what these NeighborhoodGroups ought to do if Sunday School were to remain the primary education platform for all our attenders.

Put that on the side burner for a moment and now let’s move over to a side dish in this NeighborhoodGroups entrée. Around March of 2015, I put together a group of 10 people for the purpose of a focus group to help me understand how effective NLCC’s Discipleship, groups, mission, etc, were. One of the questions asked was to rate the ability of NLCC to reach out to the people of the community where you live. When asked how true this statement was, “I have reached out to my neighbor within the last year about attending church” 50% said either disagree or strongly disagree and 50% said agree. The most telling came from this question, rate on a scale of 1-10 “NLCC’s reach into the community where you live.” 8 out of 10 rated the church’s reach into the local communities as a 5 or lower. One person rated it at a 7, and one person did not answer at all. These results (among others) tell me that the individuals are doing “okay” at reaching to their neighbors (though there was some ambiguity at the time as to what the term neighbor specifically meant). The church, however was not supporting them in their efforts in tangible ways such as curriculum, programs, etc.

Next came a phone call with a groups minister who is a friend of mine at Whitewater Crossings in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has 15+ years of groups experience and I wanted to hear his opinion on our situation. Among many things, we talked about the triangle focus of a church. There is up, in, and out. Generally Church’s are really good at one, okay at another, and not good at the third. NLCC seemed to be good at the up (worshiping God, Bible Study, etc) and it seemed to be okay at the in (fellowship, friendships in the church, etc). Yet the church seemed to lack most in the third area of the triangle, the out (reaching out to the lost through evangelism and service). The fruit from that conversation of NLCC’s unique setting led to an idea, one that would eventually become NeighborhoodGroups as we see them today.

So now how these groups fit into the discipleship strategy of the church:

NeighborhoodGroups are for demonstrating the love of God to those within your sphere of influence. This mission assumes three things: (1) show God’s love – tangible efforts to bring God’s grace and peace to people; (2) Sphere of Influence – those who you have a connection with either neighbors around your home, co-workers, family, and friends; and (3) that this is done in the setting of a group or community of people. Essentially, these groups are for being the front door or initial impressions for the church to the communities that surround New Lisbon. It is where you, as a believer and member of NLCC, can have real lasting impact on your community through fellowship with believers and non-believers, and Kingdom work.

This is the focus of the NeighborhoodGroup, fellowship with believers and non-believers and Kingdom work.

The former is pretty self explanatory, the latter is not – so let me explain. Kingdom work is anything that helps advance God’s Kingdom. Anything from prayer walks in a specific neighborhood to service projects around town or even serving at the local social ministries (think food pantries) are all considered Kingdom work. They can be little acts of love to big projects everyone does together. Basically, you become Jesus to someone and build relationships with them.

We want you to invite people to our church by inviting them to your NeighborhoodGroup. Because they do not have a Bible Study in them, they are not intimidating to new unchurched people. Of course we want them to read the Bible and worship God, we just think that history has shown relationships are more effective at reaching the lost. When they begin to have a desire or yearn for God, they will want to take the next step. Therefore, NeighborhoodGroups are for Seekers and Believers to interact together. The collective group then helps seekers to find their way to Sunday morning worship, and to StartingPoint.

NeighborhoodGroups, in a way, are the front lines of the Church. It is becoming less and less likely to rely solely upon walk-in visitors for church growth, though it does occasionally happen. If we truly ARE the church of Christ in New Lisbon, then we need to BE the church to the people around us. This is the philosophy of a NeighborhoodGroup.

Now that the idea was well established, it became a matter of mapping and coordinating. We started out with 7 groups that meet all around Henry County. If you’d like to see where the groups are meeting, you can see a map of them by clicking this link.

Neighborhoods was the first step in generating this 4-group style of discipleship. At the time, we did not know exactly what all we were going to have in this discipleship strategy. We pray, and continue to do so, that God will help us to be effective leaders who help equip disciples to love God, love others, and make new disciples.

And this leads me to what’s next, PointGroups.