Crossroads Huddle #2

I met with several men from our church yesterday late afternoon - early evening and began our church's second huddle.  Our first huddle began in September with the leadership of  Marcus Haug from North Heights Lutheran Church.*  I'm hoping that a group of women will begin a huddle soon.

So what's a huddle?  I have to admit that we could have done a better job of explaining this before our first huddle began.  The truth is, however, that I honestly didn't know exactly what it was we were getting into.  I am very pleased, however, and I'm thrilled for what we have learned in and through our first huddle and am even more excited about the second. 

Just yesterday the Director of Content for ₃DM, Doug Paul, posted the following in an article entitled "The Difference Between Huddles and Small Groups and Why Many Churches Use Both."  Because he posted this article, I can now answer that question!  I'm thankful for the wonderful timing!  Thank you Doug and thank you Holy Spirit for arranging this so well!

A Huddle is:

• A place for leaders to receive investment, training, imitation and accountability (in other words…discipleship!). Here’s the big thing to note on this one: It is for current and/or future leaders. The people accepting an invitation into a Huddle should know they are expected to lead something (and maybe they already are, but if they aren’t, the expectation that they will start leading something). This is the principle at work: If you disciple leaders in how to disciple people, everyone in your community will be discipled. Why? Because you’re instilling in your leaders the Great Commission principle that “every disciple disciples others.”
• By invitation only. A Huddle is an invitation for 6-12 leaders to regularly receive intentional investment by a discipling leader. But it is more than that. It’s also an invitation in that person’s life, not just a 90-minute-per-week gathering point.  You have access to the life of the discipling leader outside of just the Huddle time. As we know, the principles of discipleship at work are often better caught than taught.
• Something that is reproduced. Rather than adding people to a Huddle, we multiply the discipling culture that is created with the expectation that every leader start their own Huddle at some point. But this isn’t something we spring on them. They should know that by accepting the invitation that this is the expectation. So rather than growing your Huddle to have 10 people instead of the 8 that it started with, we ask that the 8 people you started with all start Huddles of their own. It’s growth by multiplication that eventually leads to exponential growth.
• A place for invitation and challenge. The discipling leader, as they invest in the lives of the people in their Huddle, will invite them into their life, their rhythms and have access to their Spiritual capital. But they will also, from time to time, be challenged (gracefully) to live more fully into the Kingdom when their way of life is different or out-of-step with the things we read about in scripture and the Kingdom.
• High commitment. For all the reasons stated above.

 I encourage you to ►click here◄ and go to the original article written by Doug Peters to learn more.

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* Huddle #1 began in the fall of 2011.  Another huddle, not numbered because the only Crossroads participant is myself, began in late January 2012.  It is led by Pastor Per Nilsen and includes key leadership from North Heights (Arden Hills and Roseville) and Community of Hope (Rosemount and Hastings).

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