As a small group coach, I'm always looking for ways to support my leaders and help them succeed. If you're a pastor reading this blog, you're probably thinking the same thing about your leaders and your coaches.
My friend in ministry, Tony Stoltzfus, has taught me many things in the last year or two, but recently I've learned just how important life coaching is to any relationship. Tony has invested years of his life not just being a life coach, but teaching others how to be life coaches.
I'm now using my newfound life coaching questions when I meet with my leaders. I ask them what they want to accomplish, what's in the way, what kinds of plans they've made to get those things accomplished, the obstacles in the way of achieving those plans, when the person wants to get a preliminary goal accomplished, etc. It's all about asking the person to articulate a plan of action that is doable and achieves something in a defined period of time.
Folks just don't have people in their life like this, and too few are organized self-starters. Without someone who will serve as an encouraging life coach, they're stalled in many areas of life and are reactive and not proactive.
As I visit with other small group coaches, I find they do not maintain this mindset with their leaders and don't help them in this way. This is sad. It does not take a lot of time or energy, and when done right there's no advice to offer or expertise required. A ten year old kid could life coach someone if they understood why they were asking the basic questions!
If you are not helping coaches and leaders create their own plan of attack, it's time to meet with them and ask them what they want to get accomplished and how they're planning to go about it. This kind of coaching is what turns static leaders into dynamic ones with a direction in life.
So let me ask you, when you meet with coaches or group leaders, what's on your agenda? How do you help them succeed? What kinds of questions do you ask, and most importantly, what are the results?
Showing posts with label coaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coaching. Show all posts
Coaching: How to gently nudge a group to reach out
Friday night one of our new lifegroup leaders invited my wife and I over for dinner. What a wonderful evening! We enjoyed a fantastic meal together and talked and laughed for hours.
Just before we left, I asked both the husband and wife to tell me if they were enjoying leading their new group (2 months old now), if any future leaders were emerging from the existing membership, and if they had experienced any conflict yet. (BTW, everyone's peachy right now. It's obvious they're still in the honeymoon or forming stage.)
Before we left, Etna and I told them we'd visit their group in three or four weeks' time. I asked the couple if it would be appropriate to ask the group members why they thought God had brought them together and what their plans for outreach to unchurched people might be so we could pray for them and support them as their coach. The leaders thought this would be great because it would be very challenging for this brand new group of people who had yet to think of anyone outside their little spiritual family.
In this instance, our role as the coaching team over this new group is to "stir things up" and challenge them in non-threatening way. Will the members have anything to report to us? Probably not... but that's the point. The idea here is to ask some challenging questions to which I already know the answer ("um, er, uh, we've never really talked about that before") so the leaders can then come back and say, "Randall and Etna asked some really challenging questions last week. They'll visit again in a month or so and I would love it if we had some solid plans in the works. Let's pray about what we should be doing to connect with unchurched people this week and see what God tells us to do."
The role of the coach is quite often to challenge the group to be more than they are today. Doing that in strategic and encouraging ways takes effort, but it's worth it.
If you coach groups, be sure to visit your groups when they meet and ask them what their plans are for outreach to unchurched friends, family members, and coworkers or classmates. If you are a pastor over groups, ask your coaches if they are doing this and taking notes as to what the groups are doing (or not doing).
This kind of gentle prodding makes all the difference and is typically the kind of thing most every group needs to grow.
Just before we left, I asked both the husband and wife to tell me if they were enjoying leading their new group (2 months old now), if any future leaders were emerging from the existing membership, and if they had experienced any conflict yet. (BTW, everyone's peachy right now. It's obvious they're still in the honeymoon or forming stage.)
Before we left, Etna and I told them we'd visit their group in three or four weeks' time. I asked the couple if it would be appropriate to ask the group members why they thought God had brought them together and what their plans for outreach to unchurched people might be so we could pray for them and support them as their coach. The leaders thought this would be great because it would be very challenging for this brand new group of people who had yet to think of anyone outside their little spiritual family.
In this instance, our role as the coaching team over this new group is to "stir things up" and challenge them in non-threatening way. Will the members have anything to report to us? Probably not... but that's the point. The idea here is to ask some challenging questions to which I already know the answer ("um, er, uh, we've never really talked about that before") so the leaders can then come back and say, "Randall and Etna asked some really challenging questions last week. They'll visit again in a month or so and I would love it if we had some solid plans in the works. Let's pray about what we should be doing to connect with unchurched people this week and see what God tells us to do."
The role of the coach is quite often to challenge the group to be more than they are today. Doing that in strategic and encouraging ways takes effort, but it's worth it.
