DWELL Missional Church of Burlington, Vermont - A Vermont Church Seeking to be missional in all areas of life.

This past Sunday we covered our 5th core value: Multiplying by Nature. You can grab the audio here.

I spoke along with Ryan Guilfoy on the topic of how the kindgdom of God is a multiplying kingdom - and how we, all of us, are integral in that process of the good news spreading throughout our city, our state, our country, the world.

But one thing that may have been less than clear is how Dwell is going to approach the Sunday gathering, midweek gatherings, and planting new missional churches. So I will give a brief explanation on each of those points.

The Sunday gathering. If you got the impression on Sunday that our Sunday gathering is not that important, I apologize! That's not how the leadership team sees it, and that's not how you should see it. In fact, the Sunday gathering is and will continue to be the center of Dwell community life. It will also continue to be a central means of mission, as we invite our non-Christian friends to take part in the experience of worship through music, the word, prayer, sharing, and friendship. (In fact, we are working tirelessly to up the missional ante in those services by pushing further into a more intense and relevant music experience as well as involving art and multimedia in new and creative ways.)

We believe firmly that our Sunday gathering is the most powerful and encouraging gathering that we have ever been a part of - and you should feel the same way! And if you are in covenant with our community, the Sunday gathering is an absolute must. You might say this gathering is who we are. Sunday is when Dwell Missional Church expresses itself in its full glory.

Midweek gatherings (dwell/ings). We also believe, though, that because the kingdom multiplies and we are all a part of that multiplication, mission and community will spill out beyond the Sunday gathering into everyday life. One way this happens is through dwell/ings - smaller gatherings that happen throughout the week. Right now we have one at the Burlington Emergency Shelter and one at Border's, both on Tuesday nights. These are super cool, laid back, relational times of spiritual encouragement. But these are not independent churches, nor are they our main strategy for planting new missional churches.

Planting new missional churches. The basic level of multiplication is very personal - it's me and you being missional in everyday life and seeing our friends and neighbors come to know the love of Jesus. It's inviting people to church. It's hanging out and having dinner with folks. It's just being a loving follower of Jesus in every relationship you have. But there is another level of multiplication that happens with groups of people: that is, planting new churches.

At Dwell we want to be a church-planting church. We desire to see new leaders raised up within the Dwell community to go out and start new churches.

But we don't see this happening with small groups (dwell/ings) breaking off from Dwell. Instead we see a leader or leaders going out from us to begin a totally new work.

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So if there was any confusion, I hope that makes things clearer. We are hyped about multiplication - and we are also hyped about how our Sunday gathering is the catalyst for that kind of multiplication to take place, first at the personal level, then at the group or church level.

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