It is becoming increasingly popular for churches to pioneer new models of "micro church". You may know them by various names, but these intentionally simple, streamlined expressions of the church are often small, volunteer-led, and casual. Could this be the answer for post-congregational Christians?

In this episode of the Everyday Disciple Podcast, Caesar is joined by Gino Curcuruto, as they discuss these new micro church experiences. Are they all the same thing with different names, or are there real, important differences and goals behind each?

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

• Not all of these newer expressions of the church are the same.
• Is a Missional Community a micro church?
• Why existing churches need to check their motives when beginning.
• The Top 3 priorities when starting a new "micro church".

Get started here…

From this episode:

“A lot of the churches are saying, ‘Well our people aren't coming back… so we're going to start micro churches.’ And what they're doing is just basically their church service in their house. In fact, they're not really developing anybody. They're just, ‘Hey, turn on the live stream... And then maybe hang out afterward and have some food.’ I kind of like that aspect better, that's an upgrade from just sitting in pews in silence. And yet it still leaves people, unfortunately, just doing a church service in their homes.”

Each week the Big 3 will give you immediate action steps to get you started.

Download today’s BIG 3 right now. Read and think over them again later. You might even want to share them with others…

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Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

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The Table Philidelphia

Coaching with Caesar and Tina in discipleship and missional living.

Free Discipleship and Missional Resources

You have said so often, I think it's true, that discipleship happens necessarily in relationship.

And my only pushback is that I think discipleship is relationship.

I would say it not just starts, but I think that's the whole part and parcel of the whole thing.

Because what happens is churches that don't

prioritize discipleship within relationship or as relationship, is that we don't build the fluidity into our structures for people to be in relationship.

let's gather thousands of people.

So no one knows one another.

And we wonder why there's no discipleship happening.

Welcome to the Everyday Disciple Podcast, where you'll learn how to live with greater intentionality and an integrated faith that naturally fits into every area of life.

In other words, discipleship as a lifestyle, this is the stuff your parents, pastors, and seminary professors.

Probably forgot to tell you.

And now here's your host Caesar.

Kalinowski okay.

Back together.

I love it.

This is the best.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for joining me again here at the Everyday Disciple Podcast.

I am feeling so good and so rested and ready for everything for stuff.

I just came back from vacation up in the beautiful mountains up in Tennessee, Tina and I, and a handful of other couples.

How fun.

Amazing.

And.

Oh, yeah, we just, we had some good food.

We had some uh rest, we had long walks and long talks about the Gospel and our kids and life and laughed a lot.

And in the free state of Tennessee, there's no masks right now.

So you don't have to wear any kind of medical masks.

Yeah.

And so we both been vaccinated, so we weren't worried about it kind of either way, but.

We want to be sensitive to others, but there it's the law.

You, they, they don't want it.

And they, in fact, they, they can't make you and they've passed laws that no one else can make you.

So it was a blast, but I, I'm glad to be back here with you today.

Hey, before I dive in and I'm going to get started because I've got a great guest on today.

I'll tell you more about that in a second.

Join me over on the Facebook group.

Join the group of people.

There's thousands.

I don't know, thousands and thousands of people in the Everyday Disciple Podcast group on Facebook.

And we get to kind of stay in touch, let you know what's going on.

Let you know about new episodes links.

Get to have conversation there about the Podcast or Missional living or finding each other.

And Hey, where do you live?

And I live here in all of that kind of stuff.

You can find it real easily on Facebook.

But you can also go to Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash Facebook, just as a link.

And it'll take you whoop right to our page.

All right.

I hope you'll do that.

Okay.

To today's topic, whatever the cool name or term of the day is, there's an overlap in ideas for what people are today.

Calling micro church.

Okay.

Some people call it that they're just calling them micro churches or some call it a mini church or simple church, organic church house, church hybrid church, dinner church, or good old school Missional Community.

And none of these seem to have universally accepted definitions and practices.

So, but maybe there.

They're implying some similarities.

And we're going to talk about that.

I'm gonna talk about that with my guests and in the past, these types of church experiences and communities like smaller ones, house churches, or whatever hybrid churches were seen as offshoots of the more traditional church.

They were sort of started and led by people who were worried that much of the church now felt too complex or institutional or performance-based maybe they wanted something simpler more back to the basics.

While I want to talk about all that today.

What are these new micro church experiences?

All about, are they the same thing with different names or are there real practical, important differences in goals perhaps behind each of them?

Well, I'm excited to have a really good friend of mine joined me today for this conversation, the perfect person for this we've worked together for years and years.

We've traveled all over the world together.

I have the utmost respect for him and his thoughts on all of this, because not only is he a great guy, but he's the real deal, a daily practitioner, him and his family of Disciple making that definitely lives all of this as a lifestyle.

Discipleship's a lifestyle for them.

Okay.

So my pal is Gino Kircher Rudo.

And just to give you a little, who's this guy, he's a bi-vocational pastor, which means he and his wife work and they have to make their income and all that.

But they're with the table Philadelphia.

That's what it's called.

And they've started this.

It's a church plant in Philly.

That's made up of several very nimble, intentionally smaller communities.

And he has been leading in local church contexts, all kinds of different ones for nearly 20 years.

So a lot of different perspectives.

Now, along with his wife, Jill and their kids, they've started communities of people who center their lives in the love of Jesus and make disciples in both urban and suburban contexts.

Now he's also coached leaders and.

He's worked for me as a coach and I've coached him and he he's.

Yeah, he's the goods.

And he's coached leaders and lay people across the country to help him do the same.

So you're going to love this guy.

I know you're gonna really like his style and his insights.

Take a listen to our conversation and I'll be back at the end to wrap things up and give you the big three for today.

Here we go.

Hey Gino.

It is so good to, well, see you here, but also to be with you, man, man.

See, it's good to see you too.

It's really good to be on this podcast with you.

I've been listening.

I'm excited to be here with you.

I feel like a way back though, too.

We do.

And I feel like you should have probably been on episode one and then again at 10.

And so here it is like many, many episodes in and I'm like, how could I never have had my buddy Gino on what in the heck?

I was thinking the same thing, man.

