Quotes About Community

His disciples weren't just his roadies or work associates — they are his family. For Jesus, making disciples is about building a family. In one sentence, he completely redefines what family is, how it works, and what it's for.

MCs center their rhythms on growing in relationship with God (UP), with one another (IN), and with those they are reaching out to (OUT). This is community life centered on the Great Commandment and the Great Commission: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind soul and strength" (UP). "Love your neighbor as yourself" (IN). "Go and make disciples of all people groups" (OUT).

Many faith communities have become little more than gatherings of isolated individuals, while the number of online communities continues to grow.

JESUS CREATED A HIGHLY SUPPORTIVE BUT HIGHLY CHALLENGING CULTURE.

Here's the thing that can be difficult to wrap our minds around: If you make disciples, you always get the church. But if you make a church, you rarely get disciples.

A Missional Community is a group of approximately 20 to 40 people who are seeking to reach a particular neighborhood or network of relationships with the good news of Jesus. The group functions as a flexible, local expression of the church and has the expressed intention of seeing those they are in relationship with become followers of Jesus with them. They exist to see God's Kingdom come to their friends and neighbors.

We want people who have hearts that break for our world and the people in it and do something about it.

The leader of an MC needs to be a disciple-maker, not merely an event-organizer.

Every disciple disciples. You can't be a disciple if you aren't willing to invest in and disciple others.

Many Christian leaders spend their entire lives within the confines of the church campus and wonder why they see little breakthrough in the area of evangelism.

Most of us have become quite good at the church thing. And yet, disciples are the only thing that Jesus cares about, and it's the only number that Jesus is counting.

If we are going to build a culture of discipleship, we will have to learn to balance invitation and challenge appropriately.

If we can't live the sacred journey with Christ daily and are not actively drawing others into that journey—way outside the worship center or sanctuary and outside our stained-glass or silk-plant ghettos—we can't expect to do it in an hour on Sunday morning or Wednesday night.

While the Bible clearly defines roles within the Church, the mission of the Church was intended to be shared by the whole body.

So while many churches say, "We do discipleship in our small groups," the fact of the matter is that their small groups are missing one of the main ingredients of a discipling culture: Challenge.

Effective discipleship builds the church, not the other way around. We need to understand the church as the effect of discipleship and not the cause. If

The meat is on the street."11

We are a society of disconnected people longing for connections.

The message was clear: to be a disciple meant that you learn how to make disciples — an ever-multiplying movement meant to bless the whole world.

The problem is that we don't have a "missional" problem or a leadership problem in the Western church. We have a discipleship problem.

If you set out to build the church, there is no guarantee you will make disciples. It is far more likely that you will create consumers who depend on the spiritual services that religious professionals provide.

From our experience, if you want to make disciples, if you want to build a discipling culture in your community, you are going to need three things: 1. A discipleship vehicle (I call it a Huddle) 2. People need access to your life (the texture of Family on Mission) 3. A discipling language (the discipling language I use is called LifeShapes)

Effective discipleship builds the church, not the other way around. We need to understand the church as the effect of discipleship and not the cause.

The goal is not to run a program called "Missional Community." The goal is to learn how to function as an extended family on mission.