Logan Leadership

One thing I’ve noticed in our weekly house church gatherings is that when people truly get connected spiritually and faith becomes real for them– you can see it in their faces. There is a transformation you can see. They have become different, and it’s obvious that the transforming work of Jesus is happening in their life.

I’ve found that we don’t need to press people to make a decision for Jesus. We share the reality of the gospel with them and then just continue to let it saturate their lives. Conversion is a transformative experienced– the gospel becomes so real for them it shows up so you can physically see it in people’s eyes and in their faces.

What’s the goal of education? Of training? It’s transformation. The traditional approach is to give a lot of information and hope they apply it. Sometimes a more avant-garde approach is that part of passing the course is implementing the information. But what we’re really looking for is transformation… which is rarely achieved through a curriculum-driven process.

Although it’s much easier to deliver this way, a curriculum-driven process may or may not be focused on what God is doing in your life at the present moment. But what if, by the time we finish an education process, we can say, “Here’s what the people are ready to do. And here’s how they’ve demonstrated that they’ve done it.”  That’s competency-based education, and it focuses on the experiences people need in order to grow. Those experiences are what lead to real transformation.

The core issue with developing people is to identify the outcomes you’re trying to accomplish. The challenge in the formal education field is thinking in terms of curriculum– what the students need to know– instead of in terms of outcome– what the students need to be able to do. One time I asked an academic dean, “When people graduate from your program, what can they do?” He later told me that question kept him up nights. I was asking about competency, not about curriculum.

It’s not the knowledge is unimportant. It’s that application is so important.

I recently spoke at Life Pacific College to a class on the personal development of the leader through coaching. I’ve done a lot of teaching on how to coach, but I think this was the first time I’ve done a focused presentation on how to get the most out of being coached.

It was fascinating to look at the process from the perspective of the person being coached. I reflected on my own experiences of being coached. When was it most transformative? What maximized my development?

What are some of the things that make a difference and allow people to get the most out of coaching?

The post below is by Randy Lovejoy, pastor of Silverlake Community Church.

I had an opportunity to use a different metric for ministry this past week.  This Sunday we had an unusual convergence in our worship service.  Not only did adults and youth join.  Not only did we have a baptism. We had both of these things as well as the commissioning of a mission team to Africa.  And all of this in one service.

Years ago when I was teaching a class, one of my students had a friend in town and he asked if his friend and the friend’s wife could sit in on my class that afternoon. I said sure. Just recently I saw that student again and he said, “What you did during that time completely revolutionized their entire ministry. They got a new paradigm for the way they served.”

I of course had no idea what I had taught on that day—or what they had heard—but sometimes God just seems to work that way.  You just never know when you have a conversation that can change the entire trajectory of someone’s life and ministry.