I was thinking like, what, how many episodes do you have to do before I get invited?

I'm just kidding.

But what I wanted to say, you probably has, it's probably has crossed your mind.

I'm sorry, but here we are.

And we're going to rock hard today.

We are, um, we are so close, like man, like how many guests have you had that have slept in the same room as you and your wife in like, um, Prague like anyone else?

Or is it just me?

No, this would be, this would be guest number one that is actually shared a room with my wife and I.

I, I think I slept on the footstool.

So I've really like slept at your feet, right?

Yeah.

All right.

We won't get into, yeah, I was going to say, we want to talk about exactly what you slept in the room.

All, you know, a little Gina sandwich.

I just want to make that it's clear that I was at another, I was at another piece of furniture, but yeah, same room.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, it's it's awesome.

Hey, well, we've chance to catch up a little bit on what you're doing, but I want you to tell us a little bit about your family and Philly and your community there.

Philadelphia and the church you're really helping establish.

Cause it's not, it's not your average pair of pants per se, but, but for, you know, but it really flows right out of who we are and how, you know, we've been really building community and making disciples for quite a while now, actually, but it still doesn't look like a traditional church model.

So just, yeah.

Tell us real, real quickly, like a little bit about what's going on, uh, with your family and the community there.

Yeah.

So we, um, a few years ago we, uh, started to establish like disciple-making communities.

Those are idea, just people getting to know people in our neighborhood and seeing the church form around people rather than establishing a form for the church and trying to squeeze people into it.

So what, what we kind of call it is we'd say we call them table communities be, and we'll talk about this probably more on this episode, why we chose that name because of all the meaning assigned to everything else.

So we've started these communities that try to really get involved in the neighborhood, getting to know neighbors and people around us.

And then we've kind of gathered those communities together for one worship service.

Of course, everything's on zoom now.

So any kind of idea you guys are still on zoom.

We, yeah, we're just able to start gathering our table communities back in person outside because of the weather has warmed up.

So we're still, we have some restrictions it's still here in Philly, but the thing that I think is worth emphasizing here is the differences we started with people gathering in homes in the neighborhood or in.

Coffee shops in the neighborhood or cigar lounges in the neighborhood around people that are not interested in the church rather than creating a church gathering and trying to get people.

Yeah.

And, and we just had an episode last episode on, uh, are we.

Uh, like, should we be building out stuffing, like neighborhood or network?

And then I kind of early, I went through like, there's advantages to both, but there's disadvantages to both.

And I was pretty, I was pretty, you know, honest about it too, and came down and said, but if you can, you got to go for proximity.

And so you're all about proximity there with the table network.

You guys

Yeah, we are.

I mean, w w with the table filling, we want to focus on our neighborhoods, but we've noticed this as we contextualize things, we've noticed that a lot of people don't do lights within the neighborhoods because of the way the neighborhoods are now built, you know, with, with public schools, people don't often go to the school in the neighborhood or have their kids in that neighborhood school.

They're in a charter school.

So people do life in different pockets.

So we talk about this too, like yeah.

There are neighborhood focused issues that we can, we can get involved in, but there's also networks of relationships that are probably gonna drive a lot of our, our multiplication or our Disciple, um, discipleship efforts as well.

So yeah, that's, that's a beautiful thing to, to know, and you're doing this as a family.

Right.

You and Jill and the kids.

Four kids, four kids.

Yeah.

They're almost all teenagers now.

See, can you believe it?

Nine, 1916.

That's Ella and Sayla girls and 14 and 12 are boys, Tim and Nate.

So that was our church.

Planting bathroom was just smell like a locker room all the time.

What's worse than that is that we only have one right now.

That's what I mean.

So it's like the line out the bathroom is the hard part.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

You know, I grew up with one bathroom.

I mean, most people did.

Right, right, right, right.

And, and I remember one time, this is going to sound really bad.

This is completely off topic, but one time, um, our, we have three kids.

Right.

But when our kids were younger, um, we had a little problem with them, not flushing the toilet, like with consistency.

And we were having some overflow issues to the point of it.

When so many times, you know, coming like raining down, you know, toilet water in the kitchen, you know, from up above that we lacked, we locked their bathroom for about six months.

Nice.

So they had to come downstairs and use like the powder room and then they would either shout, which open it for showers or they'd shower.

But that way we could monitor it.

Cause it was, it got ridiculous.

Anyway.

No, that makes no sense to, I said what we're talking about today, but you know, maybe some actions cause some connections there.

Hey, like, like I was saying, you know, given in my opening that given the interest now in smaller communities, especially as we're, as we're emerging from COVID and, and a lot of churches aren't really.

Seeing their gathering back.

You know what I mean?

Like if you believe the statistics it's about 30 to 33% of people have kind of come back, like when it's open.

Right, right.

And they say 33 or 35% they think are online, but that's tough to monitor.

Cause you know, everything's a stream, right.

One second, you know, three seconds or whatever.

Um, and then they think they've lost about a third.

Probably like, Hey, you know, once we pop the top off of this that you don't have to be here.

They're not right.

They're all dialing up Tim Keller or something.

Um, but so I really was excited to be able to talk to you about what you're seeing.

You know, good, bad, and the ugly, um, as church leaders and regular folks forge out.

Into newer expressions of being the church together.

Cause I mean, there's like that all today.

We're going to talk about it all, I guess, under the auspices of the term micro churches, you know that, and there's meaning smaller, but they're called many church, simple church, organic church house, church hybrid church, dinner, church, even Missional Community.

Right?

I mean that term hasn't died.

Some people.

They tried something, they called the Missional Community.

It failed.

So they go like, ah, we don't do that anymore.

It's like we do micro church instead.

Okay, wait a second.

You know?

Right, right.

So, which of those have you participated in so far?

There are micro church, miniatures, simple church.

I feel like, I feel like it's so great because the most of these terms have become like what I'd call empty signifiers.

They don't actually mean anything.

We just attach the them to try to change the meaning of what we're already doing.

And as, as you know, like we've seen that happen with.

With all.

So I think, but if we, if we're going to go by, uh, distinct definitions for each of these, I think I've participated in all of them and decide this to some degree, um, and said, and I think there's, there's emphases on each one that are really healthy and good.

