[0:00]
This audio was recorded during a one-day workshop title pursuing a mission by style through gospel communities. Yeah, so, yeah, very happy to take any questions that people might have. How big is small? Yeah, so we plant, oh sorry, so the question was how big is a small gospel community?

[0:30]
When we plant them, we don't like them to be any bigger than about 15 adults and maybe up to that many kids as well. So that's roughly the size that we're looking at. And then they start growing. And the largest one that we had last year, so we've just gone through the stage of planting another one this year because they were just getting way too big. And the one that was the biggest last year was.

[1:00]
actually, I think, starting to push about 20 adults. And there was about 10 kids. So, yeah, if you can imagine that's like a small church plant, trying to fit into someone's house. That was really… And the thing is, once you start to get to that size, you can see it stops. We were starting to lose the life-sharing ability. So that's kind of when you know it's time to multiply. But you start to go, actually, this is starting to feel like a little church plan to get.

[1:30]
again and there's getting too hard for everyone to know each other. It's been an interesting thing besides them because we've kind of wrestled with, well, do you then make them smaller than that? But the problem is if you go too small, all it takes is for one family to be away on holidays or snowed under with work or whatever. And then you don't have enough people to keep things sticking over. So you might have a family that goes off for a month around a street.

[2:00]
and then suddenly you're left with just two couples and it's kind of hard to keep all of the things going. So we've worked out that if you start at around 15 and kind of grow them up from there and then once it starts to feel a bit too big, that's when you kind of look at planting a new one. Yeah. When you're marked on this path, was it a fork in the road or a gradual curve? And if a fork in the road, how many people chose the other fork? The other fork, yeah. So it was interesting for us.

[2:30]
So the question was, can you hear me, and I realize actually half the time I'm holding that over there. So can you hear me? Yeah, I'll just put it down because it's just becoming a gesture in one. You can tell I don't normally use one of those. Yeah, so I want to talk to that. So the question was, when we went down this path, was it a fork in the road or a gradual curve? Maybe a more of a sharp angle.

[3:00]
I think. And the reason is I'm coming from a fairly unique situation where when some of these started, it started as a church plant from Kingston Reform Church in Hobart. That's the biggest Christian Reformed Church in Tasmania. And there was this new area of Kingston opening up, a lot of subdivisions, a lot of young families moving in. They were starting to get pretty full. They said, right, we want to do a church plant. They had a whole team of people that were up for that. And they wanted to do

[3:30]
something different, but they just didn't know what. And so they were looking around for someone that could come in and go, well, yeah, let's try this. And that someone happened to be me. So I came in with kind of a blank slate in some ways. I say in some ways because everyone that was part of that initial team had their own experiences of church and ideas about what church should be like. So it's not like, obviously,

[4:00]
heard of some people plant churches like this where they spend a long time before the church plant, getting everyone ready. And so when they plan everyone's on the same page, and they get the ground running and they go in that direction. So we kind of had that, but I actually had to spend a lot of time teaching, explaining the theology behind it and creating a culture where we could get to this. So actually it really has taken I think about five years to get us actually functioning

[4:31]
this way. And we've sort of just been gradually changing the culture. Each year we've sort of added a different element. So when it started, people only knew the standard small group type thing. And so then the next year, I think we introduced just the idea that we wanted it to be more than that. And just tore heaps on the theology as to why we wanted to do it. The year after that, we started to go, okay, what we want is for you now to start meeting at different times and including kids. So that was the next step.

[5:01]
The year after that was the introducing the mission thing and that's where we started just really with the big things. I'm just going, look, don't panic too much about the week in week out. Just try and do a few things this year as a community that is mission oriented. That was the next thing. The year, sorry, the year after that we started with the introducing God type courses and I think we're still going. I think that next year we kind of want to get more kind of one to one-e type stuff happening so that'll probably be the next step.

[5:33]
But, yeah, so it's kind of yeah, it's quite as it's more like a curve, isn't it? Did it make you ever go around with it? Not everyone, no. So we have lost, let me just think. There's probably been, I think, over the whole time, four families from that original crew that have left because they've gone, actually this just isn't for us and we're not up for it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if we started…

[6:04]
Yeah, so if we started with that, we just started the original crew, maybe, yeah, maybe close to, yeah, yeah. The only reason doesn't feel like that's because obviously we've gained a lot more, so it feels small. And that's been quite gradual, so we've had one just leave recently this year that's just kind of, they've been giving it a go, but just have gone actually at the end of the day. that's just not for us. Yeah, and that's okay. Like we're blessed in Kingston, we've got lots of good churches that teach the Bible

[6:35]
and they've gone to another good church and they do things differently. But that's just two to them better. Yeah. Yeah. How do you, can you, and how do you maintain and grow relationships between the gospel community? Yeah, okay, so how do you, how do you grow the relationships and maintain between gospel communities? And do you do mission together? As a big whole church type thing, yes.

[7:05]
And do we do mission together as a big whole church. Yeah, we do. So we, I guess we, what we found is that a couple of things happen. So we still meet everyone comes together every Sunday for what looks like any kind of contemporary evangelical church planty sort of service. So that just looks the same. So, everyone's together there and we found that people still relate much

[7:36]
the way they do like I would expect at any of your churches as well. So it's not like people have just retreated and got all cleaky in their gospel communities. In fact, if anything I think the opposite happens and that's because we work so hard at making gospel communities diverse, it's very hard for them to be cliques. So people don't find their gospel community. I think a lot of people genuinely find gospel community to be quite hard work because I remember, sorry,

[8:08]
a church I was in previously, we just sort of had groups that anyone and everyone, so we had young mum's group and we had a student group and we had kids group for just about every age. We had a men's group. We had a 20s and 30s group. We had just so many groups. And they were quite easy groups to be a part of because you'd go and everyone was in your life stage similar to you, whereas a gospel community is quite different. It's not like that. It's a mixture.

