The LPD uses an ABC approach for disciple making.
A is for Assessment: generating insights or awareness that recognizes a need for development.
B is for Basic training: creating the action steps that form a personal development plan.
C is for Coaching: instilling a culture of accountability through coaching conversations.
The LPD Residency Program is designed to help church pastors and leaders be effective disciple makers through coaching conversations that help church leaders move beyond managing people for performance and compliance or simply running church programs. Our goal is to help empower and unleash disciple makers to expand God’s kingdom through the local church.
Coaching assumes there is a clear and specific goal. Basic Training is derived from an action plan. A plan for action is generated from insights. These insights are often generated from coaching sessions or coaching conversations. These insights are always generated through the agency of the Holy Spirit. John writes:
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
John 14:26 ESV
In order to generate these disciple making insights for “Awareness” the LPD Residency Program has adopted the COACH model for Christian Leaders and the symbiotic relationship between the coach and the Holy Spirit. This practice is articulated as “Learning Without Teaching.” The author of the COACH Model writes:
The power of coaching is the Process. A coach empowers others by helping them to self-discover,
gain clarity and awareness, as well as by drawing Content from them. A good coach helps draw
out what the Holy Spirit has put in.
Keith E. Webb
The COACH Model for Christian Leaders: Powerful Leadership Skills for Solving Problems, Reaching
Goals and Developing Others
However, revitalizing the church to refocus on disciple making by coaching through the agency of the Holy Spirit will not be an easy accomplishment. It will be challenging for pastoral leaders to abandon their ‘Just-Tell-Me-What-To-Do’ approach to disciple making because that is both what they were trained to do and the normative expectation of congregations. Yet, they have been recognized and rewarded for this approach to disciple making since the innovation of the printing press. The church needs to revitalize how it fulfills the great commission mandate to make disciples.
How have you established an Awareness culture for disciple making transformation in your church so that you will both survive today and thrive tomorrow?
The LPD Church Planters I am coaching view our current COVID-19 crisis as a God given opportunity to revitalize their church and their ministry by establishing a basic training and coaching culture. I would love to share these insights with you and encourage you as you lead your church and ministry. We are all in this together.
Steve Sharpe
