SERVICES
Here are a few things I love to do that may be of help to you and your community. Don’t hesitate to reach out and see if there’s a way we can work together.
INTERIM TRANSITIONAL PASTORING
I can walk alongside your community in a season of change, exploring God’s dreams for your community, discerning practical next steps, and designing a path forward to flourishing.
CONSULTING
I can work closely with your leaders and/or community through a project-based approach to one or more areas of transition (ie, vision clarity, governance and structure).
COACHING
I can work closely with your core leaders (pastors, elders, board) to provide practical tools and guidance for leading your community through change.
GUEST SPEAKING
I can help your community make sense of change and transition through a sermon, sermon series, workshop, or webinar.
LEADERSHIP RETREAT
I can curate an experience for your leadership community that will focus on one area of transition (ie, vision clarity) and/or interpersonal/spiritual support for your leadership community.
Contact me for more information
AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION
While the above speaks more broadly of services I can provide, what follows below is what I get excited about. If your community is looking to explore any of these areas, let’s find a way to collaborate.
Communal Discernment
As someone who loves to ask big questions, there’s something truly wonderful and life-giving about the act of discerning in community. There’s beauty in the plurality of voices and experiences. There’s joy in the conversation. There’s animation in the room. And there’s something divine about finding ways to pause our own talking to listen to the voice of God. I love helping communities explore practices of communal discernment.
Power and decision making
This is a topic near and dear to my heart. Power dynamics are ever at play inside the walls of the church and outside its walls, in our workplaces, neighbourhoods, and family systems. How do we hold power? How do we make decisions together? These are questions I regularly wrestle with and have given a great deal of thought to.
Meaning making through story
We are ever in motion and perpetually a part of interconnected systems that change all the time. We may think of change and transition in macro ways, but change is always happening in micro and small ways in us and around us. Change can be disorienting, and the speed at which change is happening can truly leave us feeling lost and dislocated. Storytelling is a way to help us locate ourselves – individually and communally – to help our feet find a solid footing, and to help us make meaning out of our fragmented experiences.
interactive liturgies and litanies
I’ve spent time in a variety of creative churches and differing faith expressions. I’ve experienced and curated a variety of liturgical elements. Liturgy doesn’t need to be static or stale. It can be an invitation that connects us, deepens a relationship, widens understanding, cultivates empathy, and moves us to action.
CURATED CONVERSATIONS
I love rearranging the chairs and reimagining how we engage in communal dialogue. A monologue is great for the delivery of information, but a dialogue leads to new ideas, empathy, and transformation. Whether it’s a world cafe, a fishbowl, a panel, or something else entirely, there’s opportunity to elevate the genius in the room and involve more voices.
MUSTARD SEED INITIATIVES
I love to work with innovators and starters. It is pure joy to walk alongside these incredibly passionate people and help them gather their ideas, refine these ideas, and discern which idea(s) to move forward with. The power of asking good questions with curiosity can really open up a conversation for these new ideas to develop, like mustard seeds turning into wide-spanning vegetation.
ECCLESIOLOGY
This fancy word is the theology and thought around how the church structures itself. I’ve been part of so many unique and creative churches that have experimented with the shape of their gathering (the literal shape: circle, round, around cafe style tables, linearly in pews), how the stage is used (or not used), who can contribute to the conversation (and expectations around the mic), and so much more. There’s such rich possibilities when we reimagine how we arrange the chairs and how this informs us as the gathered people of God.
PROCESS MAPPING
I’m a process guy. For me it’s less about the goal and more about how we get there together. The means is just as important as the ends. I am wired to think about process and I love to help others explore that all important ‘how’ question. How will we get from A to B? Process mapping is an exercise that moves us from goals and priorities to a more robust process or timeline. It can clarify a way forward, provide tangible next steps, and give way to an implementation strategy that can be followed. It can distill for a community what needs to happen next and how we will do it.
NEIGHBOURHOOD EXEGESIS
I have experience living and working in a place-based parish community. Learning to walk the neighbourhood with fresh eyes is a valuable tool for seeing what’s beautiful and what’s broken. I love helping others their neighbourhood with fresh eyes. Through the practices of neighbourhood walks, prayer walks, crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) walks, demographics data, storytelling, or a more personal reflection exercise on my own pathways and pivots, I can help you explore your neighbourhood further and deeper.
SPECIFIC TOOLS for Teams
Team dynamics are really important. The various personalities and gifts of team members can define a team for better or worse. Sometimes it’s helpful to take some time to sit with a specific tool as a team. Below are a few I love to lean into.
WORKING GENIUS
If you haven’t discovered the six types of working genius yet, head over to workinggenius.com and get acquainted. It’s a beautiful theory of how work happens in team environments. The individual assessment is fairly priced and out of it can come the team map activity, exploring areas of collective genius and collective frustration. It can be a helpful ah-ha moment for a team as it shine light on the challenging areas of our teams work.
Enneagram
The Enneagram is a dynamic tool that offers a wealth of insights into our personality, why we make the decisions we make, what drives us and inspires us, how we look in health, how we operate in stress, and how we’re all connected. Not only is it a fantastic resource for self reflection and spiritual reflection, it can be used in teams to identify areas of collective strength and collective angst. It can identify and speak to underlying conflict between two personality types. And it can be a window toward personal flourishing and growth.
APEST
Another great tool is the fivefold gifts inventory known as APEST. This stems from Ephesians 4 where five gifts are named: apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. There’s so many good books about APEST, and some great assessments that will help you discover your aptitudes and gifts. Because each of the five APEST gifts are gifts from Jesus that are meant to reflect Jesus, and because the church is the body of Jesus, it follows that a healthy church will lean into all five of these areas. In the same way, the healthiest teams are ones where each of the five gifts is present and active.
SIX STREAMS
One of my go-to tools for congregational health stems from the work of Renovare and Richard Foster, in his work on the six streams (or traditions) of the church. It’s similar in a way to Phyllis Tickle’s work The Great Emergence in that it provides several ways of seeing the diversity of tradition and approach that the church has taken throughout history. Because the goal is balance, this tool can be a helpful and self-reflective way for the church to examine its own history and leaning. Most churches prioritize and excel in a couple of the six traditions, are decent at others, and likely even shy away from one or two. How much healthier could we be if we learned to embrace the beauty and gift of each of these six traditions?