[8:38]
So I think there is people struggling to like people and be with people and love one another that are outside of their normal sort of social or life stage circle. So I think often when people come together on the Sunday, people are quite happy to mingle because that's a chance to actually for all the mums to catch up, for example, or for blokes to hang out or whatever. So in some ways that hasn't been an issue there. There are also things where, so some projects, this mainly music thing, for example,

[9:11]
that started off mainly out of one gospel community, but pretty quickly they went actually, this is just getting too big for us to do on our own. So that's been opened up now and that's something that people from lots of different gospel communities helped with. So that would be an example of doing that. We do we do some Sunday things all together. We do have a things like there's a women's prayer retreat once a year and that's open to all some of these women. We have a men's camp once a year that's open to all some of these men.

[9:42]
So there are things that we do, you know, as a whole church as well. But we just try not to clutter things too much so that people still, yeah, that first issue I was talking about, they will still have the time. and the focus energy left to really work hard of the gospel community stuff. Yeah. Yeah. How do you establish your communities? Yep, so how do we establish gospel communities? It needs to be any of the ones. Yeah. So that's done at an eldership level.

[10:13]
So when we start one, we as builders, and we do consult, so it's not just we just lock ourselves away to retreat and move everyone around. We would certainly consult with people when we take. take very seriously where people are at and what people's needs are. But we as elders ultimately are responsible for the formation of gospel communities initially. And we do that primarily along two lines. The first line is the leadership thing. So I mentioned before, we

[10:44]
have at least four leaders in each one. And we think that's so important that that would be the first consideration. And then the second thing after that is diversity as much as is possible. So we try to make them diverse. Then as they grow, if a person gets converted through a gospel community, they stay with that gospel community until it needs to multiply. And if we get transfer growth, so it's to say, one of you guys moves to Hobart, you want to come and join some of these,

[11:14]
again, the elders will then go, okay, well, we've got this person. Have they got any really specific needs that a certain community can care for that would make that call for us? If you answer to that, no, then we look again at diversity and go, well, this one could really do with another family with kids, so that's where they'd go or this one could really do with a student and we have a student now, so they'll go there. So it is quite, it's certainly not the sort of the model where you just go, right, who wants to do Tuesday night, sign up. Yeah, sorry.

[11:45]
I'm wondering where people live has an impact on how you shape? Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question. So does where people live impact where, which gospel community they're going to. I don't actually need to look at that when I say it. That probably would come third in those considerations. We would love that to be higher up the list, but what we've found is that the first two are so important, and

[12:18]
just because of our size, we don't have enough people always, that we've got enough leaders in each sort of suburb and an updiversity in each suburb to do that. The thing we've got going in our favour, and this might be where, you know, in a Melbourne context, I mean, I don't know what it's like in your churches. I know when I was living in Sydney the church I was in there, we had some people that were driving up to an hour one way to get to the church, just I don't know if that's a big city

[12:49]
culture thing or whether that's the same issue here. That might be something that you need to think through more than we do. In our context, there's, maybe, I'm just trying to think, Kingston, Blackmun's Bay, Margot, Snug, Lizzie Bar, we're probably mainly operating in five suburbs, some of these others, and their furthest would be 15 minutes away. So for us, it's not as an urgent thing because people can pretty much get to any one of those suburbs

[13:22]
as well. That's a thing that we've got going for our advantage, I suppose. said that for a Tasmanian 15 minutes it was like a very long way away D. Which was really funny when we moved back from Sydney and then within six months we were thinking exactly the same thing, isn't that strange? Yeah, yeah. But we have found, we do have some, so I'm just on that, we do have some that do have a number of families that do live in the same sub-of- them, and that has been incredibly helpful. We've got one, we've got one that actually, I actually we don't need more, but last year had one and there are two families living

[13:54]
in the same street even, and that was is marvelous. That does. Yeah. It's a take from your model that there is much room with Sunday morning only Christian. No, no. ! In that morning. Yeah. There's an regular review on Alam's question not coming up in this time. Is that a struggle? Do you have people who want to kind of line up as a Sunday morning only, but the odds have killed?

[14:25]
I mean, how practically it comes on that attention. Yeah, that's a tricky one. So, everyone at Summeles is in a gospel community. But, and that's part of joining. So when people say, I want to be part of Summeles, I'll actually sit down and say to them, look, that's great. Let me explain to you how the church works. This how it works.

[14:55]
Now, we know that's not for everyone, and you probably want to think carefully about whether you, in the end, do decide for us, you want to come to us. And the reason for that is that just in terms of how a partial care works, how your kids are going to get looked after all the rest of it, if you're not in one of these gospel communities, and of course you can still lock up on the Sunday, that's fine, but chances are you won't feel all that connected and won't get looked after in the way that you would hope to and the church should look after you. Now, everyone I've met up with at

[15:25]
the end of that is I've never had anyone go, no, I think by the time they've sort of got to that stage, they've pretty much figured it out because it's obviously talked about a lot in their Sunday gatherings. But we do have some people that whilst they're in a gospel community, they're not as connected and might be quite irregular. We've got one couple at the moment that are very irregular, which has been a challenge. However, again where it's been good is that they

[15:57]
know and there's an expectation that there's a small community in the church that considers them as part of their community and that's sort of looking out for them and that actually has them very firmly in their sights in terms of wanting to try and draw them in closer. Now that can be a slow process and people move at different rates and all the rest of it. Yeah, but you're right, that can be a challenging thing.

