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.