What is it?

Integrated mission and discipleship in shared-life community

Many churches struggle with sustaining a strong decentralised mission focus in which everyone in the church is involved. They tend to rely on courses and preaching to deliver discipleship, hoping something will stick. Small groups are usually inward looking and don’t grow, let alone multiply.

A learning community is all about:

The ways of Jesus in mission, discipleship and community life… bringing your church into a place of fruitfulness, freedom, family identity, and full member engagement.

It is a unique opportunity to engage with inspiring training, personal life changing revelation, and a journey of discovery for your church as it seeks to discover ‘the ways of Jesus’. How did Jesus and the early church gather the crowds, raise ‘all of life’ disciples, build authentic communities of believers, and raise world-changing leaders?

Like all LCs it will be based on 4 events over 18 months (one every 6 months). Each 2 day event will take a church’s leadership team through a series of inputs, exercises, breakouts, group coaching times, planning sessions, and accountability moments. Along-side this the senior leader is coached through the whole process.

The events will happen on a Friday and Saturday. A leadership team of between 3-6 people from a local church comes together with other teams from other churches to learn together. It is a ‘learning community’

The primary themes focus around

• Raising missionary disciples and leaders 
• Growing and multiplying Missional Communities

Some key outcomes will be

• Understanding how to build a discipleship culture where disciples get to make more disciples
• Learning simple, sticky and reproducible tools for mission and discipleship
• Building communities of believers that are truly 3 dimensional (up, in and out)
• Identifying how such a missional community is able to find and develop it’s mission focus
• Discovering tools, practices and vehicles that help build a culture of multiplication
• Enabling church members to find their core gift and calling, so they can make their best contribution to the mission and ministry of their communities
• Finding and equipping the pioneers who are called to plant new missional communities, and reach unreached areas of our towns and cities
• Creating an effective leadership development process and pipeline
• And much, much more!

The 4 gatherings cover the following topics and answer the following questions.

1. Missional culture – how do we help all our members to grow to live as confident missionary disciples where they live, learn, work and play; those who are confident in their story and God’s story?

1. Discipleship culture – how do we train our members to live as disciples - those who become like Christ in his character and competencies, and those who hear what God is saying and obey it as a way of life? And how do we help disciples become disciple-makers?

1. Community culture - How do we nurture authentic communities of missionary disciples who not only genuinely love and serve one another, but also love and serve the neighbourhoods or groups of people they are called to reach?

1. Leadership culture – how do we establish a strong leader-raising culture where everyone is seen as a potential leader, where all discover their God-given gifts, and all become people of influence who invest in others?

Our main speakers will be:

Nic Harding Director of Kairos Connexion

Andy Glover  team Leader of fresh Streams and Leader at HBC Chester 

Who is it for? 

Each event will be a two-day affair, where the leadership team from a local church comes together with teams from other churches to learn together. We recommend that you bring a team of between 3 –6 people although there is no upper limit. As a family of churches we are passionate about investing in the next generation, all teams are encouraged to bring younger leaders with them to join in the journey.

When is it?

There are 4 gatherings  over an 18m period. Between each gathering the senior church leader will receive fortnightly coaching with an experienced coach. This enables  participants to process the experience and to transfer that into practical next steps for their leadership team and church. Coaching provides an opportunity to grow in personal development and leadership skills.

Gathering 1: 15th - 16th October 2021 

Timings for Gathering 1: Friday 15th October 9.30am - 7.30pm including an evening meal for all teams. Saturday 16th October 9.30am - 4.30pm

Gathering 2: 1st - 2nd April 2022 

Gathering 3: October 2022 (TBC)

Gathering 4: April 2023 (TBC)

 ***IMPORTANT INFORMATION***

Tickets

Costs have been kept to a minimum, and will be £200 per church per gathering and £20 per person per gathering

If you are a senior leader please purchase 1 Team Ticket AND 1 Delegate Ticket. 

If you are a team member please purchase 1 Delegate Ticket only.