This blog entry continues the story of the church planter from yesterday’s blog entry.
The church service I had started prematurely was already dying, so I took it off life support. We had moved to the local Starbucks, switching from worship to prediscipleship, and in doing so had lost almost all of our people.
So what now? We were struggling with what to do. We had tried doing a Bible study, but that still felt a little churchy– more like a traditional small group than like prediscipleship. I had tried various other methods in the past. They were good methods, but they weren’t quite right for what we were trying to do. People were leaving empty.
I talked with my coach, Bob, about the problem and he showed me The Map. Where did I want to go? For me personally, I chose the area called “Find Your Focus.” When I asked the same question of those in my group, and they chose the same area. So we got the three-week Journey Guide on Find Your Focus and dove in.
This approach totally transformed our time together. It was night and day. I’d like to say it was me, but all I really did was real the questions aloud. The Journey Guides aren’t exactly a Bible study– they’re more like spiritually-focused, thought-provoking questions. The questions were so simple, yet they led to people making connections and gaining insights. They were leaving excited about the study, hungering for more, interested in what God might be doing in their lives.
Now that we’ve finished the Finding Your Focus Journey Guide, we’ve decided to start Serve Others. The guides are a coherent set, each one building on the others, but they don’t have to be done in any particular order. That all depends of where you sense God leading you next.