But at the end of the day, I think the there's one distinction that we could probably talk about the most is like, what is the, what is the primary.

Um, portion of the church, like what is the basic building unit of the church?

What is a church and then move from there?

Because that's where I see the differentiation, like a small group is not the same as a Missional Community and my understanding because of where you're starting from and what you mean.

Well, your focus is exactly right.

We've talked about it a lot on the podcast.

Generally, if people are honest, you say, Hey, who or what is the focus of, of your churches?

Small groups.

Us.

Yeah.

Right.

It was us.

In fact, they were created if anybody is old enough, like me to remember when small groups started, um, they were created.

Very consumeristic like, Hey, let's, you know, like no one feels connected at the church service because we're sitting in silence.

So let's try to create some sort of a vehicle where we can close the back door of people leaving and attrition.

They don't feel like they know each other and that, and so then you started these small groups, but let's let them pick what night of the week works best and the same age and stage of life.

Let's not cause any kind of friction because you have to learn to bear with one another.

Why would we do that?

And we're certainly not gonna invite our neighbors because they won't want to talk about.

The pastor's sermon from last night or whatever.

And then you get to, like, this is like a pet peeve where it's like, well, we have a closed small group now.

Right.

And then we take the summers off and it's just got worse and worse and more consumers sexually driven.

Right.

So from its inception, it really wasn't an outward focus.

Hopefully when we hear terms like Missional Community, it's, you know, it's Missional, what's the mission it's make Disciple.

So right from the get go, the goal is.

Hey, we're going to start trying to make disciples of ourselves and others and, and, and there's an more outward expression to it, but what's been your like years past when you heard the term house church, what did that represent?

Do you think?

Oh man, house church, when I first.

Thought about it.

And first got experienced in it.

It was like, Hey, there's this one patriarch.

That's going to teach the Bible to all of his kids.

And you might get included in there now that's really, um, kinda kind of condescending and rude, but that's only 60% of house churches.

I was going to say.

It's a little bit of an over, over reach, you know, but, but it, and then th the another iteration of that when people were like, Hey, no, it's not that it's, it's more than a Bible study.

We're trying to do life together.

And that's, that's a beautiful thing, but then it became like let's try and cram everything we do as a church into a three hour gathering in someone's home.

So it became like, Church in a house, not house church.

Well, and I think we're seeing that again right now is, you know, regardless of what you're calling in, a lot of the churches are going to war people aren't coming back.

And so we're going to start micro churches.

And what they're doing is they're just basically doing their church service in their house.

Right.

In fact, they're not really developing anybody.

They're just like, Hey, turn on the live stream.

Yeah.

And then maybe, and then maybe hang out afterwards and have some food, which I kind of like that aspect better.

You know what I mean?

Like, I feel like that's an upgrade for years.

We've said, Hey, if you're gonna, if you're going to do streaming to multi-campus stuff, you know, why not just stream it to houses and let people be in smaller groups that actually know each other.

So in that sense, I'm for that, you know, like.

I think it's a better upgrade than that.

And yet it still leaves people, unfortunately just doing a church service in their, in their house.

Right.

And then they go, but you know, we could stream it at any time.

So let's do it.

Let's do it Wednesday night.

I can't make ones, you know?

So now you get into that stuff too.

Yeah.

See, like I've seen, um, a lot of different, and I've said this to people too.

Like we don't, we don't define the church by where it gathers.

Cause when we would call it like school, gym, church, you know, or cafeteria church or something like that, the church isn't defined by the location that it can, or, or an ought not to be at least in my, my thinking will language, culture.

Right, right.

But what's the purpose of the gathering, use a label that speaks to your purpose, which is why I'd always preferred a Missional Community because it's a Community on mission, but we've like we said, I used to debate this years ago.

Like, should we call it a small group?

You call it a Community group.

Should we call it a tribe group?

Should we call it, uh, you know, the name of the church group, you know, like it's part of a church in New York called grace, grace groups.

I'm like, yeah, that's okay.

That's really, you know, very us centered again.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, and I always opted, I always opted for Missional Community, if nothing else, for us to be reminded of what we're here even doing.

Right.

And then we always fought the trend too.

You know, how we call it, going to church.

And we hate that, you know?

Cause like the building is like the church instead of the People.

Well then we saw people starting to do the same thing with like, Hey, what are you doing on Thursday?

Oh, I'm going to Missional Community.

Yeah.

It's like, I'm a part of a Missional Community.

Um, we're the church, you know?

Yeah.

I think that, I think that all also, you know, part of the challenge is that we hear language, especially if we're transitioning existing.

Movements or structures or systems.

And we hear language and we love the description that's attached to it.

So we change our language, knowing that language creates culture, but we never actually do any training or modeling.

So we call our small groups, Missional communities, and then we say, Missional communities fail.

I've seen this a lot of times has, have you.

Right.

Same thing with micro church.

They're like, well, I'm afraid just on a frame or something, but I feel like.

There is there's this tension there because there is a need to define it, something new.

Like I can see the, the desire to have the term micro church be significant and meaning, because we've had all these transitions.

Yeah.

We'd call it Missional Community, but it's not, you know, and so we're going, okay, great.

We got to scrap this and call what we're trying to do something else or what we're doing something else.

And so we're perpetually just coming up with new names for some of the same old ideas, which is let's have a community that is discipling.

One another and makes disciples as well.

Yeah, no kidding.

And language does create culture.

We're big on that.

So I think, I think choose what you want to call it, but make sure you infuse it with meaning now.

Yes.

Um, in the past, whenever there was like house churches or Missional Community, if they weren't like part of the traditional church itself, which in most cases they weren't.

I think that, I think the traditional church always saw those types of things.

You know, communities or expressions, um, like they were rebels.

Yeah.

And many times they just created smaller versions of what they had come from.

But now with no one telling them what to do, do or not to do.

And there is still a whole, there's a whole strain of it that were like, you can read books and get training on how to start your own house church.

And it's like, and there's even like a whole huge stream and there's no leaders, nobody leads.

Right.

And, and I think I love what they're trying to say.

It's like the only Jesus leads, he's the leader.