If you coach groups, be sure to visit your groups when they meet and ask them what their plans are for outreach to unchurched friends, family members, and coworkers or classmates. If you are a pastor over groups, ask your coaches if they are doing this and taking notes as to what the groups are doing (or not doing).
This kind of gentle prodding makes all the difference and is typically the kind of thing most every group needs to grow.
Choosing a small group model. Just say no.
When researching various models of small group organization and structure, many pastors adopt a model before they have started their first group. What's wrong with this?
1. It puts the visionary's focus on a structure, not the member's values that make just about any small group structure work great. Frankly, if one's members are reaching the lost and discipling them successfully, any small group structure will work well.
2. The structure chosen in advance cannot take into account the actual and ongoing needs of the ministers (members) in the groups, making them feel as if they're a new cog in someone else's clockworks from the beginning.
3. Choosing a structure in advance promotes a false sense of security, which keeps pastors from experimenting with or prototyping various models before deciding upon one.
The smart pastor ignores the hype around the models written about or those featured in mega church conference plenary sessions. He focuses on developing a healthy biblical community that experiences the presence, power, and purposes of Christ. Out of this, he will see what leader to coach ratio will be most profitable for his church at that time in ministry.
A great illustration to drive home this point would be buying a suit out of a mail order catalog. The model looks great wearing it, but everyone knows it's gonna look horrid on you once you take it out of the box and try it on. A man's suit needs to be tailored to fit properly, doesn't it?
Don't wear other church's clothing. Develop your first groups, invest your time ensuring they're healthy and growing, and then add the support they need in the way of training leaders and inserting coaches over groups. Your model will then be your model, not another church's model you tried to replicate poorly.
If you must replicate something from another church, figure out how they disciple new believers into spiritual maturity and make it work with a handful of members. When you refine this, you'll be well on your way to a successful small group ministry.
1. It puts the visionary's focus on a structure, not the member's values that make just about any small group structure work great. Frankly, if one's members are reaching the lost and discipling them successfully, any small group structure will work well.
2. The structure chosen in advance cannot take into account the actual and ongoing needs of the ministers (members) in the groups, making them feel as if they're a new cog in someone else's clockworks from the beginning.
3. Choosing a structure in advance promotes a false sense of security, which keeps pastors from experimenting with or prototyping various models before deciding upon one.
The smart pastor ignores the hype around the models written about or those featured in mega church conference plenary sessions. He focuses on developing a healthy biblical community that experiences the presence, power, and purposes of Christ. Out of this, he will see what leader to coach ratio will be most profitable for his church at that time in ministry.
A great illustration to drive home this point would be buying a suit out of a mail order catalog. The model looks great wearing it, but everyone knows it's gonna look horrid on you once you take it out of the box and try it on. A man's suit needs to be tailored to fit properly, doesn't it?
Don't wear other church's clothing. Develop your first groups, invest your time ensuring they're healthy and growing, and then add the support they need in the way of training leaders and inserting coaches over groups. Your model will then be your model, not another church's model you tried to replicate poorly.
If you must replicate something from another church, figure out how they disciple new believers into spiritual maturity and make it work with a handful of members. When you refine this, you'll be well on your way to a successful small group ministry.
Strategic Coaching
As a coach over groups in my local church, I spend a great deal of time thinking about and praying for the groups I oversee. I'm always asking the Lord what I might be able to do for the group to encourage it to keep reaching out to unchurched people and consider multiplying sooner than later.
Here's a few things I'm doing that seem to work well in my situation:
1. I pray with the leaders of the groups often, asking them to pray with me and ask God to bless them with a large group that will require a multiplication.
2. I encourage the group's core team (5-8 people who get together monthly to make plans with the leader) to meet consistently in a host home where a group might multiply, not in just one home. If people become familiar with a new host home, they're far more likely to be open to meeting as a new group in that home.
3. I ask the worship leader of the group to train someone to lead and share the worship time with them 50/50 until the group multiplies.
4. I ask the existing leader of the group to ask one of the core team members to facilitate the core team meetings in the future. This turns a core team member into a group leader naturally, and gives the leader a break.
5. I visit the group and ask them if they've achieve all God wanted them to achieve. I ask, "Are you done? Or, is there more to do as a group beyond loving one another, which you're already doing beautifully?" This forces them to think of God and others aside from themselves.
Coaching groups in this way is weak in American churches with small group ministries. The coaches make a phone call to check in with the leader once a month at best and they're typically given far too many groups to support.
I'd love to see what your church's coaches are doing that gives results (versus what you want them to do or they're supposed to be doing but not doing... which has a simple solution: modeling.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)