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Clusters

Clusters - creative mid-sized missional communities - by Bob Hopkins & Mike Breen, is now back in stock following a worldwide sell-out of the first print run!
Clusters, explores the concept of clusters as 'mid-sized communities in mission' and is broken down into four parts:

Part 1 - The essence & identity of clusters
Part 2 - The biblical, historical and missional rationale
Part 3 - implementation
Part 4 - cluster roots, SWOTs and FAQs.

Bob Hopkins with Mike Breen recount a journey of discovery in an area where we thought we knew exactly how the church worked – the congregation. It tells the story and explores the principles that can radically reconfigure the mid-sized expression of church to recover true biblical congregation as extended family and community in mission.

I would argue that one of the disabling effects of Christendom upon the Church is that we have equated church and particularly the congregational expression with a formal Sunday Service that is actually modelled on Mini-cathedral or the biblical temple. I describe this distortion of the mid-size gathering of God’s people as the defective gene disabling us for missions. So, we outline what we believe are biblical social dynamics of a mid-sized congregation or cluster which follows the pattern Paul gives us in Corinthians chapter 11-14 in beings informal, interacting, usually built around food and which is the sum of what everyone brings rather than a front- led presentation. Clusters can enable us to escape this ‘Sunday service trap’.

The book also charts a course for transitional church, from inherited models to thoroughgoing missional communities that can creatively express the transforming life of Jesus in as many different forms as the diverse cultures and contexts of our plural society. These creative, flexible, mid- sized missional communities are also very effective in developing leaders. Those who prove effective at leading small groups more naturally to leading a community just a little larger that is still about everyone contributing. Whereas the step to leading a Sunday Service is a bridge too far for most. Then again, whereas cells can be good places for developing members in personal evangelism, cluster two, three or four cells together with a common mission focus and you have sine real mission muscle for significant social engagement.