Right.

I get it.

But like, none of us know what we're doing, so who's going to tell us well that person's leading, you know what I mean?

There's lead.

Like they, they, uh, they're so fearful of someone leading and I think really it's like, don't be fearful of leadership.

Be fearful of.

You know, over-lording, right?

That's, that's what Jesus spoke out against, but he clearly, he clearly led and then he said in it now all authority is mine and now it's yours.

I'm sharing with you.

So I don't think we have to fear that.

I think what we want to be careful is is that we're.

Really inclusive, hyper inclusive, that we're always looking to see everybody mature and grow in their ownership and use of their gifting and all the fivefold and all that.

And so, I don't know.

What's your thoughts on how the, it used to be that all these little things used to be seen as like, Hey, those are the rebels and now it's like, yeah, I think it goes back to what do we define as the primary organizing structure of the church?

Because if we're saying that it's the Sunday worship gathering that unless you have that you don't have a church, then I think that would necessarily require us to look at a house church and say, that's not really a church.

Those guys are rebels or Missional Community as being rebel.

And, and we, so we it's going back to, well, what is our.

What is our end goal here?

And what do we define as the church?

Like I look at it acts two and it has a pretty good description of most of the church activities eating together, fellowshipping apostles, teaching prayer, and then Matthew 28 saying that, yeah, as we go, we're going out into the world, we make disciples, baptize them.

You got, you got all of the, the ordinances or sacraments wrapped up in those two passages.

That's the church, right?

Are those things being practiced.

Usually each of these labels that people are pointing the finger at, they're not practicing all of those things.

They might be heavy on the gathering together and fellowship and study, but not the go and make kind of masks.

I've seen it plenty.

And maybe you have to wear those when connected to a larger church or traditional church, even when they sort of sanction those smaller micro church gatherings.

And they're letting them go beyond small group.

Now they're calling, you know, how's church or simple church or micro church, they're still saying, but you can't baptize and you can't do communion there.

Right.

And you're forbidding what Jesus said, right.

Always do this, you know, which is exactly.

I mean, that's, that's where it makes it not church.

Then in some ways, like, that's what you need to be.

I'm going to say that, that, like, that might be where we ruffle some feathers, you know, I'm not looking to do that.

That's not my aim, but I'm saying what is the primary structure of the church?

I would say.

Yeah.

What we call a Missional Community or a table Community in our context.

Yeah, they do all of those things.

We encourage and equip people to practice those things as part of a larger church where a church of communities, because we see the, the help that is brought in by having your.

Teachers and equippers do group teaching and equipping rather than expect each one of your communities to be able to pull off that kind of stuff at the same time.

So until there's a maturity of the gifting there, right.

Until there's that maturity of gifts, which is that's called like a family, like I don't.

You know, like my, my wife cooks in our family until the kids could cook a little more, you know, and I would cook and now she's training the grandkids, but she still does most of the heavy lifting when they're around, you know, it's not like, Oh, wait a minute, how come we can't like get up there and burn our hands, you know?

And they, and now that they're on their own, you know, they don't just like not eat right.

They do.

Now they have some experience and training that they can cook.

Exactly.

And they take that on.

Elsewhere.

Yeah.

Well, you're, you're speaking to them.

What's the primary structure of the church, probably organizing principle.

We've been using that language for a long time and we really do believe it's the smaller communities based on what we see in scripture and it's discipleship as the mission.

So wherever you best get to make disciples and have the most amount of interaction and.

Yeah.

The ability to have the Gospel speak into all of life, that's going to be your primary organizing structure.

So it's going to, for sure, it's going to be smaller communities because as we've said, a trillion times sitting in rows in silence, listening to one person talk is not a killer environment, therefore for discipleship.

So therefore that's not the primary organizing structure.

It's a legitimate one, but it's not our primary one.

Right.

I'm glad to see the churches getting back to that a little bit.

Now, do you think as, as churches are starting.

You know, a micro church or a house church or individuals are, do you think they all have the same goals in mind or do you, do you see people using these new sort of smaller expressions with different hope for end goals?

Well, I mean, I can speak in extremes and polemics and say, I know it's not true because I've been approached by other pastors in my city saying, Hey, you do those Missional communities.

I need you to come and teach us how to do that.

And, um, how's that financially viable.

I was actually asked that in a coffee shop.

So I know that everyone doesn't now that's one example and an extreme, but I think that's not going to be all of them.

But I, I know that they don't, because like you mentioned earlier, a lot of people are trying to manage people and have them have relationships.

And so they start these smaller things too, kind of occupy space for people to have relationship there's value in that.

Yeah.

Or they think if we put people in smaller groups, they'll automatically go out onto mission into mission, you know, they'll automatically like involve themselves in the lives of people around them, because it's more, um, I guess it's simpler with a smaller group of people.

Right.

And all of those things are good, good ideas, but it's not how it works.

So not yet been discipled.

Exactly.

And there again, it's like, they're trying to measure containers, not right.

Disciples made.

Right.

And so when yeah.

And that's what we're seeing too, is these, uh, really sincere, really smart leaders who are now saying, Hey, there's we gotta get some, you know, smaller things going.

Cause that's where our people are at.

That's what they're wanting.

They never themselves were all usually discipled.

And they certainly weren't equipped to make disciples in community and grow in the gospel fluency that it's going to be needed to actually Disciple people's hearts and help their own people die to their fear of man and even, you know, how to speak good news to things.

Not just hand out a track.

Right.

They still haven't gotten any yeah.

Equipping.

And now they're just, they're just organizing people into, like you said, containers and it's like, that's, that's not our goal, is it?

Yeah, no, I think, I think one of the issues of the way, the way that I define it is there's a difference between, um, our values and our practices, like values are aspirational.

You know, we, we are a church that makes disciples and I would say, well, what are your practices that actually make disciples?

You know, so a lot of people have aspirational values when they create these communities, but don't have experienced practitioners to walk in that and model that.

So we have a couple of practices that we named for people.

I'll just give you two of them.

One is, um, ironically it's called the table.

Um, because we end up means, you know, not just the Lord's supper, but also.

Um, tabling having meals together, having time together with people over, um, coffee in different tables throughout the city.

