Wednesday, August 11th, 2010 | Jay McSwain
This past week after talking with two ministers in different states I further committed to stressing an insight along with two keys to connecting people that I knew, but often don’t continually stress. The insight is:
Churches who believe in helping people discover HOW they are uniquely created to serve must also be committed to helping direct people WHERE to serve.
I have watched many churches teach their people on HOW to serve based on helping them discover elements like their spiritual without any thought about how to help them know WHERE to serve.
Back to my two ministers I talked with this past week. One was using our mobilyzr ministry guidehttp://mobilyzr.com/onlineguide/overview.html and pumped about how it was connecting their members to meaningful ministry. The other was excited about the personal discovery going on through the PLACE assessments, but struggling on what to do beyond the personal discovery. His church was even providing one-on-one coaching after the personal discovery, but still struggling with connecting people to ministry.
I am thrilled with churches that truly desire to help every individual in a personal and individual way discover who they are in Christ by providing insight to members and attendees into their personality, abilities, discovering their spiritual gifts and passions and connecting their life experiences to these insights and discoveries. This is why I wrote the five PLACE assessments so God’s people can discover their personality, spiritual gifts, abilities, passion and life experiences as it relates to fulfilling God’s purpose for their lives. But, I hope you will like me commit whether you are beginning your connection process or strategy or have already implemented it you will ensure to incorporate two key steps in your process and strategy. First, create a ministry guide so your people will know WHERE they can pursue their purpose. Secondly, provide one-on-one coaching to help your people know better HOW and then WHERE to serve. The results will be worth the effort. A commitment to this simple two-step process will avoid, “I’m gift but WHERE do I serve”.
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 | Kraig Kelsey
Four months ago Kristin Dawsey, the Serve Ministries and First Impressions Manager of Brookwood Church in Simpsonville, SC began implementing the PLACE process and is making huge efforts to intentionally connect their people to meaningful ministry. I recently had the opportunity to go to Brookwood twice to equip and train their leadership. I was encouraged by a recent email I received from Kristin, “We’re VERY excited! We got a shout out in one of our Pastor’s blog http:bit.ly/b0CV0h. We have already begun registration for the first class (starts Sept. 1). Our Facilitator is super excited. And, I’m talking with a gal who will hopefully be the new Ministry Team Leader for the Connection Coaching-ensuring training, etc. LOL”
The PLACE Options
Kristin and her team reviewed the three options we have developed for incorporating PLACE resources into a church’s connection strategy and decided they wanted to incorporate what we call Option 3 – Personal Discovery + Coaching + Connecting. Over the years our team has found churches have used these three options to connect their people to meaningful ministry.
- Option 1 is Personal Discovery where our five PLACE assessments are presented in various formats.
- Option 2 is Personal Discovery + Coaching where the five PLACE assessments plus utilizing members within the church who are trained connection coaches to help guide those through the Personal Discovery to ministry opportunities.
- Option 3 provides the concepts and tools to help transition people from Personal Discovery through coaching to actual ministry PLACEment.
One of the key elements in making Kristin’s desire for Option 3 successful is Ongoing Senior Pastor/Staff Support. Kristin and her team have worked hard to get their senior pastor and staff to not only buy into the ministry connection process, but also invest their time in working to ensure the process is successful and effective church wide.
I look forward to discussing the other PLACE implementation options in future blogs.
Thursday, June 17th, 2010 | Lisa Baker
In additions to church-wide surveys, PLACE Connection Sessions are an ideal environment to ask for church feedback. At Brentwood Baptist Church, PLACE is a requirement for membership. During the session, designed to assist individuals in better understanding who God created the to be and where they would be effective serving, we ask, “What drew you to BBC”? It’s exciting to hear all of the positive responses and then to be able to encourage our staff and lay leadership.
As a follow up to the positive, we ask, “Do you see any gaps”? The New Members (NM) coming in are generally apologetic when they make any negative remarks; after all they are excited about their new church home. At the same time that they are apologetic, they seem to grasp that we are giving them a chance to participate in making decisions that will better the church, so they let us know what is lacking. The perceived gaps may reveal an area of service for the NM, an opportunity to teach the NM the why behind what we do or a ministry area that needs attention.
If we, as church leadership, can remain teachable enough to learn from others and if we are steeped in a God-relationship so that we remain faithful to the path He has us on, we will do nothing but benefit. We will receive the privilege of seeing through fresh eyes to new perspectives that can shed invaluable light on how we are doing ministry and where we might consider looking in the future.
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 | Barbara Valerioti
Many churches today are watching their bottom line and wanting to be certain that they are good stewards of their resources. Certainly financial resources are easy to track and show on a balance sheet – but how about your people resources? Are we being good stewards of those resources as well? Is it proper or even desirable to consider our ‘people’ as resources that we are responsible for making an account for?
continue reading…Spiritual Gifts Testing & Ministry Placement – How Far Does the Process Need to Go?
Friday, November 6th, 2009 | Brad Sargent
In the late 1990s, I had the great experience of working with Jay McSwain on his earliest versions of assessments for PLACE. I’d never heard of the concept of “Abilities” before then. But, I’ve come to consider its inclusion as a self-discovery tool as one of the significant contributions of PLACE.
continue reading…Adjusting to Abilities
Monday, October 19th, 2009 | Lisa Baker
Personality, spiritual gifts, abilities, skills, passions and experiences were all important in making the right choices at the crossroads where I found myself standing for several years. My immediate response to this yearning for a more clearly defined purpose was to better myself through outward disciplines; however, the hours of mastering my plan offered very little fulfillment in the way of defining my purpose.
continue reading…Just Help Me Find My PLACE
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 | Ginger McSwain
Doing something for which you were not designed can breed all sorts of doubts, emptiness, and unfulfillment. I have felt feelings of frustration, failure, and loss of passion. This is not God’s plan or design for any of us. He created each of us for a purpose, “…to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up” (Ephesians 4:12). The way I serve in God’s Kingdom won’t be the same as you serve, and according to Scripture that is biblical!
continue reading…Serving God and Not Enjoying It
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