There is a shift in my ministry philosophy I wish I had figured out years ago. It is a shift from disseminating information through teaching/lecture and the teaching of skills through coaching.
This is so obvious it would seem it doesn’t even need to be said and yet it took me to 40 to come to grips with this.
We tell people in sermons what they ought to do but don’t train them. We don’t coach them to skills. Then everyone ends up disappointed. We tell people what they are supposed to be doing in the sermon but what if they don’t know how? How can a sermon equip anyone? How can a Bible class equip them? How can, even, a small group do the job?
We have to shift form information through teaching to skill formation through coaching. This will require a shift in how we use our time. We need to take people along with us, instruct, give them the experience and debrief so that others know how to do what we do and do it regularly.
No one taught me how to coach. I have been taught congregational ministry and that entails how different size churches operate, leadership, communication, etc but not coaching.
Being an effective coach is essential to effective ministry. It requires taking on fewer people and moving much more slowly than mass communication to everyone at once.
I will be talking about this more in the near future. Until then here is more info to give you an idea of where this shift came from and what I am doing about it.
