I’ve been encouraged by several readers to keep posting some of the things we’re learning from this experience of launching The Fulcrum Community. By nature I love to share what I’m learning, so I’m happy to do so.
As I’ve written elsewhere, we’ve been hesitant to move too quickly into launching a weekly large group gathering.
One reason is that we wanted our core group to develop a sense of community and prove that we could be “church” to each other without relying on such a gathering. We also wanted to experiment and see how meeting together only a couple of times a month would shape us. Would it encourage or discourage connections with new people? Could we grow numerically without a regular gathering?
After six months of experimentation we’ve decided to launch weekly large group gatherings on September 12th.
In no particular order, here’s a list of why we decided a weekly large group gathering is a good idea:
1. In this neck of the woods, it gives cultural legitimacy to a community of faith. Even those who have no interest in attending the gathering expect it to be a weekly affair. Stray too far away from the cultural norm and you come across as weird and not in a way that the people of Austin want to keep.
2. It’s harder to keep a group of people focused on a unified vision when they’re only getting together a couple of times a month. Vision leaks and it leaks fast when we’re not being reminded of it regularly.
3. If someone misses a twice-a-month gathering, it means a month will pass before they’re with everyone again. If they miss two in a row, it’s six weeks. Not as big a deal if they’re in a small group that meets weekly, but if they’re not (and not everyone will be), then it is easy for them to lose touch with the community.
4. When the purpose of the home group is not geared toward deep Bible study (and ours are not), then the larger community doesn’t get much exposure to Scripture. Call me old fashioned, but I think most people need to hear the gospel more than twice a month.
5. If you have a gifted teacher or worship leader in the community, it puts his or her gifts in the dock half the time. Since one of my primary gifts is teaching and Patrick is a gifted worship leader, this made less and less sense as we went along. I’m not sure if I should have said this one out loud, but it’s the truth.
6. Most people we’ve encountered aren’t going to come to a home group first. It’s asking a lot of someone to show up at a strange house and hang out with ten people they don’t know for 90 minutes. Extroverts may not mind it so much, but half the population are introverts. A larger group gathering feels safer than a home group setting.
7. Our kids like seeing all their friends at the large group gathering each week. They were always disappointed on our off weeks.
8. It made it a bit harder to invite our friends to come to one of our gatherings. We’d have people ask us, “Are you meeting this week?” It never felt right saying “No, but we’ll meet the next Sunday.” Sometimes it takes multiple invitations before someone shows interest. If they showed interest on a week we weren’t meeting, if felt like a lost opportunity.
9. Most of us weren’t using our off Sundays productively. Instead of using that time for service projects or cultural engagement, some of us were sleeping in and/or staying at home and doing nothing. A few among us, who admit to being addicted to attending church services, would attend gatherings at other churches out of habit or a sense of guilt.
10. I don’t have a tenth reason. I’ve been trying to think of one for two weeks, but I’m done. You’ll have to live with only nine.
Telling Stories, Asking Questions, Learning Lessons
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