When someone comes to you with a question, or looking for advice, how do you respond? It's all to easy to simply give "the answer", telling them what you would do. But such a response may be missing a much bigger opportunity.
One improvement is to explain the 'why' behind the answer, sharing not only what you would do but why. This will help them evaluate the advice, and provides some insight as to what issues are important regarding the topic at hand.
But there's another approach that may be even better. Instead of telling them the answer (your answer), why not help them think through the question enough to come up with their own answer? Instead of giving them a fish, you're teaching them how to fish. How do we do this? Not by giving answers, but asking questions. 'What do you think?' 'Why?' 'What pitfalls could that run into?' 'Do you have the resources to do that?' 'What are the key issues at stake here?' 'What does Scripture have to say about this situation?' These coaching questions can be very powerful, and are great to use when developing the person you're talking to is more important (or as important) as the task or situation at hand. This not only improves the chance for a good solution, but helps people to think for themselves and understand underlying issues, and instills confidence.
Showing posts with label coaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coaching. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Review - Real-Life Discipleship
"Real-Life Discipleship: Buliding Churches that Make Disciples" is a new book by Jim Putman published by NavPress. It's a concise and well-written book aimed at church leaders to address a critical question: "Is your church making disciples... who make disciples?" and that gives them the principles and tools to be able to answer 'yes'. As the senior pastor of Real Life Ministries Putnam's approach is both biblical and very practical, and has been successful at his and other churches.
Real-Life Discipleship reexamines the goal and methods of discipleship. Part One sets the stage for discipleship and describes three keys for effective discipleship: an intentional leader, a relational environment, and a strategic, reproducible process. Part Two takes a close look at five maturity levels of seekers and believers, then gets into the details of their process: Share, Connect, Minister, Disciple. Part Three addresses some important questions on developing leaders within your church. "The leadership of the church must view its job as that of making disciples who can make disciples."
I had a a mixed but overall good impression in reading this book. In some ways it seems like many other old and new books on discipleship, hearkening a return to how Jesus did things - most of which fail to provide practical insight on how to actually do that in the 21st Century. The 'process' in Real-Life discipleship is more of a framework than something you can directly implement. That is both a plus and a minus - you will definitely need to consider further how to apply the principles here to your specific situation. In addition, there is a supplemental Training Manual that gives some more specific ideas and studies.
The material in Real-Life Discipleship is very solid, and Putnam does a great job in addressing a tough subject in a short space, covering both the rationale and process for discipleship. NavPress is known for its commitment to discipleship, so it's a natural addition to their lineup. I would recommend it to pastors and church leaders whose churches are not doing as well as they could be in making and reproducing disciples.
Real-Life Discipleship: Building Churches that Make Disciples is available at Amazon and other book retailers.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from NavPress Publishers as part of their Blogger Review Program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising".
Real-Life Discipleship reexamines the goal and methods of discipleship. Part One sets the stage for discipleship and describes three keys for effective discipleship: an intentional leader, a relational environment, and a strategic, reproducible process. Part Two takes a close look at five maturity levels of seekers and believers, then gets into the details of their process: Share, Connect, Minister, Disciple. Part Three addresses some important questions on developing leaders within your church. "The leadership of the church must view its job as that of making disciples who can make disciples."
I had a a mixed but overall good impression in reading this book. In some ways it seems like many other old and new books on discipleship, hearkening a return to how Jesus did things - most of which fail to provide practical insight on how to actually do that in the 21st Century. The 'process' in Real-Life discipleship is more of a framework than something you can directly implement. That is both a plus and a minus - you will definitely need to consider further how to apply the principles here to your specific situation. In addition, there is a supplemental Training Manual that gives some more specific ideas and studies.
The material in Real-Life Discipleship is very solid, and Putnam does a great job in addressing a tough subject in a short space, covering both the rationale and process for discipleship. NavPress is known for its commitment to discipleship, so it's a natural addition to their lineup. I would recommend it to pastors and church leaders whose churches are not doing as well as they could be in making and reproducing disciples.
