December 6, 2024

The SEND U Blog

Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

Author: Ken Guenther

Director of SEND U
Church Planting

Church Planter Training

A few weeks ago, Dick Walton and I joined the SEND North Central Europe church planters and their Polish co-workers for a SEND-sponsored church planting workshop in Karlowice, Poland. Dick was a church planter and my former Area Director in the Philippines, and since then he has also served as area director and church planting trainer in Bulgaria. He was planting churches in the Philippines since soon after I was born! My experience in church planting is much more limited, and I was somewhat surprised that I was asked to be one of the facilitators. I was also very impressed with the quality of the instruction by Adam Małkiewicz, a Polish church planter from the Bible League as he talked about how to incorporate new people into church plants. The workshop itself was short (only one evening and the next day until supper), but packed with great ideas and opportunities… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther2 mins read
E-learning, Pre-field Training

Online Training for Team Leaders in Week Three

We are now in our third week of the online course for SEND team leaders.   This week we are working on our job descriptions, after having discussed the essential tasks of a leader and the SEND Team Leader Profile in the previous two weeks.  I have been delighted to see 16 team leaders from many different SEND areas interact with one another in the class forums, encouraging one another, asking questions, and sharing principles they have learned about leadership.   We have participants from 8 different areas of SEND, and a wide range of leadership experiences in many different countries and contexts, so we have a lot of stories to tell.   There is never a time when everyone is online (or awake) at the same time, but as long as participants regularly login several times during the week, the discussions can flow as each participant posts his comments in an open… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther2 mins read
Coaching

Why Am I Convinced Coaching is Valuable for Missionaries?

Why am I so convinced that coaching is valuable for missionaries? Primarily because of how much coaching helped me at a time in my life and ministry when I was frustrated and felt that I had plateaued and was no longer growing. Back in 2007, I contacted Dr. Keith Webb in Singapore about some questions I had about coaching missionaries.  I was trying to “coach” a church planting team in FER, but I had no real idea what that meant. Rather than just “tell” me what a coach does, Keith graciously offered to “show” me by coaching me for the next 6 months. That coaching experience proved to be the most significant learning experience of my past 15 years of mission leadership. I believe that I learned more about leadership in those six months, than I had previously learned from any book, seminar or even the graduate classes on leadership… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther2 mins read
Books, Resources

Obtaining Good English Books on the Mission Field

Maybe you are wondering how a missionary obtains access to all these great books that SEND U is recommending at www.senduwiki.org. Most countries in which we work have very limited opportunities to purchase books in English, and basically nothing is available on topics related to professional development of missionaries. So we can order from Amazon, but then we have to pay shipping and wait several weeks or months. But the problem is bigger than just obtaining a new book on church planting or team leadership. One frequent question I get asked by new missionaries is how I recommend they send their entire libraries to the mission field. My answer to that question these days – leave the paper books at home, and take as much of your library as you can in digital form.… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
Coaching

Coaching in SEND Increases

During the summer, my coaching load went way down, but new coaching series are beginning in fall.  I am pleased to report that during the second quarter of 2010 (April – June), SEND missionaries were coached a total of at least 120 hours.  These are formal coaching hours that were reported to me, and I know there is more coaching going on within SEND than just this.  But according to my records, 33 different SEND missionaries were being coached during those 3 months.  A year ago, the total number of coaching hours and the number of missionaries being coached was about half of what it is today.   So SEND International is headed in the right direction!   In an organization of our size, if 25% of its membership was being coached at any one time, and coaching was happening twice a month, the quarterly totals of coaching hours would be over… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther2 mins read
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