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Top 10 Reasons Missional Communities Fail


6. Too little mission, particularly at the start of the group.

If your MC is just starting, you need to do a lot more mission than you do worship/teaching (up) or times of hanging out with people already in the group (in). You need to be out doing things that connect to persons of peace (people God has already prepared in advance to be open to you and your vision) in your mission context and then spending lots of time with them. If it doesn’t get into your DNA early, it won’t get in.

Pragmatically, think of it this way: For every time you do something up or in focused in the first three to four months, you need to do at least two to three outward, mission focused things.

7. The missional community leader does everything.

MCs are, quite honestly, what we see the early church functioning as. The word used in scripture is oikos, and when we get down to the historical data, we see the average church size was maybe 40-60 people. So the book of 1 Corinthians is written to a fairly small group of people. And in chapters 10-14 of this book, Paul outlines some really clear principles of how this community gathers, functions, participates, etc. when they are together.

One of the key principles? Everyone participates. That’s the beauty of a MC as opposed to a worship service. In a MC, everyone brings something (food, a word of encouragement, a prayer, a song, etc.). The point is that you’re together. If the leader is doing everything and isn’t dispersing either leadership or responsibilities, the group is done for.

8. The missional community is a mini Sunday service.

This is one of the more common mistakes people make. They don’t realize that a missional community is a FAMILY on mission together, so the task is to build a family, not an event. But because all they have seen most of their lives is a Sunday morning church service (i.e. event), they do that, just without the same quality or number of people to make it appropriate from a sociodynamic perspective.

These communities sink faster than an anvil in the ocean. If people who don’t know Jesus were interested in going to a worship service, they’d find one that’s done well with a number of people that allows them to observe in an anonymous fashion.