Great post from Jonathan Dodson from Austin City Life on the importance of Community Groups for loving the city and understanding church not as a church building or Sunday Service, but rather as Tim Chester and Steve Timmis say,"a gospel-centered community on mission." Missional Communites are meant to make this happen. At Austin City Life, they call their groups City Groups and say, "this is where the church is the church to one another and the city." I love this description.

Dodson goes on to explain why Sunday isn't enough. This can be a huge difficulty for the church. Church is reduced to Sunday worship. If church is only the Sunday gathering or bound to the building, then we cannot carry out the one another's of the Scriptures. Community Groups can be a structure to help us love one another. Dodson says the following, "(These Communities) are flexible church structures designed to facilitate the people of God living out their intended life together. They are not a 'purer' expression of church than Sunday gatherings, but they are a much-neglected expression of church in North America."

Dodson explains that our life together in Community and Sunday Worship should not appear to be two events, but rather a "steady state of community." Community doesn't happen primarily in the meeting according to Dodson, but in all of our life. He says, "it is a constant flow of social, gospel, and missional connections throughout the week. It’s not adding special 'community building' events to your already full calendar. It’s inviting people into your existing calendar." This is a beautiful way of understanding our life as the church on mission together.

Dodson says to engage in this 'community on mission' vision, we will need to make 3 shifts.

Conceptual.

Church doesn't equal a meeting or an event; it is the people of God on the mission of Christ.

Practical.

We see that this is Biblical, and we are willing to repent of living a churchless life and then begin sharing life together.

Affectional.

This is the hardest. We actually desire real community. We want to be a people gathered around Jesus and on his mission. We must pray for this. The practical and affectional are the hardest. We must simplify our lives for the practical and we must pray like crazy for the affectional.
Dodson says, we must then continually and graciously deconstruct church as an event and reconstruct it as a community. Understanding the church as family can be helpful, what would it look like for our family to only see each other once a week?  This is one of the primary identities we stress at Crossroads.  We are a family.  And as a family we engage in life together.  This rhythm looks different each week, but it does involve connection and intentionality.  

As leaders there are steps that we can take to cultivate this "steady-state community," this community that is a constant flow of gospel, social and missional connections.

Here are some suggestions Dodson makes:
We should plan to not eat alone. If we eat 21 meals a week, Dodson urges us to eat at least 4 with people in the community.

If we have hobbies, invite others. We should share our life and our leisure pursuits.  At Crossroads some of the men gather to ride and run together.  This is a grea way to share life and live in community.  

If we use twitter or facebook, invite people through that medium to participate in errands and other things with us.

We shouldn't shop alone or watch tv alone, but invite others to participate in these normal activities with us.  It is football season, let's make it a regular engagement - watching games together.  

Lastly, Dodson advises us to invite others into mission. We should have dinner parties and birthday parties with our friends and co-workers in mind. We should invite one another to serve in our cities through various social justice ministries and avenues. This can and should be the church in its life together.