an experiment in community

Bethany and I are going to propose to a couple of friends - and then look for a couple more - a new kind of small group. This group (I want to call it "the ungroup" but my wife won't let me) will have four elements: story, mission, breathing, fun.

We meet 4x a month.

First week of the month: Story

We will spend every month's first week telling our respective stories - the stories of our lives and our spiritual pilgrimages. I've been in several facetime and online groups that have done this and it's always fascinating and can be quite healing. I'm thinking we'll give each person two hours to tell their story in one meeting. As the months go on after we have all finished out stories, we'll spend first week of the month meeting focusing on our story now. We'll simply do an around the room and honestly answer the question: how are you doing? If we don't make it completely around the room every first week, that's fine.

Second week of the month: Mission

This may or may not occur on our designated meeting night. Weekends might be better for this. During the second week of the month we do some kind of service together, like serve food to the homeless, paint an elderly lady's house, clean up someone's house who's in a stressful life season - something like that. Maybe we'll find something through VolunteerMatch.

Third week of the month: Breathing

This meeting will look most like the traditional small group. Each month we will read one book or a book of the Bible and during this meeting we will discuss it. And we will also spend some time in group prayer.

Fourth week of the month: Fun

Movie, a party, dancing, concert, whatever.

We'll probably covenant to meet for six months like this and then reconsider.

I'll let you know how it goes. I'm kinda psyched ab it.