By Mark Bergin

Maybe all those contemporary praise and worship songs calling for revival to rain down are onto something more than just catchy choruses. Maybe they’ve tapped into the next new rage in missional strategy. After all, sunshine is no friend to religion. Church attendance dips as summer temperatures rise and Mars Hill is not immune from that inescapable law of American ecclesiology.

Community groups feel the squeeze on a smaller scale. By June, family vacations, summer concerts and double-shot margaritas have often trumped Bible study, leaving some leaders to facilitate discussion in a group the size of a beach volleyball team though usually better dressed.

So it is that many leaders choose to cancel regular meetings for the summer, opting instead for the occasional community group barbeque or sending their people to one of Mars Hill’s weekly outdoor parties scattered throughout the city. That plan seems agreeable enough, but what about sin? People still do that when it’s warm, right? How are leaders to shepherd their mini-flocks apart from regular contact and group prayer?

Here’s a thought: Use that weeknight usually devoted to community group to invite one family or individual over for dinner. Then poke and prod into their lives until you find some junk, smack them in the face with the gospel a few times and send them home with a summer assignment all in humility and love, of course.

Just because community groups are taking the summer off doesn’t mean Christians get to. It’s grow time. And if you’re people resist, pray for rain.

Some of you may be wondering what was up with the tags on our last round of rosters. I have fielded a few questions and responses to the new tags and it seams that some clarification would be helpful. So let me lay out what we are doing, why we are doing it, and possibly the most important. what we are not doing.

What we are doing:
Lets start with what I am talking about. On the latest roster (Census) form there was a section called Tags, with following options:

Men Only
Women Only
Singles-college
Singles- career
married-young
married-seasoned
Kid Friendly
meals

With instruction to tag all that apply. The purpose is to describe your current group not define your current group. By describing the group you are merely saying this is who is here, you are not restricting it to other demographics. You may only check one box if that is all that applies, however most groups will be made up a mix of people from different life stages and will check multiple boxes. So of your group is ” women only”, you would check that box but also check the boxes that describe the women in that group, single, married, ect.

Why we are doing it:
Tags serve a couple of purposes. The first is to help us understand who is in groups and who is not. We can simply look at this information to determine what life stages are engaging in community.
The most significant reason however, is to help us to assimilate new people into groups. If a single mom with kids is looking for a group, the tags help us quickly identify what groups are set up to welcome kids. As well, if an older couple is looking to mentor young single folks they may look for groups that have those particular tags. The reality however is that most people are looking for a community of people feeling the same pressures and having the same interest as themselves. That is a reasonable desire and although we would love to see groups that are made up of folks that span across different life stages, we realize that is not always attainable.

What we are not doing:
We are not attempting to separate or define groups by these tags. If groups naturally develop an affinity identity we are not going spend energy trying to “diversify” that group, however, and our expectation is that any such group would still be open to people of any life stage.

So. please take the time to check the tags that apply to your group so we can better help plug people into the community of Mars Hill Church.

The Problem:

Your Community Group Pastors have been very concerned about a trend we’ve noticed lately. Some newcomers to Mars Hill are being shunned from the very community that we’re trying to call them to. We do sympathize with the pain that many groups feel when they’ve grown beyond a healthy size, and we want to offer help to address that pain. At the same time, it is crucial that amidst the pressure of dealing with such large groups, we do not lose sight of our call to biblical hospitality–loving the stranger.

Word on the street is that some newcomers will contact a Community Group to join, and are told that the group is too full and to look elsewhere. These newcomers become understandably frustrated and feel rejected rather than welcomed, and, at worst, may lose hope of getting plugged into the community altogether.

This is not fitting for God’s missional community. Your pastors are calling you to the attitude of hospitality that God intends his people to show, as an expression of his own heart of compassion, kindness, generosity, and sacrifice.

(more…)