Real-Life Discipleship: Building Churches that Make Disciples is available at Amazon and other book retailers.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from NavPress Publishers as part of their Blogger Review Program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising".
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Environments for Developing People
I recently listened to an audio MP3 of a conference call on "The Small Group Fraternity" led by Mark Howell. This featured an interview with Jeff Galley who serves at LifeChurch.tv as Central Team Leader for Life Groups / Life Mission. Jeff discusses small group coaching, people development, life coaching, and some big shifts in how they think about discipleship in their church. I found it really interesting, and wanted to share a few highlights here. If any of those areas of interest to you, definitely check out the MP3 (time points listed below are from this audio).
Small Group Coaching (8:00-15:00)
Every environment is unique, so every campus needs their own approach to small group coaching. One of the more popular models adopted/tweaked by different campuses is very decentralized. When a person signs up to lead a group they meet immediately with a coach and dive right in, pulling people together the start their group. About twice a year clusters of 4-5 group leaders under one coach will come together for a huddle. At that point they go through a more intentional development process that takes about six-weeks, based on conference call discussions with reading or an e-learning lesson between sessions. The point is let leaders jump in when they're excited to do this, and train them after they've been doing it when the questions and discussion will make sense. The use of the 60-90 min conference call and reading in-between is to fit their schedule. LifeChurch.tv is big on open source - actually they provide these lessons for any church to watch! That site is currently down for updating but will be available again soon. After leaders been through this training, what happens next? The coaching becomes much more informal, mostly driven by the leaders' need or questions as they arise. Once a month coaches will give a phone call to each leader he or she has on their list and just touch base, letting them know they're praying for them. LifeChurch structures this for growth, not control.
People Development (23:10-27:30)
It's not about the program, but in life change - they have identified five specific behaviors they want to see people engage in. They can't force people to exhibit these behaviors, but their goal is to set up environments which foster these, support leaders, inspire people to want to be a follower of Christ, then step back and coach the process. Specifically, they've identified Four Environments that are effective in supporting development. This is NOT four programs, not four buckets to discipleship, and in some cases these things might go on together in one venue, or four different ways of viewing the same activity. Their four key environments:
1. Group (be in a small group / life group)
2. Learn Something
3. Serve
4. Get Coaching (for my own life and development, or functional development towards helping others)
This actually represents a major shift in their shift in thinking on discipleship --
"Not all the environments are going to be the right thing for people at the right time." Not everyone wants to be in a small group / life group, and that's ok. As a result what they're doing in their campus is to set up some best practices to encourage these environments, but promote the desired behaviors more than programs, and allow people freedom to choose their own path in this common direction.
Their new approach is pretty simple, asking their people these questions:
"Where are you now?" "What's next for you?" "What should you do?" These lead to: "Which of these four environments is going to help you go down that road?"
Five Behaviors they're looking for, what does a "win" look like at LifeChurch? (29:30-35:45)
1. Lead people to identify their next step for personal and spiritual growth
2. Generously serve others
3. Build healthy relationships (healthy family, relationships they're investing in, and people investing in them)
4. Read and reflect from Scripture
5. Be Christ-Centered - He is the compass for all areas in their life
What they would like to do is measure these outcomes rather than just program participation. The 1,000,000 dollar question is of course, how? For example #3 is pretty hard to measure. What they're likely to try is to develop an evaluation process including a survey, some kind of self-evaluation, plus a follow-up personal interview. Then repeat this a year later and see how people have changed.
A natural question is: "How do we track people's participation in these four environments." (43:20-46:30)
Jeff's answer may surprise you: "Why do we need to track them?? What we want to see is the behaviors. If we're seeing those, we don't really care how they got there." They don't cast vision for groups, for coaching - they're casting vision for growth, for life change, for the things a Christ-follower does, not the methods themselves. That said they're not going to stop tracking these other numbers - they do give some useful info - which environments are working, and which need some help. But the key to remember is that these are not the primary determinant of success, God-honoring behaviors are.
Coaching - What might it look like? (36:07-40:00)
Probably there will be an intentional structures to do these two kinds of coaching:
1) Life coaching - How can someone sit down with me and help me develop a plan for my growth, my next steps, or more broadly, how do I get a better understanding of my life purpose? Maybe it's a marriage situation, or parenting. Not a counselor, but a coach.
