Coaching and facilitating

At the Conference, we explored two simple "equations" which explain so much about NT church life.

1. Church = Family

2. Leaders = Parents (in the best sense of the word)

On Thursday night and Friday morning we had two equipping tracks designed to help people learn to use two "tools" that are vital for good parenting/leading.

Track One: Coaching. The coaching tool helps us serve individuals by helping the them to better pay attention to what the Spirit is doing in their lives. While there is certainly a place for telling and teaching, we know that people don't grow to maturity without coaches who help them to learn to think for themselves by asking great questions and listening deeply to their answers.

Track Two: Facilitating. The facilitating tool helps us serve groups by helping the group pay attention to what the Spirit is doing in its midst. Facilitating is different from the way that many of us where taught to lead a group which was essentially to disciple individuals in a group context. By contrast, a facilitator sees the group as a living organism and disciples the group which then disciples individuals.

In the video below, Walt Hastings and Tim Morris comment on these two equipping tracks.

John

Report on LK10 Conference (1)

The first annual LK10 Conference was held at the end of may at Abilene Christian University. This Conference was hugely significant because it was our first attempt at applying LK10 practices in a conference setting. We have lots of experience at living into these practices as individuals, as CO2 partners and as house churches. The Conference was a wonderful affirmation of the way the Lord can work through these rhythms in a conference setting.

Typical Christian conferences are built around "talking heads". Even though research shows that lecture is the least effective means of communicating information (not to mention changing lives), we continue to feature well known speakers at conferences. (This is similar to the high value for preaching in church services.) The LK10 Conference represented a major paradigm shift in that it was built around collaborative listening (to each other and to God). Over the next several posts, we'll tell stories about what this was like.

Talking about the priesthood of all believers vs experiencing the priesthood of all believers.