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"If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciple." (John 8:31)
New River Fellowship Church
New River is a contemporary church of more than 1,100 people located just outside Fort Worth, Texas. Phillip Hearn, brother warrior and friend, founder and Senior Pastor of New River Fellowship, listened one day as I presented a three-strand church model and a process of relational discipleship I had been involved in for several years.
After hearing me out, he blessed the process and allowed me to launch the first CORE Group as a kind of pilot project in August 2003. There were three men in our church who impressed me as the kind of men hungering for something more than a traditional church experience. One is a teacher and baseball coach that I had been discipling for a couple years, another a construction company owner, and the other a salesman for a roofing manufacturer. Great guys longing and looking for something real. I went to each of them and asked them to join me for breakfast one morning. We met and I shared my dream with them, asked them to prayerfully consider what God might be saying, and to let me know whether or not they were willing and thirsty for some seriously white water. Within a week, they all agreed and so we embarked - with a passion, vision, and entirely dependent on the Holy Spirit's guidance.
Our original CORE Group was together for nearly two years and three of our original members have now been released as CORE Instructors and have launched their own CORE Groups and a fourth generation CORE Group is now being formed. Instead of me trying to tell you what we've experienced, here's what they have to say:
And that's just the beginning. In just 12-months we've seen our CORE Group Network multiply and has now produced a band of brothers and sisters including 26 CORE Groups with 67 members and we there are numerous churches around the world launching their own CORE Groups. It has proven to be a very effective tool because it focuses on building intimate relationships with God and each other, on God's Word, fellowship, communion, and prayer with special emphasis on fulfilling the Great Commission through the Great Commandment.
You don't have to be a theologian or a pastor to start - just a willingness to launch into the deep.
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