And so that, that says that we practice that we practice shared life through that, that, um, practice.

And also we'll say ordinary life.

We named that we named ordinary life because it gets missed that these aren't extraordinary things.

When you are hosting a huge party, though, it could be that it's the normal season of life in which you practice hospitality and all of this, this life together.

And with your neighbors, with your networks of friends, with people in your community.

And that's something that people can hold onto and say, I do that well now, are you doing that with the intention of the Gospel?

And that's see, that's so experiential though.

That's almost, yes.

Uh, hard to teach in a class or a course or something.

Right.

Maybe impossible.

Right.

Remember, remember all the years of us leading Soma schools together and people would come and they'd stay, you know, for a week, 10 days.

And they not only were they always by God's grace blown away, but they all said this it's so normal.

Like it's so normal yet.

Intentional.

Like, I dunno what I was expecting, but it's so normal, but full of the Gospel, we just had a friend here a few weeks ago, staying with us.

Someone would have coaching and her and her husband and their church planters.

And they're great.

And, and we had a really nice three or four days together and she said the exact same thing.

Yeah, like your life's really normal.

And we met friends and we hung out and we laughed and we cooked and we cried a little bit and we hugged and we talked Gospel a lot and we, we, we watched comedy and it was, it was really normal, but the whole thing seemed kind of bathed in intentionality, in the Gospel, all soaking into it all.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, that's my experience with you when I went to Soma school and then I was, I had time to kill afterwards and I was going to sit in the hotel while.

The person I went with was going to prep the sermon that he was going to be preaching the next day.

And you're like, why don't you just hang out?

And I thought, who does that?

Who invites me over to their house to meet their family, watch a movie, have dinner together.

It was so normal.

And I, I mean, as much as you can in any way, like if you don't want to come, you know?

Right.

And so I say as much as I got from Soma school, which was helpful in many ways, what?

That, that like afternoon evening with you, I went back home and I was like, well, this is pretty simple.

I am going to be doing these things.

I might just want to include people into those.

And that's informed how I've led this church plant and equipped others to say, this is really normal and that's a missing piece.

So to your question, that's missing from most people's transition is that is to make it normal because we think it's gotta be really exceptional because it's hard, but it's simple, right?

It's, it's hard, it's hard work, but it's simple to do.

And, uh, having practitioners to lead and model that.

In the normalcy is how you make these, these things actually happen.

And it's not just the hanging out part cause people can hang out like, okay, I'm gonna start invite neighbors over more.

But I have no idea how to bring the good news of the gospel to bear to the myriad of bad news things going on in their heart and life and emotions and dreams and shattered dreams and abuses and joys of life in all of it.

And so that's the other part of it.

And we're constantly reinforcing that with the folks that we coach saying, if is if an, as you'll grow in gospel fluency and it's a language, so you're not gonna learn it in a weekend or two courses or reading my book or Jeff's bars, you know, like you're, but as you grow in gospel fluency and.

You were up in that interaction, a normal life where people are doing that.

You're going to see people moving from unbelief to belief, coming to faiths, walking in the ways of Jesus.

But you can just end up being either an isolated church, culdesac of Christians, or you could be a few Christians that are like the nicest people in the world that never get around to Jesus with anybody outside of that circle.

Yes, because I think we, and especially now, um, nowadays in our cultural moment where there's more and more, um, hesitancy to share good news.

We don't, we won't, we'll say evangelize, I'm not going to evangelize, you know, I hear that from people.

Yeah.

And I, and I understand a lot of where that's coming from and some of that is worth digging into for sure.

And analyzing, but I think the missing piece is that our imagination for this as either, we.

Force feed People, this Gospel, or we on the other extreme, the other ditch we fall into is we don't say anything until they bring it up.

Right.

And something in the middle is learning to listen, engage, ask questions, and tie the story that God's unfolding with the story that they're telling in simple ways.

And that, and that's, that's a beautiful thing that makes this ordinary.

But it's also really hard because it takes some experience to learn how to do that.

It takes some failing.

There's some intentionality to say I'm going to apply myself to being discipled and learning and getting help and equipping and coaching and help.

Otherwise probably look down the road five, 10 years.

It'll be the same situation.

Let me ask you this in light of all of that gene, Geno, um, how structured do you think these smaller.

Experiences, you know, call we'll call them whenever we want.

Right.

But how structured do they need to be?

So they don't just end up being a, a smaller version of the once a week.

Sure.

Service now done in our home on our own terms.

Yeah, I think that's good.

I think that they, they, there should be some structure there needs, there necessarily needs to be some structure for the reasons you just said, like, we're not just going to come and hang out.

We can do that.

And I think there's value in doing that, but I think there's value in having an intention for why we're hanging out, like when we're starting a community and we say we're hanging out because we're getting to know one another and.

Hear each other's stories and how we're relating, but that's a structured, that's a structure that we work in, right.

It's not just no structure.

So at the same time, they need to be fluid because that's one of the beauties of these smaller communities is that they're flexible.

Right.

So we want to have.

We want to have kind of some, I would say like, like a spine to it.

Not, not an exoskeleton, that's like a really hard shell that you can't get in.

We're going to call these jellyfish communities now.

Exactly.

That's right.

Um, so, so that's where I get the ideas of the practices as well.

Become very helpful for a structure.

We don't name specific things that you have to do.

We say things that we're doing that we're going to do with intentionality.

So shared meal is something that we really value, um, pre and post COVID that'll be actually happening for Austin.

Right.

And, uh, um, and other things.

Prayer.

Um, we, we just, we asked the question, what's God doing in your life and what are you going to do about it?

I mean, we might not say it so starkly, but that's basically the conversation that seemed to happen and what basically what you're Disciple describing there, Gino is the terms.

And I know you're familiar with these.

We talked about there's organized aspects to our community, and there's a lot of organic stuff that then flows out of those few things.

And that's just like our families.

You look at your family, there's some organized stuff, but really there's only.

Probably less than a dozen, 10 things that you organize, like religiously in a family and a million organic interactions that now you have, you reap, you have that opportunity.

And I think that's the thing is people need to decide what will our organize things.

