What is the experience like in the congregational teams?
In Congregational Team Meetings, pastors will lead a monthly group of five to eight people from their church through the Stepping Out process. In each two-hour meeting, participants will share a meal, dwell in a passage of Scripture, pray together, report the results of the activity that was assigned between sessions, and then be sent out with a new activity to complete before the next gathering. Over the course of two years, meetings will advance through four learning modules that will guide action and reflection around: 1) becoming a people of relationships rather than outcomes; 2) listening without agenda; 3) attending to the stories of people in our neighborhood; and 4) discerning what the Spirit might be saying to us.
The Stepping Out process was designed by The Missional Network out of their experience working with dozens of churches in North America seeking to join God in their neighborhood. It is designed to empower participants to:
- Build a community of learning and belonging
- Explore their current engagement with their community, see with “new eyes” those who belong to it, and consider what it could mean to be the church in their particular place
- Take a posture of “being with” others rather than exclusively “doing for” others
- Learn how to listen and attend to the stories of others in the community
- Expand their understanding of who God is and where and how God acts
- Enter into the Christian practice of communal discernment as a means to discover how God might be calling them to engage in their community
- Identify actions they can take together in order to rediscover their church’s mission
Awaken Dane 