Ancient-Future Group Life Conference Breakouts 1 and 2

In the afternoon at this conference, we had two breakout sessions. My first one was about coaching life-changing small group leaders. One of my big takeaways was the first essential skill of being a LifeGroup coach: Modeling: Pursue Christlikeness.

In this breakout I was challenged to "take the time and trouble to keep myself spiritually fit." Just this week the though ran across my mind, I'm way too busy. Honestly, I'm surprised I had time to think that. Seriously. I need to make sure I spend time regularly in the Word, not just random 5 or 10 minute spots here and there. To disciple, you have to be discipled.

The other challenge I received was that I need to model "Spirit-filled leadership." I do spend time praying for all my groups, but can anyone really pray too much? I doubt it. Little prayer, little power; much prayer, much power. If we want LifeGroups to be a powerful, an integral ministry at New Life, we need to pray for it constantly.



The next session was "Promoting Growth in Your Leaders" with Mike Hurt. This guy was really good and down to earth. I remember that he articulated a LOT of the same frustrations I had with leading and coaching, especially coaching. Here's the good stuff from that session:

Every leader needs three things from a coach:

1.) Know them personally - This is key. When entering a coaching relationship, we need to concentrate a ton of time on just this. You will not get into the actual "coaching" of the leader for his/her group until this critical personal relationship is established. It just doesn't work any other way. So I guess the first key to just to get to know someone very closely. It will take time.

2.) Encourage them spiritually - "How can I pray for you?" Share with them what God is teaching you. People like to follow godly people. I've personally learned in my own experience that people will eventually respond to stuff like this. "I'm praying for your group specifically this week. What do you want me to pray for?"

3.) Equip them - Everyone needs real world tools. And each leader will have different skills. What one leader needs another may not. What that means for general training sessions for leaders is that you may have to get creative to equip each leader in their own individual needs. If you are doing a training session on something in particular that you know one leader does NOT need, have that particular leader do the training session, then you can also see if that leader could end up being a good coach.


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WJS