[16:27]
Yeah. And I think I think I think I know at least one, maybe one couple that kind of left because because they really, all they wanted was to rock up on a Sunday and for that to be it. And I'm not quite sure what to think of this, but in some ways I wonder whether even it was helpful in that this made that such an issue for them that they actually had to then go, well, hang on.

[17:00]
I don't want that and at least put themselves in that basket and ask the question about where they're at as well. I don't know. I'm still trying to think that through. But yeah, I mean, there's definitely been one couple I think that's left because they felt we'd actually try to make, I think anyone ever from the front tries to make people feel uncomfortable or pressured to do anything. But I think just by notion that you're part of the community. Everyone else is doing this stuff. If you're not, then you probably do notice it. Yeah.

[17:31]
Yeah. I think there and then, yeah. I think my ad was just a just a question. Yeah. A couple of questions. Yep. First ones quick. Yep. The gospel communities that will worship together in a Sunday-type worship. or is it your Sunday everyone together? So do you mean did they ever meet just on a Sunday you just meet with your

[18:01]
gospel community? No, no, no, no. ! We always, Sunday mornings, we always have that main Bible teaching sermon. Part of the reason for that is that what we realize, sorry, the question was that the gospel community's ever do the Sunday morning kind of worship service type thing. I'm looking at it. Pay attention. part of the reason for that is what we kind of notice with a lot of house church and type things because I guess one of the big benefits

[18:32]
of the gospel community model is that you kind of harnessing a lot of the benefits of the house church really. So I spent a lot of time looking at house churches and what are the really good things about them but what are the really hard things about them? One of the really hard things about them is that it's very hard to multiply the kind of leaders that you need to run a church when you're just going to have really small. more churches because quite quickly the church gets too big to stay in a house so you need someone else. But if you've only got one person

[19:03]
that's got the kind of theological training is able to do Bible teaching at a certain standard, then you've got a big problem there, because it's hard to come by lots and lots of people that can do that. You might be lucky enough to have a couple, but you're going to very quickly run out of them. You're never going to have a budget to be able to afford a full-time minister for each of them and so I kind of had to make the sort of decision and go actually what level of Bible teaching do we expect in the gospel community because the higher

[19:36]
a level that we expect there the more time the leader is going to have to spend on that which then means the less time they've got to spend on mobilising people in mission, passing care, looking enough to be young people, all that kind of stuff. So what we thought was well no we're happy to have pretty much the standard kind of growth group level of Bible teaching in the gospel community. But that means that we need to make sure they all come together to make sure they all benefit from the resource that is me, that they are all thrown together to employ

[20:07]
to deliver that level of Bible teaching. Does that make sense? So we do have that as a very high priority because we go, well, that's the place where you're going to get your main biblical diet for the week. That will get supplemented and added to throughout the week, but that's where that main kind of feeding thing happens, I guess. So yeah, so for that reason, Sunday mornings we try to really encourage everyone to be there. Sometimes gospel communities might have a weekend away in which case they might miss a Sunday, but that would be like a once-off that would be a thing that we'd regularly encourage.

[20:41]
And the transition from new to believers moving from smaller gospel communities into realising the bigger church and embracing Sunday worship with all of these people, that's been fairly easy. Yeah, the question is what's the transition like from a new believer from just the gospel community experience to the broader church community experience? Yeah, it has been easy. And I think that's because by the time

[21:11]
they get around to coming on Sunday, they already know, they're a part of the crew, do you know what they rock up and there's lots of people they know already, they know lots of kids. A lot of them. A lot of them, A lot of them will even kind of come along, they'll kind of get a sniff that we all get together on Sundays and we'll come along before they're Christians anyway. And so that has been a very easy transition. And I think easier again, just because they're feeling much more comfortable because they know lots of people. They're not just coming in with their one friend into a seat of unfamiliar faces.

[21:43]
They're coming in and they know 15, 16, 17, 17, 18, up to 20 other people. Yeah, you can imagine that if you walked into this building and you already knew 20 people, well, you feel pretty well at home, you know. You might think it's a bit weird or sitting down listening to a diesel like me, but, yeah. Yeah. You mentioned all your members are in it if they come for membership. What about adherence? Yes, I'm saying in adherence as well. And it's kind of a part, I guess we've kind of worked that

[22:13]
into part of our membership. Our membership process as well. So in the Christian Reformed Churches of Australia, for someone to become a communicant member, session has to satisfy itself with regard to their life and doctrine. So in terms of the life bit, the way that we worked that out as a session is has someone come in and being in a gospel community and actively involved for about six months? We normally have it. And by that stage we can tell, because you know, they've been sharing life with people,

[22:45]
we actually have a really good idea as to whether are they really converted, are they just saying they are? Do they actually really love the saints? Do they contribute? Do they care about God? Commission and at that point we can then go would you like to take an step into full membership? Yeah. And that's my name. Do you restructure your groups and periodically when it's a need? You know how they're able to get them once a year? Yeah, so when do we restructure them? There's only two reasons we generally restructure.

