Practices.

  • THE CAVE: Hunger & Humility: Centering on God and being utterly dependent upon His Presence.
    The CAVE is all about surrendering to and worshipping God and building a deep hunger for Him - an utter reliance upon His presence above all else. To quote Henri Nouwen, ‘we have a call to be mystics first & then missionaries as a fruit of our intimacy with God.’
    The Cave is where we cultivate a hunger for God & stay humbly grounded in his love.
    THE CAVE is where we pursue The Lord Jesus first above all else. He is our motivator, inspiration, provider and sustainer - our goal and our pursuit. Everything we do starts from a place of deep intimacy and reliance on Jesus.
    The Cave takes us back to the first order - to being with God & relentlessly pursuing him. This encapsulates everything else we do; community and mission are both a fruit of this as we follow Jesus out on mission.
    The Cave clarifies our identity IN Jesus, away from anything we will ever do. He loves us first.

    “My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead. Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Family, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:10-14

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    THE TABLE: Availability & Vulnerability; growing together as The Body, with Jesus firmly enthroned as our head.
    The Table is our spiritual family - the people who walk alongside us and share the ownership of the call Jesus gives to a team or community. People who we can rely on and share life with, modelling availability and vulnerability together. Everyone has a voice and an important role to play at the Table - no one is forgotten, but everyone is empowered and has the chance to proactively step up for Jesus.
    The Table is where we live out our collective calling to be God’s spiritual family; to be his empowered and anointed children. Where we practise sacrificial hospitality and covenant to deeply sharing our lives together. Where relational, intentional discipleship happens as people are called to follow Jesus through simple steps of proactive encounter-based obedience to the leading of God.
    The Cave defines The Table, as encounter with and dependance on God are pursued together. This is where accountability and encouragement to mission are bathed in the grace of God’s love.
    The Table is a bridge from the Cave, as we encounter God both personally and together as a team, building it into our regular rhythms of connection. The lines of cave and table should be intentionally blurred.

    “God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the less honorable, so that there would be no division in the body, but that the members would have the same concern for each other. So if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honoured, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and individual members of it.” 1 Corinthians 12:24b-27

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    THE ROAD: Compassion & Power; where we join Jesus in the harvest to share God’s love with the poor, the broken and the lost.
    As you process together at the Table the call and invitation given by the Lord in the Cave, you come to the ROAD.
    The ROAD is where the rubber of prayer, worship, forming team and encountering God hit the road of mission and calling.
    The Road is where we live on mission - where we pursue the great commission and where we join Jesus in the harvest to proclaim His praises to those who are in darkness (as it says in 1 Peter 2:9-10).
    It’s where we look for opportunities to share the gospel in word, deed and power - where we get to show compassion, to right injustice, and to bring the manifest power of the Holy Spirit to those around us.
    Again, there are intentionally blurry lines between the Road and the Table, as hospitality can be a bridge that welcomes people into our spiritual families & open the door to them discovering and encountering Jesus with us.
    The road is the fruit of our time in the Cave WITH God, around the Table as spiritual family - in this liminal space is where our callings, kingdom dreams and passions are realised. Then we take the wholistic gospel of Jesus Christ out to those He calls us to, proclaiming the gospel in word, deed and power. On the road we invite people to come home to the cave of God’s love - to retreat from the darkness of the world and be found in the light of God’s love. On the road is where new disciples are found and formed.

    “And now Lord, consider their threats, and grant that Your people - those that belong to you - may speak Your message with complete boldness, while You stretch out Your hand for healing, signs, and wonders to be performed through the name of Your Holy Servant Jesus.” “My speech and proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom but a powerful demonstration by the Spirit, so that your faith might not be based on men’s wisdom but on God’s power.” Acts 4:19-30, 1 Corinthians 2:4-5.

  • “Follow Me” - Jesus (Matthew 4:19). We believe that discipleship isn’t a training program just for mature Christians, but an ever-deepening relationship with Jesus; ‘Follow me as I follow Jesus!’ For us, disciple-making begins out on mission as we invite people to encounter Jesus through acts of compassion and care, and by proclaiming the gospel in word, deed and power. When this happens and people want to know more about God we invite them into a discovery environment, using our own stories as open doors to the hope and salvation on offer through Jesus. Our first port of call is inviting people to discover more about Jesus through the Bible, using Discovery Bible Studies (find some HERE).
    Our conviction is that discipling starts when a person encounters Jesus; when they take their first step towards him. Then, as they move closer to Him, they in-turn will draw others into a discipleship journey - people become disciples even before that have fully given their lives to Jesus; salvation will come as a result of them encountering Jesus ever-more! This is a paradigm shift for many. We are happy to talk more about this - get in touch!

  • Microchurch: Extended Spiritual Family. We believe that the most effective way of being the church is in small extended-family-sized groups: small enough that you can all fit in a living room, yet big enough that there is a sense of collective purpose and momentum.
    Every person is seen, heard, needed and known. Without them, their church is lacking in a distinct way.
    These smaller family-sized groups are where we, as humans, are designed to be open, honest and vulnerable in true community together.
    As the group engages in mission, others may join their family and increase the numbers… but more often than not new spiritual families will be formed, naturally multiplying the original group as these new disciples take Jesus’ salvation into their own areas of influence.
    Being a tangibly close relational place, they provide the most fruitful environment for community formation and incarnational mission.

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    Relational Discipleship Space: Invest, one-on-one, in discipling relationships that multiply. Jesus modelled a life that honoured both the extended spiritual family space, and the individual. As we join him out on mission into a place or people-group, what we a really doing is looking to connect with and invest in that one person. Jesus cares about individuals, and so do we. Our dreams are big, but our calling is person-focussed, as we look to authentically love them and share life with them in the hopes that, as they encounter Jesus, they will multiply this in others too.
    This smaller space is where true vulnerability happens; where people can truly let go of shame and guilt and take hold of Jesus’ transformational love and healing.

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    Network-Wide Gatherings: A place to be connected to the bigger-picture work of God. The larger public gathering of God’s people are where testimonies are shared to encourage those on mission; where we get to share our commonality together and worship God too - they give us a prophetic snapshot forward to when we will all eventually be stood before the throne in utter worship and adoration of Yahweh (Rev 7:9-12).
    These spaces were only used occasionally by the New Testament church for this reason (1 Cor 14:23), understanding that the spiritual families formed in Microchurches are the lifeblood of what it means to BE the church. So we, as a network, gather monthly to bless and serve our Microchurches - the big gatherings serve the small, not the other way around.