Hugh Halter and Matt Smay, the authors of The Tangible Kingdom, have published a Primer designed to help guide your small group (either existing or created for this purpose) through an incarnational community experience over the course of 8 weeks.
The TK Primer was written for two specific purposes:
- To be a spiritual formation tool to prepare your heart for mission.
- To be a field guide for starting mission together.
It’s designed to compliment The Tangible Kingdom, but reading the book is not a prerequisite to the Primer.
The subject matter of the TK Primer is both thought provoking and practical. It provides some simple ways to begin your journey together as a community, and the designers left enough space to write your thoughts and comments as you go. (I say designers vs. authors because the book looks really cool, too. Each page is different, so even the visuals will help you begin to think and see things differently as you work your way through each section.)
So go on, check out the primer here, where you can watch the video Hugh created to introduce the primer, and order your copy through their website.
For an unbiased recommendation, surf over to Austin New Church’s blog and read over their shoulders as their community groups have been working through the primer for the past 8 weeks.
Here’s a review of the primer by Brandon Hatmaker, lead pastor at Austin New Church:
I had the opportunity this Spring to sit in a living room condo with Alan Hirsch (The Forgotten Ways), Neil Cole (Organic Church), and Matt Smay & Hugh Halter (The Tangible Kingdom). Many consider these guys to be at the top of the list of the missional conversation, so I was wondering how I made it into the room. I’ve enjoyed my time observing from the outside what’s going on at Matt and Hugh’s church (Adullam) and getting to know them a little more on a personal level. In the same way, it’s been good to hang with Alan at a handful of meetings where the topic of the day was typically “where do we go from here”. It was the first time I met Neil, and as expected, he did not disappoint.
They were discussing the same realization that Ed Stetzer (Breaking the Missional Code) and Alan both acknowledged at a dinner gathering the following night. The claim that missional is not just another passing fad that will be here today and gone tomorrow. They all affirmed that although it’s quickly become a junk drawer word for many, it’s not just a trendy word to describe what’s going on in the church today. Instead, it’s a Biblical idea communicating well the sentness of the church, a label that’s worth hanging on to, and a concept worth pursuing.
I agree and am relieved to hear how convinced they were.
A key element in sustaining the sentness of a church is not only to establish a missional DNA, but to ensure its ideals are manifest in its formation of structure. The key element is to form, organize, and seek new ways to discover incarnational community… and somehow keep it as organic as possible. The problem for most of us is that while there is a growing desire for this type of community, most of us don’t know where to start in creating it.
I think Hugh put it best on the Tangible Kingdom website, “Everyone’s talking about community. Everyone seems to want it, most complain if they don’t find it, but it’s harder to pull off than you’d think.”
So we’ve engaged culture and begun to form community. We may even gather for worship on the weekends (maybe you’ve done that for years). But how do we equip an entire church to strip away their preconceived ideas of what community looks like and replace it with gospel-centered relationships that emerge out of an intuitive lifestyle? How do we point our people outwards?
Enter the Tangible Kingdom Primer. I think Hugh and Matt describe it best:
“The Primer is about building life-long habits, with two primary purposes: first as a formation tool to prepare your heart for mission, and second as a field guide for starting mission together. So whether you’re a pastor hoping to reinvigorate your church, a planter needing to get your people on the same page, a small group leader wanting to push your friends into mission, or a regular guy (or gal) looking to start something new… get started with this eight-week guide to incarnational community.”
And it’s good. In fact, it’s the best I’ve seen.
Over the past 8 weeks at Austin New Church, we’ve sent each of our Restore Communities (Villages/Community Groups) through the TK Primer. I have several friends both at large churches as well as small churches doing the same. While at first it was a tough sell to get everyone excited about an 8 week study that required daily reading and action steps each week… there was quick buy-in once they realized how practical it was, that it spoke directly to some of their greatest sources of tension, and gave them a realistic plan for intuitively living out their faith.
It’s practical. It’s simple. It hits (and even creates) some tension head on. And it takes even the leader through a calculated and experienced journey. Yet still manages to leave enough unanswered questions to force each community to dig in and blaze their own trail.
Bottom line, we will be using the TK Primer as a critical step in our spiritual formation process and will continue to work through the study as a key part of our partnership (membership) requirements.
Whether you’re building a core team from scratch and wanting to insure a missional DNA, find yourself needing some help communicating missional theology, looking for a way to equip and lead others towards incarnational community, or even find yourself leading a church of thousands searching for a resource to help your people engage community, you should give the TK Primer a hard look.
To track ANC’s journey through the TK Primer, see posts from other pastors and churches doing the same, and to contribute to the conversation go to www.tkprimerblog.wordpress.com.
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Stephanie Plagens is the Publications Manager for Leadership Network.
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