[23:17]
The first is for the sake of growth. So as I sort of said before, eventually they and God willingness will continue to happen. They get too big, so it needs to plant a new one. So that's the first reason. The second reason, this has only happened once is if something happens that means that the gospel community is going to struggle to keep functioning effectively. So what happened once, we had some leaders in one gospel community that just went through some really awful personal stuff

[23:48]
and just were no longer able to continue in leadership. And that just meant that it didn't have the kind of leadership to keep going. So in that situation, we went, I call let's close that gospel community down, people can join other ones and we moved on like that. So they're really the only two reasons we do it. And the reason we do that is just because, as you can gather, like if you really want to get people sharing their lives with each other, that takes time to develop those relationships. So if you're chopping and changing them all the time, it's

[24:19]
too hard to really get the kind of life sharing thing going on. So, yeah. Yeah, right then. I think you're saying you're meeting each other's houses. Yeah. It's probably on a rotating basis. Yep. Does that mean that you're nearly all from the same socioeconomic bracket of society? I mean, Kingston's, I think, fairly affluent. Yeah, yeah, it's fairly. Yeah.

[24:49]
Yeah. Does that mean that all those people were. have a house in which they could accommodate those 30 people each time. Yep. And what about the student? I mean, does the student feel poorly because he or she can't have everyone at his house? How does all that stuff to travel? Yeah. Yeah, so the question is, you know, we're meeting each other's homes, which is all very well. If you're sort of fairly well to do income-wide and own your own home, it's big enough

[25:19]
to have that many people in it. And then, and then what's the effect that that has on someone that maybe doesn't have a house like that or lives in a flat or a student accommodation? Yeah, we do do that. Now, that varies enormously. When we started, we were actually fairly, all fairly similar in terms of, I guess, I guess, our, you know, make class for a better word, you know, we're kind of middle-classy type people, mainly university-educated and

[25:50]
completely white at that point, which, again, is fairly reflective of the area. And so, but actually, having said that, not everyone, there were some people that would have bigger houses than others. And I guess it just depends. So, the gospel community I was in last year, before we planted the new one, which was the one I was telling you, was getting really big, we've got down to there really only being two houses

[26:22]
in our gospel community that we could all fit in all at once. Now, again, that's not such a… So for those meetings, yeah, that can be limiting. The reason I don't think it becomes too much of a problem is because if you work hard at keeping the idea open that we're a family and not just a meeting, then there is possibilities for everyone to host stuff because they want to host stuff. So, yeah, if you're going to do an event

[26:53]
that's the whole community, kids write through to adults, and we do those regularly, like we'll probably have a meal like that at least once a month, and then once a month we do a thing called whole family learning where the idea is everyone right through some kids up and try to do some kind of Bible study together, which can be chaotic and fantastic and wonderful and eye-opening and all sorts of stuff. But those are going to be pretty limited venue-wise. but for a you know girls movie night

[27:23]
that's something that there might only be three or four people at that that's something that the student could host in their home for example or if it's a small group discipleship session you know we've got in a number of hours there might be two or three people that might be up regularly to study the Bible and pray again you can do that in a flat so once you get out of thinking that it's just gospel community is everyone together all the time and more like the family idea

[27:56]
like in my family that might just be me and my brother or you can do that in your flat you can do that in a big house it doesn't matter as much so I think that helps with that and then added to that is that there's some things that we do that isn't at anyone's house so if you're going to go and help out of something in the community well that's no one's house actually going on to the community's territory there as well so I think I think because of that that hasn't been such an issue yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah how does your structure look say over at a month sort of for your normal groups including your

[28:36]
altogether yeah Sunday morning just a high level sort of what is it what would look like for the average gospel group over a period of a week or a month. Yeah, over a month, yeah, sure. Yeah, so the question is what does it look like over a month? There, I have, Brandon, we, did we, are we going to make that available that big document that I sent through? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I sent through, I mean, it was way too overwhelming to include in a thing like

[29:08]
this, yeah, yeah, it's a lot of pages. But there is a document that, there's still, you'll have to bear with, it's still a drug. because I still need a bit of proofreading and style work and all the rest of it. But it's a document that kind of outlines in detail a lot of the stuff we do. And on there there's actually a calendar that's an example of my gospel community, actually what that looks like. So what, but to give you a nutshell, so what we do, we get everyone together, we try to do this at least once every two months.

[29:41]
Some gospel communities will do it with more in advance. so ours does quite a few months, where we get together, we get out our calendars and we kind of plan in some of the big stuff. So that would be things like Bible studies. So we'd want to do at least two adult-orientated, more like a growth group type Bible study things a month. At least once a month we will want everyone to get together for a whole family meals, so that's kids right through, and that would be a thing that would be open to non-Christians, often non-Christian,

[30:13]
that would come to those, like it's a very easy front door. A lot of non-Christian spouses, for example, come to those sorts of things. We'd at least once a month to do the whole family learning things, so that's just to try and get adults meaningfully teaching kids and building that relationship in a potential way that's sort of structured around God's Word. So they would be all scheduled in. Then some months would have a mission event.

[30:43]
So just last month, for example, our community went and did that thing of the international student ministry that I talked about before. At the moment, three of the gospel communities are also got introducing God courses running. Now, not everyone in the gospel community will necessarily be at that. So depending on the non-Christians that are coming, but we would encourage, as I said before, at least some of the people that perhaps haven't done it before to get along and be a part of that team,

[31:13]
But not everyone would be there at those. What else happens? One thing that we started this year is to, because we're starting to get some teenagers now. And so what we found was a lot of people in our gospel communities were struggling to know how to mentor and get alongside the teenagers that they've got or the kids that are sort of late primary school years. So what I do is once a month in my home, I have a thing called gospel community.

