COLLECTIVE

Collective: Gathering in Strength

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Imagine walking into a room and realising that the people you know from your Community Church are part of something much bigger.

 

People are arriving from across our communities. Kids are finding their friends. Youth are reconnecting with people they know from across Divergent. Leaders are catching up. Families are meeting one another. There is a sense that something bigger is happening because we are gathering together.

 

This is Collective.

 

Collective will be where our Community Churches come together fortnightly to gather in strength.

 

Our Community Churches are where we live out Church in community, building deep relationships, sharing life, making disciples and becoming a Church that is genuinely rooted in the places God has called us to. Collective gives those communities a place to come together and experience the strength of being ONE Church.

 

It will be our regular, larger and more front-facing expression of Church.

 

We will come together for dynamic worship, strong biblical preaching, prayer and prophetic ministry, creating an environment where we can encounter the presence of God together. We want Collective to carry a sense of expectation, energy and faith, creating space for God to speak to us, challenge us, equip us and send us.

 

But Collective isn't simply about what happens from the front.

 

One of the most exciting things about Collective will happen around the gathering.

 

As our Community Churches come together, our kids and young people will have the opportunity to build friendships and community across the wider Divergent family. A young person won't simply know the handful of people who attend their local Community Church. They can begin to see that they belong to a much larger family, with friends and leaders across the city and beyond.

 

For our Kids, this creates the opportunity to build strong friendships and experience the joy of belonging to something bigger.

 

For our Youth, it creates an environment where relationships can deepen, community can grow and discipleship can happen with others who are walking the same journey.

 

This gives us something really important.

 

Community Church gives us depth. Collective gives us breadth.

 

Community Church is where we are known, where we share life and where discipleship takes root in community.

 

Collective is where those communities come together, where we gather our strength, build wider relationships and experience the bigger story we are part of.

 

We don't want to choose between being deeply connected and gathering in strength. We believe we need both.

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So every fortnight, we will have the opportunity to move from the intimacy of our local community into the energy and expectation of the wider Church.

 

We will worship together. We will hear the Word together. We will pray together. We will make room for the prophetic. We will celebrate what God is doing. Our kids will find their friends. Our young people will build community. Leaders will connect. And together we will be reminded that the mission we carry locally is part of something much bigger.

 

This is Collective.

 

It is where our Community Churches come together.

It is where we gather in strength.

It is where we experience the wider family.

 

It is where we create an environment for powerful worship, dynamic preaching, prophetic ministry and genuine community.

 

And it is where we remind one another that we are not a collection of separate churches. We are ONE Church, expressed through multiplying Community Churches.