Learning the language of your place

​Each of these are opportunities either as a small group, a leadership team or an entire congregation to experience new ways to engage or re-engage in the story of your place … urban, suburban, or rural.  From 90 minute discussions to full day experiments in your neighborhood, you and your group will experience what it means to step into the story that God has been writing and will continue to write in the place that He has called you.
My focus on each one of these is to discover 5 built in spaces of connection:
Civic / cultural / communal / creation / Christ centered
and then to explore ways to be present in each
Workshops – these are 90 minute to 2 hour interactive lectures that give you theory and how to strategies to turn your groups focus outward.  Topics include:

• “Learning the Language of your Place” … becoming fluent in what really matters and gaining an understanding of what is “good news” to your neighbors.
• “Turning Proximity into Presence” … the typical person now merely lives in their neighborhood or community rather than engaging it.  Discover the transformation that can take place when Jesus followers learn to actively live “into” their neighborhoods.
• “Partnerships that Build the Kingdom” … strategies for living out Jeremiah 29: 4-11 and seeking the well-being of your neighborhood while finding causes common with groups that churches don’t traditionally work with.

Experiences – These are 4-6 hour active experiences that lead you hands on into your particular community while giving you personalized tools that will change the culture of your church.  Topics include:

• Neighborhood inventory … If your church were to close its doors tomorrow, would anyone notice?  Take a walking tour of your community, highlighting areas of engagement that will help your church to become an indispensable asset in the well-being of your neighborhood.
• Spiritual mapping … Redeem the time you spend walking or driving in your neighborhood by learning to see it as more than a collection of businesses, homes, parks, and schools.  We will go through a process of converting a normal map of your place into a spiritual guide for engaging God through informed prayers and intercessions
• Interactive prayer walk … We spend enough time walking around with our eyes glued to our phone screens … what if you could use it for the benefit of your neighborhood by following an interactive and informed prayer walk specific to the realities and stories of your community?  By the end of this experience your church will have a contextualized prayer walk that you can use over and over again.

Church coaching – All of the above will be used to launch your church into a new era of influence and effectiveness in connecting people to the hope of Jesus.  Generally a 6 month hands on relationship with a 6 month followup process, broken down as follows:

• 2 months evaluation process
• 2 months strategy development
• 2 months community engagement
• 6 months leadership follow up