[31:43]
youth opportunities, but GC YouthOx for short. And what that is, that's an opportunity for someone, so we encourage different people from the gospel community each time to take the kids that are at that age group from their gospel community. They come around to my place with everyone else doing the same thing from their gospel communities, which is kind of nice. Often there'll be a kid, you know, kids don't necessarily have a lot of peers in their gospel community, so, there's a couple where they might be the only grade six or grade seven.

[32:17]
So this way I get to spend a bit of time hanging out with the other kids of that age group in my home and then we break them up to do Bible study with the people that came with them from their gospel community if that makes sense. That's how I've started to try and pick away at that. So that would happen once a month as well. I think they'd probably be the big… Our gospel community had a lot. and this was only this once a year, or we did it this year, was a weekend away that happened for us last month as well,

[32:49]
but that wouldn't be an every month thing. And then inside of that, we would want to try and encourage people to be involved in each other's lives in lots of sort of informal ways too. So whether that's babysitting one another's kids or helping out with whatever or meeting each other's friends, The women in our gospel community have a sort of a craft night that they run quite regularly where they invite their non-Christian friends to come along and sit around and we've got some avid misses and souls and stuff

[33:22]
so they sit around and do that and get to know each other as non-Christian friends that way. But again, that's not something that we'd formally plan, that's something that they just go, are, shall we do that again this month here, let's do it and they organise that? Yeah. Yes. I've read that Christianity took off in Korea or not in Japan because it resonated with Korean culture but it didn't resonate in Japanese culture. But if that's the case,

[33:52]
and if our culture is not into sharing, why would we expect such a model to resonate with the culture? Why would we expect such a model to prosper rather than just being a small niche as as Christianity is in Japan? So the question is, why would we expect this sort of thing to work in our culture when our culture isn't into sharing life together and this kind of community style of living?

[34:25]
I, yeah, I guess the answer is humanly speaking, you wouldn't expect it to work because, yeah, we're all sinners and there's different areas. I guess each culture has. it's areas that it works well with Christianity in and doesn't. So if I use my Libyan friend, I think for them they've got an advantage in this area of the Christian life, but perhaps when it comes to attitudes towards women, for example,

[35:00]
there may be a bit of a disadvantage culture. I don't know. But, you can look at each culture and go, well, there's certain things about each culture that actually resonate quite well with the life that the New Testament calls us to live. and then there's also bound to be because we're all simple things in each culture that doesn't resonate well. And the only reason I think that we can expect the things to work that don't resonate well with our culture is just through the life-changing power of the Holy Spirit, working in Jesus' people to call them to repentance and even repentance of culture where need be.

[35:36]
So that's the only reason you'd expect it to work. And I do think it's a hard area for modern Westerners to grow in often. But I think if you have a sort of an attitude of cultural change, or I think actually it's a helpful place to start, because if you have a good attitude to cultural change, it kind of gives you the tools to go about seeing transformation take place because cultures do take time and incremental steps to change, generally speaking.

[36:10]
I remember my first year at Bible College, I had a missions lecturer, and he spent 11 years over in Pakistan. And he was saying it was really interesting watching the various missionaries approach missionary work in Pakistan. So you'd have some people that would come in and they wouldn't adapt to the culture at all. They wouldn't learn the language. They lived in massive mansions, western-style houses. They would have large.

[36:40]
locals lined up at the fences literally drooling over the food they were feeding their dog. And they weren't going to change anything about anything. Then they had the people that came from this sort of really incarnational mission movement, which is where you basically come in as a westerner, you just live in a Pakistani house, you wear Pakistani clothes, you speak Urdu, you change everything and you live exactly like a Pakistani person. And he said neither of those worked very well. The first one didn't.

[37:10]
work very well because you never related to the people that you were trying to reach. The second one, those missionaries generally lasted a year, give that, before they had nervous breakdowns or suffered depression or burnt out, and then they had to go home. He said the ones that were there for 11 years or longer were the people that came and went, okay, this is going to be a big time of cultural transformation for me, and they start off, not extravagantly, but they still live a Western life, but they start to learn the language.

[37:40]
and they start to eat the food and gradually step by step over time they get closer to the target culture that they're trying to reach. And I think that's a really helpful way for us to think about this when it comes to embracing parts of the Christian life that perhaps are hard for us culturally, having that kind of step by step trying to think through, what's the next step, how do we grow in this a bit more, how do we change the way we live a bit more to bring it in line with the way Jesus wants for his people.

[38:13]
I think that's actually a really helpful way to think about it. I've seen some people kind of want to go after this stuff and they just go back to church and they bring all this stuff and bang, want people to go from zero to 100 in a week, which generally doesn't work very well. They normally end up burnt out and the rest of the church gets quite angry and all ends in a mess and then people never want to try anything new again because that was a disaster. But I don't think not changing is an option either.

