Concept

The original Society Room movement started in the late 1600’s when small “societies” of believers in England began meeting together. The spiritual conversations that took place went beyond the participant’s personal relationships with God. These believers also considered how they could work together to put their faith into action and renew their culture.

These Society Rooms reshaped British culture. Participants tend to the sick, constructed schools and hospitals and engaged the arts. This paradigm for cultural change was adopted by later groups such as William Wilberforce’s Clapham Circle and its fight for the abolition of the slave trade. Indeed, historians note that the Society Rooms of the seventeenth century “prefigured much of what Wilberforce and his associates sought to achieve at the end of the eighteenth century.”

In this spirit, today’s Society Rooms are designed to catalyze leaders throughout the church. By convening forward-thinking, culture-shaping individuals around the purposes of God, societal change can and will happen.