We have all needed to adapt to our new reality. One thing I cannot say is that I have so much more time now that we are staying at home. The nature of how I serve church leaders and congregations is done in person but also on phone and online video calls.
Austin, Justin and I discussing our website choices.
Here’s what I have been working at:
- Our Navigators Church Ministries website. My fellow staff Justin Gravitt and I met with Austin who is helping us with the complete redesign of our site. It is much needed. We will be focus it on those outside our staff, helping them understand and connect with our tools. We want to increase our digital footprint enabling us to serve the Church with our disciplemaking culture process and our life coaching. We’ve had several meetings this month and expect more as we approach our end of the month deadline.
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Our NCM Regional Leaders Meeting charting our next steps.
We meet monthly with our Trainers meeting. We are revamping our training process for our disciplemaking culture process or GiDC. Our Trainers are from Akron, Comubus, Dayton, Portland, Houston, Atlanta, Baltimore and New York City. In the next five years we want to build 100 Practitioners of our GiDC, who’ll work with 400 churches, producing 1000 disciplemakers each year. Big goals that need that right steps today. I am grateful for these folks wisdom and creativity!
Our Akron Disciplemakers Cohort are walking through the principles in the workbook, “The Ways of the Alongsider.”
- Our Akron Disciplemakers Cohort meet twice a month to develop folks who up their game in discipling others. We had been meeting at Front Porch Cafe though now we meet online. My friend Randy and I have been a part of three of these. He and I share the lead working through the principles in the Alongsider. It is giving people the “What” of discipleship and the “How.” We tackle the skills necessary to invest spiritually in others at a higher level. We leave energized after each meeting.
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Mark my old friend from Young Life days helped us consider rest and solitude. It was great fun for me to work with him again!
Monthly I lead our Great Lakes regional staff in an hour of prayer and a hour training. We break the team down into small groups of three and four to pray personally for each other, then regather to pray through our ministry challenges.
- In our training portion here I invited my friend Mark Evans, from The Front Porch Ministries to share about about biblical rest, Sabbath and abiding in Christ.
We preparing for our webinar with the discipleship.org folks. I must have been confused about something in the picture. What a scowl. :^)
- In late March we held a webinar with Discipleship.org. We co-released a survey on the state of discipleship in the church. There were some fantastic finding in the survey. Bobby Harrington was gracious to host our time to discuss and consider the issues facing the church in the US. For a copy of the survey email me at NCM@navigators.org.
Some days I’ll have four Zoom calls, with pastors, and those I am leading. I am grateful to continue to have opportunities to equip, to encourage the body of Christ. 