[38:43]
Because as we started with, I think there's plenty of biblical call. I saw the Psalms, it's there in a Westminster Confession, it's there in a manifesto, and it's all through the New Testament. We are called to live together and love one another the way that Jesus loved us and all the one another verses in the New Testament. I mean, they're not really up for negotiation as far as God is concerned. We need to do something about it. We need to move in that direction. somehow. Now, you don't have to do it the way that we're doing in Somalis, but we do need to repent of our individualistic, materialistic, self-cented culture at some point, even if it's hard

[39:20]
and the power of the Holy Spirit, there's just the hope that we can do it. Yeah. Yeah. The structure of the project you just described, to a lot of degree that led to in between all those times, the gospel community is doing those one another's spontaneous and really sharing and struggling with those sorts of people. I'm assuming that's the aim of combining all these people, but

[39:54]
the structures themselves would still be possible to do all those things but not actually get around to doing it. Well, not get around to the apart of those times. It's all those that fire the nights of the week. living in your home and just doing your thing and I think about, yeah, but to what I mean's going to say that is family or anything. Yeah. Yeah.

[40:36]
take a while. But I definitely think we're seeing progress. ! So, like, I still think we've got a long way to go, and you're right, there are some people that, you know, it's amazing that the minute you put things into a calendar, it just, the sort of the desire to program things just becomes overwhelming and pretty soon it does just become another program of, I do that then, I'll do that, then, and I do that then, and so, yeah, that is a struggle that we've got to continually keep wrestling with.

[41:06]
But I think we are seeing it, and I think particularly where I've been encouraged is with a lot of the, I suppose, pastoral care type issues and things like that where we're actually seeing that people are now going to one another instead of feeling like, oh, I've got this issue, I have to get the professional pastor to come and sort that out for me. People are looking to one another for that kind of thing a lot more, which is really good. I mean, I still do help out with people.

[41:36]
side of my gospel community, but it's generally only with really big stuff. So if a marriage is sort of about to break up or someone dies or something, then often I'll get involved at that level. But even then, it's normally being well on the way to being dealt with within the community anyway, which is, I think, has been quite encouraging. Yeah. So, look, I think it's getting there. I mean, yeah, so it's always different depending on the person, yeah.

[42:06]
Yeah, where do we go? Yeah, yeah. And how do you connect the group with individual members of the group in their ministries or their involved in community teams? It's on an individual basis. Yeah. How do you connect those individual pursuits? I'm not saying to have to have them talked about that.

[42:36]
but someone's involved in a is that part of the you go to really talk about that? Yes. Yeah, so that's, so the question is how do, if you've got members of gospel communities that have been involved in other community groups or hobbies or anything like that, I suppose, is that right? And how does that get connected to gospel community? Yeah, I mean, the vision is we want it to be very much connected to the gospel community. So we certainly want to be praying for people in those situations.

[43:11]
We also want to be really encouraging people in those situations to think about how do they take the people that they're getting to know and care for and love in those circumstances and to connect them to the gospel community a bit so that we can actually show something in Christian community to those people too. And we really, what we often try to try to do. do is actually see whether we can use some of those connections to help us as a whole

[43:42]
gospel community with some of those big type things that I was describing earlier. So, for example, we had a community garden example was a good one where there was a working bee there. And so the person went, oh, look, you know, the garden needs help for this and we could marshal the whole hospital community to go along and help out to actually come in and the gardeners were wrapped because I would actually, you know, and I reckon it would be all sorts of groups like

[44:12]
land care groups, rotary groups, all sorts of things, scout groups, school fairs, all the rest of it. We'd love to see people growing that more and more actually just going, you know, there's these things. He's a great chance to take, you know, my church to the outside of church thing I do. Yeah. Yeah, that's the kind of thinking that we're really doing. my foster. So was it, yeah? Depending what, whether you have formal or any formal things in place

[44:42]
to develop in place like how you say I've got on a person. Yep. This is what we're seeing in and thought. Yes. Yep. So how do we develop leaders? Yeah. So what we do is we, um, once every two months I'll meet with each gospel community leadership team and that's normally about a two-hour meeting so I'll kind of meet up with them do a bit of training and then talk through I've got sort of a big kind of

[45:13]
agenda of all the different elements of gospel community life that we'll talk through if they've got struggles and if I can help them sometimes I can't sometimes they help me we have that kind of conversation do all that kind of thing so that's one thing then on the month so let's just say I meet with with gospel community leadership team one in February. In March, I would meet with the what we call the vision leader who's sort of the main contact point between the gospel community and the eldership. I'd meet up with him in the other month.

[45:46]
So I'm kind of getting a kind of monthly check-in point, I suppose, with each gospel community. So that's how we kind of do that. Then we encourage all of our GC leaders to be constantly asking that question, who is the next? leaders that we've got here. It's one, I'm saying to Brandon actually in the car away here. It's one of the things that I've appreciated about this model, although it's been very hard work, but it just constantly forces you to be on the front foot in terms of raising up leadership because, you know, if you need four leaders

[46:18]
every time you plan to new one, obviously you're just constantly needing leaders to be raised up, you know. So we're constantly asking the team, you know, who are the people that you've got that you've got, could be potential leaders in the future. What's the next step to them? Is that they don't need to meet one to one with someone for a bit? Do we need to get them along to the team meets? You know, he's at the way forward and get them to kind of hear the way we talk and what we're talking about and give them some responsibilities and that's kind of how we do it.

[46:48]
So I'll differ from person to person where they're at. Like sometimes you'll get, we had a couple move from Queensland two years ago, and we sort of gave. him a year to settle in, but I mean, yeah, he was an elder in a Presbyterian church up there, he could preach, he'd screwed on really well. It all it took was a year for them settling in, getting a feel for how it all worked and bang, he was pretty much sure to rock and roll, whereas someone else might need quite a lot of one-to-one sort of input or training or whatever for them to get ready.

