Learn best practices for mentorship/discipleship between young adults and others in your church community.
ThereforeGo Ministries and Faith Formation Ministries of the Christian Reformed Church of North America 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.
Interested in a Cohort?
Let us know if you are interested in participating in a mentoring cohort in the future
What to Expect
A cohort consists of 5-8 congregations and will focus on mentoring as a form of intergenerational faith formation engagement.
Cohort teams will meet 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 will include:
- One Pre-meeting Video Conference Call for a Church leader and one other.
- Pre-session Instructional Videos.
- Two In-person meetings or four video meetings for a group of 4-6.
- Monthly coaching calls.
Renewed Hope
“I found hope in the “next” generation of young people in our church and community! They were amazing examples of Jesus Christ. This {experience} brought back my confidence in our kid’s salvation.”
Leader
Engaging Youth
“We began this mentoring cohort looking for ways we could engage our youth more effectively. We were given some helpful steps and have began some conversations in the church about mentoring our youth and building a stronger community for everyone.”
Emmanual Reformed Church
Ontario
Refilled & Refreshed
“My participation in the SERVE experience served as a great reminder as to why I got into ministry in the first place. I’m passionate about teaching, serving and building relationships with students. I was able to encounter all 3 without the stresses of the office or head leadership role. I feel refilled, renewed, and refreshed.”
