The Rhythms of a Missional Church

The Crowded House is a family of church planting networks and our network is called The Edge Network. The Edge Network have adopted five rhythms (influenced by Soma Communities).The rhythms are an attempt to encapsulate what it means to live the ten core values of The Crowded House. The values can be a little abstract so the rhythms spell out what it looks like to practice them in ordinary life. Here they are:

B. We bless
Each week we aspire to bless others in our Christian community and local neighbourhood in word, action or gift at least three times.

L. We listen

Each week we aspire to listen to God, looking for him to guide us through his word and Spirit. And we listen to people around us to understand their stories and the story of our culture.

E. We eat
Each week we aspire to eat or have a drink with people outside our immediate family at least three times, offering friendship and community.

S. We speak
Each week we aspire to tell people the story of Jesus and our story of Jesus, making Jesus a normal part of our conversations. And we speak to God through prayer, recognising our dependence on him in all things.

S. We sabbath

Each week we aspire to spend time in rest, praise, play, partying and creativity.

You’ll notice that together they spell the word ‘BLESS’.

Every month our three congregations gather together for what we call ‘Re:union’ and at the moment we are working through the rhythms. Each congregation has a rhythm ‘champion’ for the month who encourages people to think about and practice the rhythm we are looking at that month. The ‘champions’ then organise Re:union around the rhythm as a celebration of what we are doing. I produced a sheet for each rhythm to help the ‘champions’ shape the culture around that rhythm. I’ll be posting these over the coming day.

28 January 2009 — Tim Chester of The Edge Network
(With thanks to Mark Berry of Way Out West for pointing me to Tim Chester's blog)