[47:21]
So it really depends on the person, but we are very proactive about looking for new leaders all the time. And just on that, where did the elders get into the progress? Yeah, so pretty much all our elders will be on a, oh sorry, oh yeah, beginning about the little friend down here. Sorry. Yeah, so where the elders fit into gospel communities? So every elder is a gospel community leader of some sort, and they're normally,

[47:53]
in fact, they always have that action in I think about it, vision leaders of the gospel community, so which makes sense. although we do have obviously lots of gospel community leaders that aren't elders. But they, our gospel community leaders, we give them a lot of pastoral responsibility, but it's very much overseen by our session. And I guess sort of the direction of the church,

[48:25]
overseeing the teaching that happens in gospel communities, the formation, of gospel communities that all gets seen at the session level. And I think in many ways that's one of the things that kind of keeps them all together in a way and stops them from just sort of totally breaking off to be their own thing. I think just that kind of understanding that actually each gospel community is sitting under a sort of a united session that's most of the gospel community is up until now

[48:55]
at least yeah, I think most this year we've got one gospel community that doesn't have an elder in it just because we're kind of getting more GCs than we can keep up with elders. But most would have an elder in them, which is really good. And we try to keep the communication going quite well. So I'm on the main kind of contact point from each GC back to session. But we'll have a bit on our session agenda as well about what are the key things that need to go out to gospel community leaders as a result of this meeting to make sure to contact

[49:28]
stays fresh and the communication stays up to those. I have a question. That's all right. My first one. Yep. I'm just wondering if all of the leaders are men and if so, do you run out of men? Yes, so are all the leaders men and if so do we run out of men? Yes, so no, not all the leaders are men. And we I mean, we're just just to kind of

[49:59]
I suppose, nail our colours to the mast. I'm not quite sure where you guys are demunation or even within your denomination, how much the discussion this is. But we have a sort of a complementarian view of men and women in ministry. So we do believe that there are certain roles that God holds men particularly responsible for and wants men to take particular initiative in. So that would be eldership and in the preaching. That's something that in our church, that's

[50:30]
a job that men do. And the vision leader, I was talking to Brandon about this in the car, although we haven't officially stated this, I think we're pretty much at the point where we'd go that vision leader role, which is really the oversight of the whole community. Up until this point, that's been a man doing that. And I think just with the way that they're sort of families, it kind of fits with the family structure there as well. ! So we would believe that within

[51:00]
families, God holds the husband responsible for the leadership and well-being and direction of the family. So in the same way, I think we're thinking that it makes sense for the gospel community family for a man to be doing that as well. But for the other three roles are, yeah, we have women serving in all of those. And so that's means that, A, we haven't run out of men. And B, it's been, I think, really

[51:30]
a positive thing. I think for our women, because it means that there's sort of lots more sort of formal ministry opportunities open to women. Yeah, outside of just, say, kids work or just ministering to other women there's ways to serve there. And B, I think our gospel communities have just benefited enormously from that too. And the reason for that,

[52:00]
is I think a lot of our women, I don't know what it's like in your cultures, but they're kind of the modern Kingborough, and I'm generalising, but in the modern Kimbra culture, it's generally wives in the family that largely organize and I guess they're in control of the social life of the family, the ones that are responsible for when kids do stuff and all the rest of it. And so,

[52:30]
to have them serving on those leadership teams, particularly in some of the communication, organizational sort of roles, and it has just been an enormous blessing because I remember in the early days when we started before we had this, you know, the elders had come away and go, yeah, we want to have this thing, and we want all the kids to be there, and we want everyone to study the Bible together, and we want to do it at 8 o'clock at night, and there's going to be food, and it's going to be awesome, and then they'd go away, and you'd just get wives going, you guys insane.

[53:00]
and it was a disaster. But now that doesn't happen to us, which is really good because we've got to people contributing in that level. So that's been a really, really positive thing, I think, just to have a lot of our women involved thinking through that side of things as well. It's been a massive blessing to us. Yeah. Yeah. Just a number. Just another, where how many

[53:30]
community go there at the month? Five. I've got five. Yep, back in the corner. Do you know, go to question? And have you experienced. And have you experienced much in the way of course. And have you experienced much in a way of

[54:00]
fractions, gossipings between one group and another. Yep. So the question is, have our gospel community leaders and elders have much training in Christian counseling? And has there been much gossiping between one group and fractions and things like that? So the second question, no. So that's been really good. That's been a blessing. The first question, not a lot. My wife,

[54:30]
Evdokcia is a counsellor. And she has done some basic training, particularly listening skills, with our leaders. But on the whole, no. But then we're okay with making the most of other good counsellors and psychologists and things like that too. Where we think that tends to go wrong is when people in the church just palm people off

[55:00]
without owning the responsibility for people so that you go, oh, well, you've got depression, well, I don't really want to talk about that. So we'll send you off to the psychologist down the road and you can take your problems there. Now we might go, actually we think this person needs help. And in fact, we've had a number of people that have got quite serious psychological problems and have had to get quite heavy help including visits to the cycle and all sorts of stuff. So we're thankful for the health services we've got,

[55:31]
but what we don't want to do is just kind of ditch people off to those services and forget about them because we think that it's actually the solution, the ultimate solution is going to come from the gospel. So whilst we avail ourselves of professionals, we also want to always be making sure that we're kind of bringing the gospel word and the gospel community to people in that context and helping them to do that. So we're kind of relatively okay with using other professionals in that area,

[56:08]
but we're not okay with just kind of leaving people with that and that's it, I guess. You need to. Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah, and always wanting to keep the care of the gospel community coming to bear on people, I suppose, if we do use them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we do. We have a group, so we have a crash from kids that are eight months old to kindergarten age.