And it, if it's just a once a week meeting where we try to.

Basically have a small church service.

Right?

Well, you're kind of just having a smaller version of what you had when you went and sat in silence.

There, maybe it's a little funner and I, like I said, I think it is an upgraded to stick around, have meals because at least then there's some organics happening.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

I was going to ask you if we could talk a little bit about, um, the, the necessity you said flows out of when you talked about.

Organized and organic and I'm sure I know you've talked about this on episodes in the podcast.

I think that's, I just want to put like a highlighter over that because that's really important that a lot of people will see or experience or hear stories that you or I, or others might tell of what they've seen in life Disciple making.

And they think that sounds so normal and organic and it's because it flows out of.

The organized as well.

So it's not just kind of anything goes, it can't be because you can't organize anyone around that.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And I think we get to, we get to choose what those organized will be.

Yes with intention.

And what would you say are the top, like if there's a church, there's people who are church leaders that listen to the podcast and we haven't scared them off just yet.

Um, what, what, what would you say should be, or could be the top, maybe three priorities for a church that's trying to start new.

You know, more out there, more outward focused micro churches or Missional communities or whatever they want to call them as part of their ultimate church expression.

What might their, what my three top priorities be for them as they start these smaller micro versions.

Yeah, I think, I think the first, the first question that I've learned to ask is like, where is God present and at work already?

And I don't mean just in your church, body, I mean, in your city, in your neighborhood, in your town, what are you seeing that God is doing?

Because oftentimes we take this approach that unless we do something, there will be, you know, discipleship, we're bringing in Jesus to the inner city.

Exactly man.

You know, you know that I said heaven last week.

I said, here I circled some areas you might want to consider joining us in.

I tell people all the time that want to come in and bring Jesus to the inner city.

Like he's already here and we don't want you please stay out.

I don't really say it that frankly, but I just said it to a lot of people.

Oh, it's okay.

I probably did.

Yeah.

Um, yeah.

But I think, I think it's important to notice what's going on and how you might participate with God.

So that, I mean, that's, that's like one point that has many sub-points like who are the people that are already experiencing disciple-making within the church and are know their neighbors kind of have this apostolic edge, um, lean on them.

That would be one thing that I'd say is, um, is really important.

The second, like priority would be who is willing to learn this.

Together.

Like who's, who's a learner and wants to participate in failing forward to do this because it's not going to be perfect the first time.

Yeah, for sure.

Now, do you think there's any differences between the PR and by the way, I got to just back up a second.

I love the fact that that's outward focused first.

Yes.

Right?

I know it's not this same old.

Consumeristic like, well, we gotta get, we gotta keep our people somehow attached to the church and they're not going to come back to the building anymore.

And you know, it's, it's, you know, you know, it's really weird.

It's paralleling what's going on in the culture when it's the work from home thing.

Yeah.

Everybody's like, Hey, you know what?

We kind of proved that the company grew like seven last year, we were all working from home.

Like the year before when I said, could I work from home Fridays?

And you said, absolutely not.

Like, but now I've been home for like a 52 Fridays or something.

Like, and I'm hitting my numbers, like crazy boss.

Could I maybe have a couple of, you know, so, you know, things have changed.

And I, and I really think for the better, I think we're finding more margin and more space and an opportunity.

And I know this is not a crazy thing right now, it's going on.

And we, we predicted it would be, but as COVID restrictions are lifting, and I know they're not lifting everywhere in the same fashion, but where they are even a little, uh, the folks that we're working with in our community and, and the people we coach, they're saying there are so many people come into our open table and our barbecue.

Like we started it up again.

We're getting back into a predictable pattern.

It's crazy.

I got a Voxer this morning from one of our groups.

They said we just did our first one.

35 people came, you know, everybody else is like, how did you get the word out?

It's like, all you have to do is just like flash the front, like twice the people like, is there something is there, let's go there.

People there let's go.

People there's humans.

Now, do you think there's any different priorities?

If it's a church trying to start these new, smaller things, or if it's an individual, you know, trying to, yeah, I think, I think, um, I think, I don't think the priorities are different.

I think maybe how you're able to.

To do those or live in those might be different.

Like the first, one of seeing where God is present in at work, you can do that regardless.

The second one of who wants to learn with you, that might be harder if you're starting out.

Like for us, it was who wants to learn with me?

Well, Jill and my four kids.

But you know, that, that was it.

Did I remember you guys?

You remember.

Hard for a long time by yourself.

And we would celebrate like, there's another couple that you know of faith.

I mean, you had people always, you always had PTs, but there was a couple of faith that have like, they'd been Christians more than a week, you know?

And then they're not getting transferred to a job in another city because that was happening for years.

And, and so that one's harder.

But I think then that will also determine what I would say is the third thing is like, how and why.

And what are you going to do?

Like, how are you going to do these things?

Why are you doing them and why I'm not knowing that, but what are you going to do?

So I think all of those questions, so that means like, are you going to gather weekly?

What are your you're organized?

Actions, how are you going to get to know people in the neighborhood?

What kind of gatherings might you get involved in or places might you inhabit, or people might be inviting you into things?

Are you inviting them into things?

So living in the suburbs for a while, where we started some communities, we found that there everyone liked each other, but there was no organizing place for people to gather because everyone just.

Parked in their garage or their driveway and went inside.

So we brought the barbecue into the front yard and just put out flyers and had 40 50 people join us in the front saying, thank you for doing this right now in the city.

We don't have front yards.

We don't have any yard in our current place.

And so, but where people gather are in the local pubs and in the coffee shops or the barbershop, and I'd go to those places and gather with people there.

So I wasn't the one bringing the environment.

I was just participating.

And those are things that we need to name.

Yeah.

And I think as much as trying to decide those things is, is also, you've given some thought and, and, or getting some help figuring out what's the order of those.

Because oftentimes I find people say like, well, we have to have some Bible study.

We have to have a period of time and we should have a worship time into, by that they need singing time.

And then we have some time with our neighbors and then we it's like, wait a second.

What's the order of those?

Like, if it's, if this is church starting.

Uh, you know, on micro-community and there's a whole bunch of Christians that are gathering to do it.

