For the past several months the pastoral team here at Fellowship Orlando which consist of
Chad Harper, Rodney Gage, and myself have been praying and working through some things that keep us up at night. The 3 issues are simple. 1) We
believe we have too many
unchurched people in community that are not being reach. 2) The back door of our church is way too big. Too many people are falling through the cracks due to lack of relational connectedness. 3) As a church whole our people are not experiencing spiritually community as described in the Bible. So what do we do? Well here is our
solution we believe God is leading us toward.
1) As of September 13th we will be moving our Saturday night service at 6 pm to Sunday night at 6 pm. In many areas around the nation a Saturday night service works but for our community we believe it's been a barrier not a blessing for people. We are excited to reach people on a Sunday night who may not be able to go to church if it were not for that time slot.
2) We believe the solution to closing the back door and bringing more biblical community is summed up in small groups. We are moving in a new direction for our small groups. Many of our ideas were inspired by
Sticky Church written by Larry Osborne . Things we are changing in our small group
environments.
- They will be 100% relational: We are encouraging our people to do a small group with people they are already doing life with, people they love, and would look forward to hanging out with.
- They will be message based: This is such a good example of how we (myself very included) as American Christians miss out on God. Instead of stuffing our faces again with more scripture, bible stories, and messages the small groups will be based on the sermon notes we heard the previous weekend. Our goal is hear to raise families to be doers of the Word not just hearers. We believe our community doesn't need another bible study as much as it needs a group of people to wrestle with the current realities God is already trying to teach them. This gets me so excited. Can you imagine 5,10, 50, 100, or 1000 small groups meeting not to learn about Gods Word but to apply it. If any Church does this half way well they can easily be the most inspiring church on the planet.
- They will meet 3 times a year for 10 weeks at a time: When looking at the calendar we see 3 natural season that are good for small group ministry. The fall, the winter, and the spring. Now obviously if the group is doing it right then their time together will carry over after their 10 weeks is up. For example if you end a fall 10 week session at the end of November then I'm sure due to the relational connection that the families would have Christmas parties together or serve the homeless together or shop together, simply live life together.
Well I hate reading long blog post and yet I just created one, so I'll be done. Bottom line on all this is that God is doing some great things in our community and we just want to roll out any barriers that might slow down the momentum of His Spirit moving.
