As part of my new staff role with Thresholds, I’m thrilled to join a team of practitioners and teachers – who have been living into their call to lead missional communities for decades – in co-leading a brand new initiative to come alongside leaders all over the country who are forming/leading missional communities in a diverse set of contexts.
We’ve found that the “missional movement” is growing rapidly, but there are very few opportunities to receive coaching and support from people that have actually “been in the game” for awhile. Spear-headed by my friend, mentor and co-author of Thin Places, Rob Yackley, and co-lead by a handful of us player-coaches, this will be a dynamic context for shared life, vocational partnership and tangible coaching.
This will be a cohort format (10-15 people) based right in our homes here in Golden Hill. We will launch with our first intensive (2.5 days) on May 1st, so consider this your invitation! We are looking to finalize our cohort participants by mid-March.
GO HERE for all the info, but here are some details as a bit of a teaser…
WHAT IS IT CALLED?
Missional Community Cohort: Creating and Leading Embedded Communities of Faith and Reconciliation
WHAT IS IT?
The Thresholds Missional Community Cohort is a 18-month collaborative journey created specifically to provide insight and direction for those who have just launched or who would like to launch a missional community.
WHY ARE WE OFFERING THIS?
The missional community movement is characterized by radical incarnation, deep neighborhood transformation, and the life-giving integration of our lives and faith.
The movement is growing rapidly around the world and more and more people are asking questions and exploring what it might mean in their own lives. But they are often without peers, a learning community, or experienced guides.
At Thresholds, we have been gifted with 12 years of experience creating and leading missional communities and we feel compelled to share that gift. Through experienced facilitators, tested teachings, personal coaching, on-going encouragement new mental maps, sharpened missional skills and sustained spiritual practices, you will be equipped to create and live out a new way of being Church.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
• We will gather five times over 18 months on the ground in a host neighborhood.
• Each gathering will be two and a half days (Thursday evening to Saturday evening)
• At least one gathering per year will be in an off-site context (within the same region) with the other gatherings taking place in the host neighborhood.
• Each gathering will have a unique focus but also re-enforce each of the other essential elements.
• Between each gathering we will offer 1 all-cohort conference call and 1 personal coaching call.
• Cost: $1,800 (not including travel, lodging, or meals). Participants will be encouraged to contribute one-third of the cost, to ask their faith community to contribute one-third, and to ask someone who believes in them and their vision to contribute one-third.
• There will be readings and assigned tasks between each gather-ing designed to implement our learnings.
• Cohorts will be limited to 10-15 participants to enhance interaction and learning.
WHY A COHORT?
There are several reasons why we believe this is a transformative approach to forming communities:
• We can’t create community alone. We need a community to help us form a community.
• A cohort offers relational continuity, encouragement, and an opportunity to tackle the task holistically.
• The cohort offers targeted instruction that is both affordable and accessible.
• We are inspired and richly informed through books, seminars, and conferences, but most of us need the sustained presence of experienced guides and a learning community to create a clear, comprehensive, actionable pathway forward.
STUDY CONTENT
Each of our five face-to-face gatherings will engage the concepts and practices we’ve found to be critical in forming and stewarding a missional community. We will engage these topics academically, conversationally, and experientially in the context of homes and a neighborhood. And we will tackle them in a sequence that addresses the challenges that naturally unfold in this pursuit.
Five Sessions: 1. Becoming Sacrament, 2. Gathering Sojourners, 3. Life Together, 4. Inhabiting Place, 5. Sustaining Practices.
We are launching our first cohort in May and are inviting a handful for practitioners to join us for the ride. We are thinking it will be especially helpful for those either starting a missional community or those seeking to transition from a congregational model of church to a more neighborhood model.
Contact, Rob Yackley, at robertyackley@gmail.com if you’re interested!