2) Functional coaching - To do this, we will have to train volunteers to do these very things and to better craft these environments. Jeff is going for coaching certification and will setup a program to train people interested in learning how to coach. He wants to help interested leaders to mobilize people to become effective coaches who can in turn help others. As a great benefit, these skills are completely transferrable. They may also develop several Coaching Journeys (maybe doing a book together) along with a common coaching methodology.
Other interesting comments from the interview
- Any time we use the word "leader" to refer only to people leading in a church program, we lose some of our best leaders and fail to move forward our real mission. (50:00-51:00)
Some of my own thoughts on all this...
- Wow, a lot of this touches on things we're doing or want to do at Calvary. Much of it echoes what Pastor Chuck and other staff have been thinking.
- The five behaviors seem to encompass four of our five purposes, and it seems like anyone doing these four will be wanting to do the fifth. They also stress outreach through several environments including their Life Groups and through Serving.
- I wonder how Monvee might be used as a tool to help people develop in a framework similar to what's described here. Monvee is a tool for encouraging personalized spiritual growth - it should be launched later this year as an online tool tied into what is already going on and supported in a local church setting.
Small group leaders, coaches, Calvary folks, what are your thoughts on developing people?
Small Group Coaching (8:00-15:00)
Every environment is unique, so every campus needs their own approach to small group coaching. One of the more popular models adopted/tweaked by different campuses is very decentralized. When a person signs up to lead a group they meet immediately with a coach and dive right in, pulling people together the start their group. About twice a year clusters of 4-5 group leaders under one coach will come together for a huddle. At that point they go through a more intentional development process that takes about six-weeks, based on conference call discussions with reading or an e-learning lesson between sessions. The point is let leaders jump in when they're excited to do this, and train them after they've been doing it when the questions and discussion will make sense. The use of the 60-90 min conference call and reading in-between is to fit their schedule. LifeChurch.tv is big on open source - actually they provide these lessons for any church to watch! That site is currently down for updating but will be available again soon. After leaders been through this training, what happens next? The coaching becomes much more informal, mostly driven by the leaders' need or questions as they arise. Once a month coaches will give a phone call to each leader he or she has on their list and just touch base, letting them know they're praying for them. LifeChurch structures this for growth, not control.
People Development (23:10-27:30)
It's not about the program, but in life change - they have identified five specific behaviors they want to see people engage in. They can't force people to exhibit these behaviors, but their goal is to set up environments which foster these, support leaders, inspire people to want to be a follower of Christ, then step back and coach the process. Specifically, they've identified Four Environments that are effective in supporting development. This is NOT four programs, not four buckets to discipleship, and in some cases these things might go on together in one venue, or four different ways of viewing the same activity. Their four key environments:
1. Group (be in a small group / life group)
2. Learn Something
3. Serve
4. Get Coaching (for my own life and development, or functional development towards helping others)
This actually represents a major shift in their shift in thinking on discipleship --
"Not all the environments are going to be the right thing for people at the right time." Not everyone wants to be in a small group / life group, and that's ok. As a result what they're doing in their campus is to set up some best practices to encourage these environments, but promote the desired behaviors more than programs, and allow people freedom to choose their own path in this common direction.
Their new approach is pretty simple, asking their people these questions:
"Where are you now?" "What's next for you?" "What should you do?" These lead to: "Which of these four environments is going to help you go down that road?"
Five Behaviors they're looking for, what does a "win" look like at LifeChurch? (29:30-35:45)
1. Lead people to identify their next step for personal and spiritual growth
2. Generously serve others
3. Build healthy relationships (healthy family, relationships they're investing in, and people investing in them)
4. Read and reflect from Scripture
5. Be Christ-Centered - He is the compass for all areas in their life
What they would like to do is measure these outcomes rather than just program participation. The 1,000,000 dollar question is of course, how? For example #3 is pretty hard to measure. What they're likely to try is to develop an evaluation process including a survey, some kind of self-evaluation, plus a follow-up personal interview. Then repeat this a year later and see how people have changed.
