Huddles, Building a Discipling Culture and 3dm resources

As part of my job for the Chelmsford Diocese, I've had the privilege of gathering monthly with a bunch of amazing youth workers from across South East Essex for the last few years - mainly Anglican based but increasingly coming from other churches, organisations and charities. Called 'The Hub' we meet for mutual support, prayer, resourcing, training, input and much laughter, knowing we all come with the same passion for young people, mission and discipleship but from different contexts and backgrounds.

We've worked gradually through LifeShapes as a discipleship tool - for youthwork and for mission and for church leadership and it's been a really fruitful time. I've loved being able to share this Rule of Life with them and seeing people 'get it' and in turn seek God more and more for their journey and that of those they lead.

Yesterday, as it was my last 'Hub' before maternity leave, I decided to more formally introduce the concept of a Huddle - which is what we have been doing informally anyway! They just might not have known it! Huddles are a group of leaders who gather together specifically for ongoing support and accountability in the journey with Jesus. It's about developing Christ like character and leadership skills, being reflective and open and receiving and giving challenge. A Huddle leader helps those in the group process what God is saying to them and in turn release these leaders to be leaders themselves in their context.

Yesterday we used the material provided by 3dm on their website  which is great stuff and stimulated lots of discussion, prayer and unpacking for us all at the start of this new term.

Incidentally, yesterday 3dm released their e-book version of Building a Discipling Culture which is a brilliant resource book,  taking in all the stuff around LifeShapes and Huddles as well as applying that more widely to developing Missional Communities. There are 2 other books also released at the same time which represents the core content for building missional churches and communities, but the BDC book specifically is a second edition with almost 50% more content, focusing particularly on using Huddles.
I can't recommend it enough - as we begin our new ministry in Billericay it's our foundation of understanding of how Jesus drew people to himself and made disciples and it's what we should all be about. But it's practical too, easy to read, life changing and yet simple.
Get it here...