Are they doing in proximity?

Do they know any common people?

It's like, you get to, you get to do this in proximity versus I just like them.

I know, I know they're 40 minutes away, but they, our kids love their kids and it's like, well, wait a second.

You're starting off on the, this is about me foot.

Um, but if you're going to do that great.

Okay.

That's, that's a family sort of dinner time as it were or whatever, or maybe you're listening to the service together, uh, as, you know, sermon series or stream or whatever.

Okay.

Then what's the other rhythm.

That's going to be like an open table or something that you are you're building relationships and looking for.

People a Peace to identify and invite them in.

And then what are you inviting them into?

Is there, is it just one step from, Hey, my neighbors seem to really be digging us and we're becoming good friends.

I guess my only next step would be, you want to watch my church's live stream?

You know, like you gotta sit and think through some of those things because.

They probably won't Hey, a bunch of us get together and we watch this one guy talk for 45 minutes and its kind of interesting if you know him and we sing a bunch of songs that aren't so great.

Yeah.

I'd love to, maybe it'd be helpful to just kind of walk through the some of the.

I mean a fast forward of an, a couple of years of our process.

Access was meeting people in the neighborhood.

I'm finding that a lot of people weren't going to come into our home initially, but would spend lots of time with them in public spaces.

So we spent a lot of time building those relationships.

Seeing people come to faith and gather in our home or somewhere in that, that process, other people moving into the neighborhood or, or other Christians in the neighborhood joining with us.

To where we kind of filled our house, which isn't saying much.

Cause it was a tiny house.

You get 14 people in there.

Do you guys have, do you have a really long table, bro?

Yeah, we do have a huge, it was mostly table in our house.

Um, and then what we decided to do is we said like, Hey, we have these people that we're in relationship with.

They're interested.

They just are kind of like in this process of what's their relationship.

Like, so we started having.

Community meals.

We rented a space that we could fit 40 people instead of 14 and had what we called dinner church, and then brunch church.

We switched it during football season brunch church.

Right.

You should maybe consider calling it sometimes of the year that pre football game church pre pre Eagles.

pre pre game church right here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And in that, like we just started that that'd be that filled up with people from the neighborhood that were curious and were in relationship with us, but didn't feel like meeting in someone's home was like a bridge too far for them at that point, at that point.

But, um, that didn't take long before that changed and we ended up with.

Two communities.

And we had to figure out like, okay, now what do we do with these things?

So I think you, when you say, like, how do we prioritize?

What do we do?

All of those things happen based on the people that were intentionally seeking to build relationships with, to Disciple, to Jesus and in Jesus, not some prefabbed idea that they fit into, but they have to fit into.

And so what I would say about that is.

Because that's fluid, you need help to learn how to do that.

We don't normally do that.

So we need people to walk alongside us, or maybe like some of the stuff that you do with coaching to help us kind of navigate that and say like, Hey, I'm seeing this, what do you think?

And then you can ask questions or we can ask questions.

You know, those things are really important because this is.

Is, like I said, it's hard but simple.

And you need someone to help you with that.

I think one of the hardest things is just trying to unlearn the only groove most of us grew up in with church and, and when there's a huge program at great expense and lots of people looking at that same, roughly two hours a week.

Well then your solution to everybody's next step is generally get them into some aspect of that program.

Yeah, they might, and maybe it's Sunday, maybe it's a mops thing or maybe it's, you know, an Awana for the kids or a VBS.

Cause it's nice route or whatever, but we're always still like, well, I guess our next step is get getting into program.

And what you're, what you're saying is as, as you see who God's bringing into your life and you're making disciples of them, cause that's the mission.

Yeah.

Right.

Then the structures of that community.

Though they might have some commonalities with other communities, are the ones that sprung up out of the same.

They might be a little bit different and they're organized things might not all be exactly the same.

And certainly the organics, like, you know, like you're saying, like for people who.

Live in a neighborhood who have yards and all that stuff and, or a bigger houses and all that, their rhythms and even their organics, they're going to look real different than the organics of I I'm meeting guys at the cigar lounge all the time.

And a few of us got together for meals with our spouses and we got to know each other and then that one family started coming to faith.

And so now they're in our house more, but we can't have 40 people in our house.

There just isn't that much space other people have that much space.

So yeah.

But it's it's I love what you're saying.

It's People first, not a program.

And that's, that kind of brings me right back to the top of the talk here where some of the, some of the outwardness and new micro church expressions and smaller things, though.

I'm so excited.

They are starting program first.

Like yeah, because that's all they know and they're going well, we have a big program here.

We'll start a small program.

And what do you do next?

Get people into that.

And, and that's what they're working on.

So I really love your emphasis here of look for what Jesus is doing people first and get the help and equipping you need just don't assume that you're going to get through this.

And especially if you're not fluent in the gospel, it's like, what are you going to have to offer?

Yes.

I think that, I think that one of the ways that might stir the imagination of listeners, I hope or confront some of the challenges that they have is to say the church.

Um, the form follows the function that's and if we're not free to do that, there's a lot of F's there.

If we're not free to do that, we're gonna, we're gonna have a lot of challenges in making disciples, because what, so what I mean by that is how you gather, like, are developing brunch church.

Wasn't a strategy because we were like, Oh, this is going to be great.

Like, if we do brunch, that'll attract people.

Cause they like to eat brunches all over Philly.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

We're going to set these sites up all over.

Um, it was.

These particular people that we're building relationship.

This is when they're available.

This is what they'd like to do.

And this is a, this is a vehicle that we can use.

So the structure of our church formed around that because we prioritize disciple-making.

And what we saw is we'd have, um, people from other churches come in and visits.

They wouldn't even tell us.

Some of them wouldn't tell us that they weren't, uh, that they were from there.

And then they tried to replicate it and it didn't work.

And then I would get an email and I'd say, well, you're not following.

The, the pattern of what you need to do, which is where are your relationships?

We're not doing this because it's hip and cool, right?

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think people need to consider that as like, what are you starting?

It's first, where is there actually God always already working in something.

And how do you gather around that and, and move it.

You're scaring the bejesus out of people because there, again, you know, I know you just dropped a lot of F words on people and it's going to come up with that in my social media, like, come listen, Gino drops the F word, you know?

