Consultant Convections |
CONSULTANT/COACH TRAINING
DR. RAY ELLIS, DIRECTOR OF CONSULTING NEWTORK
FREE METHODIST CHURCH OF NORTH AMERICA
The value and effectiveness of a local church consultation and coaching varies according to church size, setting, condition, abilities, and preferences. Only particular assumptions and objectives from the following may be appropriate.
ASSUMPTIONS
- God is pleased when churches are healthy and grow and reproduce.
- The Great Commission is best carried out by growing and reproducing local churches. Growth and reproducing disciples and congregations are signs of good health.
- God Provides for the health and growth of local churches by equipping them with gifted leaders and members with spiritual gifts for ministry.
- Local Churches and Leaders evidence certain needs.
- Local churches tend to turn inward and often resist goal-oriented and growth-directed activities.
- Local leaders often fail to observe trends, focus on growth goals, or target responsive populations for evangelism.
- The position of senior pastor requires special support to cultivate good church health.
- The pastoral staff often lacks mutual understanding of the organizational skills needed for their current job assignments.
- Consultants fulfill a legitimate and vital role in local church life.
- God uses gifted and trained consultants/coaches as agents of renewal. Their efforts enhance the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit, who is already working in every congregation.
- Churches and their leaders encounter dilemmas that often require outside help.
- Due to their greater objectivity, external consultants can more accurately assess a situation than can those internal to the church.
- Consultation fees are appropriate to the service rendered, and they increase the impact of the consultation.
- When done in correct process, the local church consultation facilitates solutions to growth barriers and maximizes growth potential in the local church.
- Data gathering activities, including surveys, interviews, and research into church history, are, in themselves, interventions and therefore potentially therapeutic.
- Properly conducted data gathering will guide staff and leadership through a discovery process and prepare them for change.
- Permission to move ahead with solutions and implementation of action plans result from a mutually-held perception of root problems and possible solutions.
- Commitment to some form of accountability or continuation process will enhance a church’s capacity to achieve its desired outcomes.
OBJECTIVES
1. Enhance the overall health and growth of local churches.
- Stimulate spiritual awakening where conversion, repentance, and restitution may occur, restoring unity and love.
- Affirm those programs and leaders that contribute to health; supplement weakness and probe blind spots.
- Reduce tension in relationships by teaching new communication skills.
- Encourage numerical expansion and multiplication
- Develop and implement strategies that result in tangible evidence of new disciple making, convert growth, numerical growth, and multiplication of cell groups.
- Help the church identify responsive target populations and develop programs to reach them.
- Assist in helping daughter congregations in sponsoring new congregations.
- Provide adequate diagnosis and direction.
- Describe the church’s current situation ~ including the key hindrances preventing growth ~ in a way that is clear, concise, and agreed on by the church leaders.
- Provide a range of options that are workable within the means of the particular church.
- Guide leaders to form long-range plans with specific recommendations for future programs and insure that the church has adequate facilities and staffing to support the plans.
- Provide documentation that can serve as a benchmark, useful for measuring progress at a future date.
|
|
|