Learn best practices for mentorship/discipleship between young adults and others in your church community.
ThereforeGo Ministries and the Office of Faith Formation of the Christian Reformed Church have collaborated to develop an interactive cohort experience.
What is a cohort?
A cohort is a peer learning group made up of congregations that work together with a shared purpose in order to provide each other encouragement and support as they explore new ways of doing ministry within their particular contexts. Listen to a Faith Formation Ministries team member and two past cohort members describe the cohort experience in the below 7-minute video.
In the cohort relationship, ThereforeGo Ministries (TGM) and Faith Formation Ministries (FFM) will:
- respect the uniqueness of each congregation.
- provide a coach to walk alongside as a partner who will listen, brainstorm, encourage, and hold each team accountable to apply their learning to some actions steps and experimentation.
- connect congregation leaders to resources, resource people, and other leaders in the cohort whose trajectory is similar.
Why should we consider joining?
We know that for the church to thrive, faith communities must be built upon strong intergenerational connections. While many emerging adults are looking to be part of mentoring relationships with older individuals, many congregations struggle to develop these connections. A mentoring cohort provides a peer network of churches a place to discern and strategize with the goal of equipping their congregations to build a vibrant intergenerational faith community.
Want to get started?
Let us know if we should start a cohort in your area!
What to Expect
A cohort consists of 5-6 congregations from one geographic location and will focus on mentoring as a form of intergenerational faith formation engagement.
Cohort teams will meet twice in person as well as virtually through video formats to:
- Identify the health of their congregational culture and their present faith formation framework while discovering how both will be able to support a robust mentoring culture.
- Explore various approaches to mentoring to help each team discern what would work best in their particular contexts.
- Discern what practices and programs are already working well to support mentoring in each congregational context.
- Experiment with two or three ways to engage in mentoring practices and spend time debriefing which practices were most helpful.
Cohort includes:
- One Pre-meeting Video Conference Call for a Church leader and one other.
- Two In-person meetings for a group of 4-6.
- Monthly coaching calls.
Building Community
“This week has made me want to continue getting close to God and keep pushing myself to serve him and his people. All the worksites taught me that it isn’t just me helping people, they are also helping me.”
Student
Finding Purpose
“How wonderful would it be if all teenagers at some point during their high school years could travel on a SERVE mission trip and get a clearer understanding of God’s purpose for their life sooner, rather than later?””
SERVE Leader
Lives Changed
“Through just this past week, I have found what it really means to be free—to be so free in Jesus Christ that I feel like I have to tell the world. SERVE changed my life and got me back on track. Praise God!”
