More and more people have heard about the discipling vehicle of Huddle, either through word-of-mouth or reading the book Building a Discipling Culture that we put out two years ago (which, by the way, is on it’s 5th printing and will be available soon. It’s become so popular we can’t keep them on the shelves). These are two of the more common questions or possible confusion points people hit about Huddles:
- What’s the difference between Huddle and a traditional small group?
- Am I suggesting that Huddles replace small groups?
First, let’s talk about the differences. The easiest way to highlight this is through describing exactly what a Huddle is.
A Huddle is:
- A place for leaders to receive investment, training, imitation and accountability (in other words…discipleship!). Here’s the big thing to note on this one: It is for current and/or future leaders. The people accepting an invitation into a Huddle should know they are expected to lead something (and maybe they already are, but if they aren’t, the expectation that they will start leading something). This is the principle at work: If you disciple leaders in how to disciple people, everyone in your community will be discipled. Why? Because you’re instilling in your leaders the Great Commission principle that “every disciple disciples others.”
- By invitation only. A Huddle is an invitation for 6-12 leaders to regularly receive intentional investment by a discipling leader. But it is more than that. It’s also an invitation in that person’s life, not just a 90-minute-per-week gathering point. You have access to the life of the discipling leader outside of just the Huddle time. As we know, the principles of discipleship at work are often better caught than taught.
- Something that is reproduced. Rather than adding people to a Huddle, we multiply the discipling culture that is created with the expectation that every leader start their own Huddle at some point. But this isn’t something we spring on them. They should know that by accepting the invitation that this is the expectation. So rather than growing your Huddle to have 10 people instead of the 8 that it started with, we ask that the 8 people you started with all start Huddles of their own. It’s growth by multiplication that eventually leads to exponential growth.
- A place for invitation and challenge. The discipling leader, as they invest in the lives of the people in their Huddle, will invite them into their life, their rhythms and have access to their Spiritual capital. But they will also, from time to time, be challenged (gracefully) to live more fully into the Kingdom when their way of life is different or out-of-step with the things we read about in scripture and the Kingdom.
- High commitment. For all the reasons stated above.
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