The Columbia Partnership

Let the Young Mentor the Old?

In his book, Recreating the Church: Leadership for the Postmodern Age, Dick Hamm says the following about mentoring relationships in a postmodern age:

“We usually think of mentors as older people with wisdom born of experience, who share that wisdom with younger people. Such mentoring is important, and there needs to be more of it happening. However, in the face of the rapid change all about us, there is a new kind of mentoring needed today. We who are immigrants in the postmodern world need young mentors, natives, who will help us learn the language, paradigms, challenges, and issues of this new day. Thus, as never before, mentoring should be a two-way street, with older and younger colleagues connecting with one another, developing these two-way mentoring relationships for the sake of the whole church.” [55]

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Seven Strengths of Perennial Churches

In his book, Cultivating Perennial Churches: Your Guide to Long-Term Growth, Bob Dale shares seven strengths of perennial churches:

"Perennials contrast with annual plants in at least seven significant ways. Does the same cluster of seven strengths apply to congregations, too? What can congregational leaders discover about planting for health and immunity season after season?" [8]

1. Perennials reflect their planters' purpose. 2. Perennials grow stronger root systems. 3. Perennials are resilient and tough. 4. Perennials thrive in  "mixed meadows". 5. Perennials grow from a variety of beginnings. 6. Perennials grow during all seasons. 7. Perennials reproduce with the future in mind. [8-13]

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The Biggest Barrier to Lifestyle Compassion Ministry

In his book, The Samaritan Way: Lifestyle Compassion Ministry, David Crocker talks about barriers to lifestyle compassion ministry:

“The biggest barrier to lifestyle compassion ministry is a self-centered attitude. That goes for churches and for individual believers. This is the attitude that says: It is about us.

I find that many church folk really do believe it’s about them. They believe the church is there to serve them—to provide child care for their little ones, to educate their children in spiritual matters, to provide safe, so-attractive-that-their-teenagers-will-beg-to-come activities for their teens, to marry their young and bury their dead, to give them their weekly spiritual ‘fix’ on Sundays, and so forth. And as long as this attitude prevails, there is little hope that many will develop lifestyle ministry, especially lifestyle compassion ministry for persons outside the church.” [47]

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Living as the Church in the Crossover Time

In his book, Borderland Churches: A Congregation’s Introduction to Missional Living, Gary Nelson says the following about crossing over as significant hinge points in Christianity:

“We are facing an ‘abar (crossover) time in the life of our church in North America.”

“’Crossing over’ is rarely embraced willingly. It is, however, only in the crossing over that God’s new thing becomes possible. Crossing over provides, as one management expert calls it, an opportunity for a ‘whack on the side of the head’ that will unlock us from thinking and living in the old familiar ruts.”

“In ‘abar moments we realize that we cannot go back and neither can we stay where we are.”  [28-29]

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Congregational Coaches and Congregational Transformation: A Match?

In his book, Pursuing the Full Kingdom Potential of Your Congregation, George Bullard shares the following about the role of coaching congregations to pursue their full Kingdom potential:

“True congregations transformation occurs when congregations understand their full Kingdom potential and can be nurtured as a Christ-centric, faith-based community to journey toward that potential. Congregational coaches who understand how to guide the transitions and changes that lead to transformation are a valuable asset to congregations.

Coaching is an emerging right-brained approach that sees relationships as more important than tasks, significance as more important than success, stories as more important than strategies, experiences as more important than rule books, people as more important than institutions, and soaring with strengths as more important than problem-solving.” [201]

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