I spent the morning with Eugene, who heads up our missional communities at Kaleo. One of the challenges we've faced as a church centers on discipling people and seeing leaders emerge to give their life to be on mission. The following idea struck me from our conversation:
We often need structures to overcome our lack of community.
How can any person's life be changed by attending weekly programs? Isn't this just a portion of what Willow Creek 'Revealed' in their failure to create meaningful disciples? And they were THE model for the typical evangelical church. Kaleo is diving headlong deeper into life-on-life mission to San Diego. Recently a sermon was preached where we outlined part of what this may look like: (This is a summary of the message preached 11/4)
Kaleo Community Covenant
We promise to honor one another, be members of one another, live in harmony with one another, build one another up, be like-minded towards one another, accept one another, care for one another, serve one another, bear one another’s burdens, be kind to one another, forgive one another, abound in love towards one another, comfort one another, encourage one another, stir one another up to love and good deeds, confess our sins to one another, be hospitable to one another, greet one another, fellowship with one another, submit to one another while not passing judgment on one another, not provoking one another, not envying one another, not hating one another, not slandering one another, and not bearing grudges against one another.
We do all this because Christ has loved us in each of these ways and this frees our hearts to love one another as He has loved us (John 13:34).
Again, this requires that we re-think a lot of things such as where we live, our patterns of life, how 'ministry' is done. But all of us long for this type of community.