[56:41]
And then we have a kids ministry for kids that are prep up to about nine. And then from nine and up, we actually encourage them to be involved in the whole of the gathering. So to start of the start. the first half of the gathering, we go for about half an hour, and we stop and have a coffee break, and then the little ones go off to various things, come back, have the sermon and finish. From about nine years and up, we have them in the sermon with us.

[57:14]
But I work quite hard to engage them. So they all have a sheet which, you know, I can kind of… I'll leave them back because I think it's my photo on today. And then on the other. There's a bit more about this.

[57:45]
I do a shit like this. And then on the cinnamon howlop point, there, there'll be the big of a little bit more content. There'll be the big of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a bit of a year. the big idea, each point will come up, and then important info for each point will come up on that as well. There'll be things that they have to kind of draw on and all the rest of it. And so, and I'll work quite hard at making sure the language is easy for them to understand.

[58:16]
And if at the end they can bring me this completed neatly, they get a fretto. And sometimes it's a bonus question that won't appear on the powerful. but if they can listen and they get it, then they get a minty as well. I haven't yet had an adult try and do it. But it's been amazing. I'd be able to be amazed at how much they take in actually. And in fact, in terms of their note taking, they put a lot of, they put a lot of… Yeah.

[58:46]
So there'll be a different one. And that'll be specifically for each sermon, each one of that. So that's kind of how we do it. Hmm. My church, do you have a bad thing? No, no. I think it'd be good to give them names, but people… So some people like the idea and some people don't. Some people think it's too daggy. But I kind of, if I had it my way, I'd give them names, but at the moment they don't.

[59:19]
I don't know, something cool like… Calver or… Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's vingling. Yeah, yeah. ! Something trendy, like that. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Did you have one… Yeah.

[59:56]
wise it means… Sometimes I kind of just wish I was a member because there's sort of, you know, evangelistic opportunities that I've really loved to pursue or spend more time in or… Yeah, but I have to kind of… Because I'm involved in all of the gospel communities to an extent, just sort of helping them run and overseeing and all the rest of it, means I don't get to do as much in my own as I would… I'd really love to. But yeah, I… I fit into it. And I think that's been important, because it's sort of…

[1:00:28]
to help all the other teams, I kind of need to know what it's like and kind of go through the issues. So I've been in about three so far, and that's really helped because I've experienced a lot of things and all the other ones. All the other leaders have had to go through or experience and can kind of bring that experience to bear for them, so… Yeah. So, you… Yeah. Could you start with just one?

[1:00:59]
Yeah, I think so. Sorry, the question is, could the model work if you start with just one? Yeah, I think so, and I think probably, depending on how many people were keen for it in your church, it might be the best thing to do to run like a pilot one, just to have a crack at it, just to go, is there a crew? Do I have four leaders that would be really, up for giving this a go with me and a bunch of others that would like to

[1:01:29]
see what it's like, and just to give it a try, and just give it a crack and see how you find it, and share the stories with everyone else, and I kind of wonder that if you did that, that might be one of the best ways to transition a church for this kind of thing, because people would see it and actually go, oh, that's kind of what I've always hoped church would be like anyway, and can I can I join please? And pretty soon it would grow and grow and growing. You can join, we're going to need you to head up

[1:02:01]
another one. So I think that would probably be quite a good way to approach it would be just to try one and see what happens. As I said before, it's a culture changing exercise. So that might be the step that you take. You might go, well, actually, instead of trying to get everybody to do it all at once, let's just try and get one going and just see what that's like and make sure we share all the stories and make sure people know what's happening and hear people up to date and then see if we can get more people involved.

[1:02:48]
It might do, yeah. but I imagine that don't want to hear the level of that level of commitment would probably wrap the same even if you said, well, we're all going to do it. Perhaps. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I guess it just comes down to your people a bit and you probably just have to think that one through in terms of where your church is at. I guess, yeah. How is the church planting fitting fitting in to some ways situation with these possible communities?

[1:03:20]
As in how would we go about planting a church? Yeah. How would it affect the… the other health communities or how involved would they be one or two or it would be several people from how would see that a number of… Yeah, how would you go about church planting with a gospel community kind of model. Yeah, that'd be interesting. I think you would need to

[1:03:55]
Yeah, you might just ask two gospel communities to be the nucleus of the new church or you might go, well, look, we need to plant, we're going to plant a new church with gospel communities, then we're going to need diversity. We're going to need leaders. And so you would approach perhaps all of the gospel communities, the amount of leaders that you need, the amount of diversity that you need, and call on people individually to do it that way. But I think they're going to be the kinds

[1:04:25]
of questions, I don't think it would be remarkably different to good sustainable church planting in any other under any other paradigm, because I think in any paradigm when you're planning a new church, you're going to want to have a good leadership base and you're going to want to have a bit of diversity as well, aren't you? So probably the same considerations, I guess, yeah. I think, yeah. This order is provided as a free ministry of

[1:04:55]
the McKinnon Reform Presbyterian Church in Melbourne, Australia. Visit our website at mckeninnonrp.org.a.u. Thank you for listening.