Core Values and Tensions

Three values shape how we run groups. Two tensions make leading one hard. Know both and most of your calls get easier.

The three values

Connect the unconnected. The group is a place for people to find belonging and build relationships.

Help people take next steps. We encourage people to grow, move forward, and deepen their faith.

Reproduce groups and leaders. Our mission is to keep growing new leaders and expanding groups so we reach more people.

Read that last one carefully. Groups and leaders, not group leaders. We are not only after the next person who will host a Monday night. We are after people taking a leadership step anywhere in the church.

Tensions every leader faces

Leading a group is a balancing act. You hold two goals that look like they are fighting each other, and you keep both upright.

Community vs. content

Community is building strong relationships in the group, helping each other through the good and the hard, and doing life together.

Content is growing our knowledge of the Bible, applying it to our lives, and growing spiritually.

Lean all the way into community and you have built a hangout people can get anywhere else in this city. Lean all the way into content and you have built a classroom. Neither one holds a group.

Intimacy vs. inclusion

Intimacy is developing close relationships between the people already in the group.

Inclusion is keeping the group open, consistently inviting and including new people.

Your members will feel this one before you do. They found something rare and they do not want it touched. Lean too far into intimacy and the group stops multiplying. Lean too far into inclusion and nobody gets known, and people start wondering why they came.

Sit with this

How does your group embody these values? Write down examples of actions or behaviors you have seen in your group that line up with them.