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”.

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.