What will happen to our Community Groups?

Most of the barriers to transitioning from a “traditional church” framework to a micro-church network are in our head. Some of us have been in church so long that we have a lot of “unlearning” to do. As one of our Leadership Team likes to say, “We need to ‘unchurch’ the churched!” This is now true for us—we’ve developed our own traditions and procedures at Discovery… and now we’ll have to “unchurch” ourselves!

One of those things is the division between “church” and “community group.” Most of us know that we’re always the church, but that division still takes place—we “go to church” on Sunday and then we “go to Community Group” during the week. In this new network, they become one and the same. Your community group is now your church, and your church is connected with other churches like yours in our network. You and your group don’t “go to church”—you are the church.

For most of us, this will take a little time to overcome mentally. We do have one micro-church that will be a combination of two Community Groups—our men’s group and our women’s group. They will meet together on Sunday, and then “sub-group” during the week—the women will get together, and the guys will get together. As our churches grow, this may become a way to plant new churches. The larger group of 15-20 meets on Sunday, and then they sub-group during the week into groups of 8-10. After a time, the two sub-groups could multiply into two churches.