Consulting
Consulting relationships are with churches or sub-groups within churches (leadership groups, task specific teams, informal opinion leaders, marginalized but motivated members, etc.).  Coaching relationships are one on one. Coaching involves other contexts but with a focus on helping an individual. In all our connections, we seek to develop eternal relationships. 


Church Consulting

Consulting projects can involve the development of workshops, assessment tools, or can focus on a particular challenge. However, in ALL our work we seek to deepen and expand the capacities of the church, address church ownership, and foster Christian maturity that is spiritually healthy.  

Previous projects have involved managing various kinds of conflicts, minister transition work between ministers, connecting ministers looking for churches and churches looking for ministers, congregational assessment, leadership upgrades, solutions to communication difficulties, surfacing and articulating God's vision for a congregation, elder selection processes, termination negotiations when a minister is fired, and "go or grow" projects that involve interventions of care for struggling ministers. 


Personal Consulting

Coaching relationships are focused on spiritual growth toward healthy maturity for individuals. The coaching, however, may focus family, work, or church contexts even though the focus is on the individual within those contexts. 

Previous coaching relationships have involved coaching relationships in the areas of marriage and family, teaching (including university faculty), dissertation coaching, problem solving and generating creative options, placement in new jobs or roles of ministry, preparation for interviews, former leaders exiting leadership, new leaders entering leadership, chairs of task specific teams, care giving for grief work and coaching for caregivers on difficult funerals, growth covenants for missionaries and other Christian servants, establishing ministry foundations for entering new ministries, information opinion leaders of influence who do not serve in formal roles of leadership, and terminated ministers.  



Outcomes

A minister moved from a frustrating and escalating relationship with other church leaders to a congregation of members and leaders that adore him, and express that appreciation in multiple tangible ways. His family, ministry, and possibilities for the future have gone from stressed to a shared ministry of gratitude.  

A mid-sized but rapidly growing church struggles to understand leadership in a new way. They develop a more biblical approach to church leadership that seeks creative ways to ensure Christ as the only Head of the church, improves the communication of the entire congregation, empowers wide spread involvement, and becomes  a model for how "professional" ministry staffs and the "lay leadership" of elders can effectively partner. 

Many ministers have effectively recovered from being fired to meaningful and productive ministries, transferred from poor ministry matches to more compatible ministry matches, changed ministry roles to more effectives areas of service, successfully navigated double-bind ministry dilemmas, and . 

An elder admits an affair, returns to a repaired marriage, and gives up ministry to receive a new ministry in a different way. He took responsibility, was healed by God's loving grace, and has restored relations with his family and friends. 

A congregation in one of the largest cities in the nation wanted to reach out to people around them but was stuck in conflict over the firing of hte minister. The church was literally split 50/50 down the middle with half the church demanding the preacher leave and half the church demanding the elders resign. I gave them a 90% chance of not surviving the division but they made courageous choices of integrity and blessed each other as they went different directions. The minister still serves in ministry and all but one of the elders received over 90% affirmation from the congregation. All the elders received over 70% affirmation. 
 
The marriage of two involved church members restored one day before the divorce was legally final. All hope was gone but God gave life to this dead marriage filled with destructive conflict and turned it into a new beginning with a bright future. 

A transient church of 40 to 60% turnover rate every four to five years also had one of the highest levels of education and wealth of any group in the nation. In a tug of war among smart and gifted type A personalities, they sought direction and shared vision. They engaged each other to the point of a shared sense of God's vision.  

A minister was burned out and ready to quit. He was as evangelistic as the church that hired him hoped he would be. However, evangelism resulted in more work and more discipleship than what he could manage. A power shift occurred in the church as he became more influential than the current leadership. The current leadership's feeling of loosing control expressed itself in concern about the minister. The more he tried to do well the more he threatened those feeling a loss of power.  His efforts to help were making things worse. He gained an understanding of how his phase of life in the early 30's and an elder's phase of life in later years with inoperable cancer were clashing with disastrous results for the church.  He developed skills that made the difference and kept him in ministry where he could fully serve. 

A more progressive minister and a more conservative elder locked in conflict at a church that was the most progressive church in a very conservative part of the country. The congregation was not progressive according to standards across the country but was progressive in their own context. Elders were leaving the eldership because of weariness over the conflict as the eldership declined from six to two. At one point, over 15 former elders attended the congregation but refused to serve. They expanded their leadership to include untapped people of substance in the church to take responsibility for seeking solutions. They now have an eldership of seven. 

A new church developed initial decision making processes that ensured they would rise above the petty issues that often hi-jack a church and reduce effective outreach to the community. Broad spread involvement, high morale, and genuine outreach to the people around them has produced a church that is steadily growing in both numbers and genuine discipleship.