So, um, but, uh, but you're, you're, you know, a scarier word for a lot of people is the R word.

Relationship.

Oh, you're kidding.

I don't know how to even do that.

I just, I just, uh, set up a post for next next week to share some thoughts on like, how come we don't know how to make friends anymore, you know?

And here's some, here's some real basic stuff, some categories now.

Here's what I, you know, here's how you say this and here's how you're transitioning, but like categories of thinking of like how this is, how friends are made, and guess what, if you don't have any friends, you're not gonna have anybody to Disciple.

Yeah, I know People there's old school.

People are like, Oh, I see you got to be friends with people before they can know Jesus.

It's like, no, you don't have to, but guess what?

You're probably gonna need to because they don't care about you.

They're not gonna care what you say about some life altering relationship with him.

And it's about today.

Not just about them.

Afterlife.

And so this is really count the cost.

Jesus, you can say, Hey, count the costs here because this isn't, you know, Jesus said, I'm the way the truth in the Sunday service or the micro church.

I'm the way the truth and the life I want all of it.

So the cost that's going to, that's going to take some relationship and it just is then that's why Jesus spent three and a half years, pretty much 24 seven with his.

Buddies and, and that breaks my heart.

It says that is essential and some still did not believe.

Yikes.

Jesus.

What did you miss?

You, you skipped over week nine of the study.

That was an important part of the discipleship course in the week nine.

Yeah, I think, uh, uh, see you say I, um, I'm not sure where we are on time, but I, I just, I don't want to open a whole can of worms, but you, you have said so often, I think it's true.

That discipleship happens necessarily in relationship.

And I, my only pushback is that I think discipleship is relationship.

I would say not just starts, but I think that's the whole part and parcel of the whole thing.

And if we don't know, because what happens is churches that don't.

Prioritize discipleship within relationship or as relationship is that we don't, we don't build the fluidity into our structures for people to be in relationship.

We build, we build structures that say, let's gather thousands of people, so no one knows one another.

And we wonder why there's no discipleship happening.

Well, there's no relationship.

And those vehicles, if you will.

Wow.

That's powerful.

Well, we're, we are running a little long, but I'm telling you that will not hit the cutting room floor as they say that was gold brother.

That was gold.

Hey, Gino.

I could keep talking to you forever, brother.

And I, again, I'm so sorry.

It's taken us so long to get you on the podcast.

I guarantee you will not be that much longer.

Again, there's so many things we could and should be talking about, and I know people are gonna appreciate your heart and your experience in this and, uh, the Peace with which.

You're living this, you and Jill are living this I, and I've watched it.

I mean, I've known you a really long time now, but I've just watched it.

You guys have gone through what other people would say was really hard times planting or starting these communities.

And you just did it with grace and fluidity and, and normalcy as you raise four beautiful, amazing children along the way who also love God and love people.

Hey, go figure.

Right.

Right.

That's amazing.

So, Hey, it's been so good being with you.

Thanks.

Thanks for the time.

And thanks for your bringing your heart and the reality of your life and on the reality of this life, we all get to live to share today.

Thanks, man, man, it's been great being with you.

Thank you.

I love that guy.

So smart.

So humble, so normal and, and definitely one of my favorite traveling buddies ever.

I hope you love.

I love his heart as much as I do.

And, uh, wow.

He is a wealth spring of wisdom and good news and kind of, like I said, you know, in our, in our talk there in our interview, he's just so chill about it.

Even though he's been through, wow.

We could do episodes and episodes have some of the mountains that he's had to climb where people have thrown him into digits and all that, but he's, he is really centered on the love of Christ in his life and the Gospel.

So I hope you enjoyed that.

I hope it helps you think through this issue of micro churches, many churches, house, churches, whatever you want to call them and maybe gives you some ideas on how to either course correct.

Or if you're thinking about.

Starting to implement one of these or start one of these, some ways to begin and maybe some priorities there.

Well, as always, before I wrap up, I want to leave you with the big three takeaways from today's topic so that, you know, if nothing else you don't miss these and you can get this as a printable PDF.

If you like these three big three sort of summary statements here, you can just go to Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash big three and zoom we'll send it right out to you.

Here are the big three for this week.

First when starting any new expressions of the church in your city, begin by looking for where God is already at work.

I loved when he said that, join him, join God and ask the spirit to show you what to begin to do to build relationships for the sake of the gospel, where God's already at work.

And if there are more Epistolic types in your church that are already doing fruitful ministry out there, we'll fan those flames and send people and resources to join them.

So instead of trying to just create structures, second discipleship is relationship.

Oh, that was also powerful when he said that.

And it's what it is.

It's relationship with God that we're inviting others into.

As we do normal life with people bringing the gospel of the kingdom to bear in and through those relationships, discipleship is happening.

See discipleship is relationship.

God is not looking for more smaller containers of people popping up all over.

He's looking for relationships with people who are disciples of his son.

Jesus.

And third, get the equipping and help you need to seed fruitful new micro churches.

Most people in church leaders were not taught or discipled in these ways.

And to throw a bunch of new, smaller, simple structures and programs together without the needed gospel, fluency and relationship building skills is sure to fail and frustrates you and your people.

So you could guess at it, or he maybe can get a little bit of help and I'd love to help.

And maybe Jean will, could help.

I'll give you a link to the table church in the show notes, so you can kind of see more what's going on there, table Philadelphia.

And if you're interested in learning a full framework, For discipleship and mission, that's really how you would start these types of communities and even grow in your own gospel fluency in everyday life.

I'd love to set up a short zoom call to get to know you better answer any questions you have about how we coach and how we do it.

Tina and I do it together as couples with couples and we can get you started and love to help.

You can learn more about that and what we do by going to Everyday Disciple dot com forward slash coaching Everyday Disciple comfort slash coaching.

Leesy well, time's up, I've run a little long today, but I think it was worth it.

Join me next week as we'll continue to dig into discipleship and mission as a lifestyle together.

Talk to you soon.

Thanks for joining us today.

For more information on this show and to get loads of free discipleship resources, visit Everyday Disciple dot com.