December 3, 2024

The SEND U Blog

Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

All Blog Posts

Coaching

Training and Coaching Hold Hands

I frequently refer to SEND U as SEND’s training department, although I realize that training is also only part of what it means to “equip SEND missionaries and leaders to more effectively mobilize God’s people and engage the unreached in order to establish reproducing churches.”  The other half of what we do in SEND U, and a major focus of me personally is coaching.  The byline of our newsletter says “BY COACHING AND TRAINING, WE EQUIP MISSION LEADERS TO EFFECTIVELY MOBILIZE THEIR TEAMS TO ENGAGE THE UNREACHED AND ESTABLISH REPRODUCING CHURCHES.”  Are coaching and training two separate assignments or are they somehow related?  I see training and coaching as two complementary “hands,” both needed to develop our membership to accomplish our mission.  In fact, training becomes much more effective when combined with coaching.  An article in Public Personal Management analyzes the impact of a managerial training program.  They found that… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther2 mins read
Coaching, E-learning, Team Leadership

Team Leader Training Module Concludes

We have now completed all four weeks of the online SEND Team Leader Orientation. Some of the participants are still completing their assignments but a number of them have already submitted their final evaluations. Since this was the beta run for this module, we did not charge anything for the training, but in exchange we asked all the participants to track the number of hours they spent on the course and post their evaluations of the material at the end of each week, and again at the end of the course. I see a few areas where I need to revise the material, but by in large, the evaluations have been overwhelmingly positive. As has been documented by others, follow-up coaching after providing some training greatly enhances the impact of the training (see Keith Webb’s blog about this).   So in a couple of months, I will be contacting each of… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
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 MaÅ‚kiewicz, 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
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