A natural question is: "How do we track people's participation in these four environments." (43:20-46:30)
Jeff's answer may surprise you: "Why do we need to track them?? What we want to see is the behaviors. If we're seeing those, we don't really care how they got there." They don't cast vision for groups, for coaching - they're casting vision for growth, for life change, for the things a Christ-follower does, not the methods themselves. That said they're not going to stop tracking these other numbers - they do give some useful info - which environments are working, and which need some help. But the key to remember is that these are not the primary determinant of success, God-honoring behaviors are.
Coaching - What might it look like? (36:07-40:00)
Probably there will be an intentional structures to do these two kinds of coaching:
1) Life coaching - How can someone sit down with me and help me develop a plan for my growth, my next steps, or more broadly, how do I get a better understanding of my life purpose? Maybe it's a marriage situation, or parenting. Not a counselor, but a coach.
2) Functional coaching - To do this, we will have to train volunteers to do these very things and to better craft these environments. Jeff is going for coaching certification and will setup a program to train people interested in learning how to coach. He wants to help interested leaders to mobilize people to become effective coaches who can in turn help others. As a great benefit, these skills are completely transferrable. They may also develop several Coaching Journeys (maybe doing a book together) along with a common coaching methodology.
Other interesting comments from the interview
- It's not attractional vs missional, it's both. We definitely need to live out our faith outside of Sunday morning, but we have them here together at that time, how can we make best use of this?
- For things to move forward well it's important to identify catalytic leaders and encourage them strongly, seeing what they're fired up about and seeing how you can help them.- Any time we use the word "leader" to refer only to people leading in a church program, we lose some of our best leaders and fail to move forward our real mission. (50:00-51:00)
Some of my own thoughts on all this...
- Wow, a lot of this touches on things we're doing or want to do at Calvary. Much of it echoes what Pastor Chuck and other staff have been thinking.
- The five behaviors seem to encompass four of our five purposes, and it seems like anyone doing these four will be wanting to do the fifth. They also stress outreach through several environments including their Life Groups and through Serving.
- I wonder how Monvee might be used as a tool to help people develop in a framework similar to what's described here. Monvee is a tool for encouraging personalized spiritual growth - it should be launched later this year as an online tool tied into what is already going on and supported in a local church setting.
Small group leaders, coaches, Calvary folks, what are your thoughts on developing people?
Monday, August 17, 2009
Some insights on small groups
Two posts this weekend really caught my eye, each on an important aspect of small group ministry - how we learn, and how we care for those who help us learn.
1) Dave Treat commenting on the book "Sticky Church" by Larry Osborne
A quote from the chapter "Velcroed for Growth" - "Most spiritual growth doesn’t come as a result of a training program or a set curriculum. It comes as a result of life putting us in what I like to call a need-to-know or need-to grow situation." Dave adds "I grew up under the linear model and recognize the defining features: learn it all (in order); store it in your head; apply it later. We argued over what “it all” means, and in what order. Long-term storage is especially tough when the knowledge is academic and not linked to real-world situations. Application may be hardest of all..."
"The ultimate goal of a sermon-based small group is simply to velcro people to the two things they will need most when faced with a need-to-know or need-to-grow situation: the Bible and other Christians."
2) Mac Lake of Seacoast with 'Three Movements in Small Group Coaching'
He points out three growing approaches that he disagrees with while finding good points they make and common principles to learn from. 'Hired Gun' approach hires part time staff to oversee about 30 small group leaders; 'Remove the Middle Man' approach has one staff member firing the coaches and handling 50-70 groups directly; 'Call Me if you need me' approach is purely reactive way to oversee 20-30 groups. As he looks at why many are abandoning the coaching model he finds three essential lessons for any small group coaching structure.
1. Provide and maintain a span of care that is reasonable and realistic for your coaches
2. Make the role less about resourcing and more about relationship
3. Raise the level of significance of the role by emphasizing spiritual care of leaders
Note to self - I need to write another post soon on what I've learned from Steve Gladen which has addresses several of the key points from both perspectives.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)