Learn best practices for mentorship and discipleship between emerging 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 network experience.
What is a network?
A network 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.
In the network 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 network 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 network 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.
Upcoming Network Launches
West Michigan
This network will include two in-person meetings, the first will take place on October 1, 2022 (breakfast and lunch included). Participants will have monthly coaching calls between the sessions. Churches will be asked to bring 4-6 participants from each church.
Online Network
This network will meet monthly beginning in January and concluding in April 2022. Churches will be asked to bring 4-6 participants with a designated leader from each congregation being part of monthly coaching calls between large group sessions.
Meeting Dates (all meetings will take place at 8:30 pm Eastern, 7:30 Central, 6:30 Mountain, and 5:30 Pacific):
What to Expect
A network consists of 5-8 congregations and will focus on mentoring as a form of intergenerational faith formation engagement.
Network 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.
Network 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.
Can’t commit to a Mentoring Network right now?
Try our One-Time Workshops!
Emerging Adulthood: What it is and why it matters.
What’s the average age of the individuals worshiping at your church? If your congregation is like many others, you may be noticing fewer and fewer individuals between the ages of 18-25 years old. This workshop will help congregations deepen their understanding of these “emerging adults” and how they often experience the church.
Mentoring 101: We want to connect so what should we do?
Many “older” individuals in the church want to build relationships with young people in their congregation but aren’t sure how to begin. This workshop will discuss best practices for individuals looking to connect across generations that focus on calling, gifts, and individual experiences.
Interested in setting up a time for a trained facilitator to lead your team through a workshop?
Contact events@ThereforeGo.com to start the conversation!
References available upon request.
Click here to contact us today!
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