At Summerleas, we want to experience all of the blessings of a small house church (the cake), whilst enjoying all of the benefits of being a larger church.

We believe that there are many wonderful things that a large group of people can do that a small group will always find difficult. A large group as a far wider pool of personal, time and financial resources. These resources...

• allow us to tap into different ministries that smaller groups may struggle to sustain
• give us a wider pool of leaders
• give us a more diverse range of gifts and personalities with which to serve and care for one another
• allow us to engage in certain beneficial activities that are hard or awkward to do in smaller groups (e.g. preaching).

However, despite the great strengths of our larger community ministries, they are very limited in their capacity both to foster close, organic relationships and to display these to a watching world. Because of our core values, we are not content to settle for second best in this area and this has given rise to our 'Gospel Communities' (an idea that borrows from the House Church Movement).

Gospel Communities

The Gospel Communities consist of small but diverse groups of people. The aim is to give people an opportunity to express our core values to the full and expose outsiders to something of the wonder of authentic Christian relationships. The great strength of the Gospel Communities is their size. An average person simply does not have room in their life to relate deeply to even a group of 30 people. However, when people commit to, and focus upon, one another in a small group, realistic progress can be both aspired to and made.

Our gospel communities manifest themselves in a variety of ways. The most important of these are their midweek meetings as they allow a more comprehensive and intentional expression of our core values. However, they are certainly not the whole story. Gospel Communities also meet for shared meals and seek to gather within the many other contexts of everyday life. Sometimes this involves laughing and celebrating together, at other times it may mean mourning with and supporting one another. Whilst all of this is good in theory, the reality of doing life together like this is not easy. This is especially so in an individualistic culture like ours. Therefore, in order to make it easier, we have introduced a number of community 'rhythms.'

Rhythms

What are rhythms? Well, we could say 'routines' but there is a certain degree of intentionality tied up in the word 'rhythm'. If you think about a drummer, the rhythm he creates is steady, regular, but also very intentional. Routines can be mindless; you can slip into or out of them with very little thought. Rhythms, however, always require intentionality.

Our Community Rhythms are regular chances to be together in normal, non-intense, relational settings. They provide opportunities to encourage and build each other up in the gospel in an informal, organic but none the less, intentional way. Crucial to their success is that they are not burdensome because if they are, their effectiveness will decrease. The more we can just do normal, real life stuff that we would do anyway (but together and with gospel intentionality), the better. In addition to all of this, Rhythms can also be a useful opportunity to expose non-Christian people to Christian community. This then harnesses our community as a mission tool and provides a great context to explain the gospel in a natural, informal, organic, kind of way.

Our current rhythms include a B.B.Q. dinner (Community Rhythm), a City lunch break (City Rhythm), a mid week morning tea and a midweek, child friendly, exercise session (E.E.K. - Easy Exercise with Kids). All of our gospel communities can utilise these rhythms, but we hope that people will devise their own rhythms as well. After all, it would be wonderful if people began to live in such a way that they naturally included one another in each other's lives. Such a goal will require a long term process of cultural transformation, however, so in the mean time, rhythms are a good starting point.

The One and the Many

At this stage one might argue that whilst our strategy will achieve a number of gospel centred, organic communities, it won't achieve our stated vision of a gospel centred, organic community. Our response is that the gospel communities have the potential of feeding back into the larger group and strengthening and enriching it in a way that simply would not happen otherwise.

Any large group will automatically organise itself into small groups. Like attracts like and every church will divide itself into groups of young people, young married couples, families with young kids and older people. In addition there will be gender divides and further divisions along personality lines. If left to itself, the church will remain divided into these small groups. In one sense there is nothing wrong with this. People of the same age/gender/life stage can be of invaluable support and encouragement to one another and so this is something we want to foster. However, it is hardly representative of the diverse, multi gender, multi generational picture of New Testament Community. If we stick exclusively to these natural divides, then it is very unlikely that (for example) a married, 60 year old man will ever share a meaningful relationship with a single 20 year old woman. However, if these 'natural' relationships are enjoyed by people who are active members of their gospel communities, then we will start to see some amazing bridges being built between groups that would otherwise have very little to do with each other.

This can be seen elsewhere in our culture and we will use our previous example to illustrate this. It is not often that you see a married 60 year old man relating meaningfully to a single 20 year old woman (at least in a good and healthy way). Where you do see it, however, is when that man has a 20 year old daughter. That man's daughter provides a bridge between her father and a whole group and generation of people with whom he would never normally engage. He might find himself fixing the car of one of his daughter's friends, helping her move house, picking her up from a party where things have gotten out of hand and she's in trouble. You might even see him making a speech at her 21st or wedding. That man's daughter acts as a connection point and her Father does the same thing for her, connecting her to his circle.

If we foster deep, organic, family relationships in the context of our gospel communities then we will find ourselves connecting our spiritual fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers to our natural circles too and we will be well on the way to achieving our vision: to be a gospel centred, organic community.