I recently received this question from a partner at The Austin Stone, and I thought it would be beneficial to address here:
Hey Todd, thanks for your faithfulness to getting this information to us. It’s proven to be a great resource for myself in regards to leading my MC and coaching others. A quick search didn’t bring anything up so I wanted to get your thoughts on gender-specific missional communities.
Below is my response.
Gender-Specific Missional Communities
The idea of gender-specific missional communities probably belongs in a wider question about affinity-based groups in general. Gender isn’t necessarily an “affinity,” but most churches have a tendency with respect to groups to see it that way. Men’s groups and women’s groups typically are part of a wider network that includes life-stage, geography and various other affinities.
Affinity or Mission?
The short answer to why there are not many affinity-based groups at The Austin Stone is that missional communities ideally define their group around a pocket of people rather than an affinity. Rather than focusing on creating places for specific genders, we’ve tried to focus on helping communities reach groups of people in our city.
I’m perfectly happy for a group to be all women, all men or life-stage specific (newly-weds, young professionals, etc.) if that is best for the mission. If the people you are wanting to live amongst and share Jesus with are primarily women, and that is the best kind of community to help someone meet Jesus, then go for it.
If the affinity becomes exclusive or primarily focused internally on the group, however, then I think it can be unhelpful. I’ve seen many groups that build an affinity-based community struggle to take steps toward mission because they are primarily meeting needs of individuals inside the group.
The commitment from The Stone is that we primarily want to build community for the sake of mission, rather than build community for community’s sake. In my experience, the American church has primarily done the opposite, so it’s a little difficult for people to comprehend that who join The Stone from other churches.
