As many of you know, we kicked off our Discipleship Coaching Ministry last fall. The plan was to make sure that every Western Hills family had someone who would check on them at least one time a month asking them, “How can I pray for you?”  The ultimate goal was for these coaches to help people grow in their faith in the areas of Love God, Live Connected, Serve All, and Multiply Another. In order to complete this picture, each of our coaches had an elder that was responsible to check up on them and was available for further questions and training.

Over these months, we’ve learned a couple of things. First, our coaches told us clearly that having ten families (or more) was WAY too many. They could consistently hit three or four families with deep, meaningful conversations, but beyond that was proving to be very difficult. The second thing we learned was that we needed more training.

So we’ve had to make some changes, and we are already in the middle of some of those changes.

First, we trained our elders on how to train coaches. Next, our elders spent a couple of months training our coaches. We gave our current coaches permission to choose three to four families that they could continue to stay connected with and to help identify new coaches who could possibly pick up some of their other families. Between now and the end of August, we will be training these new coaches and re-organizing how all of these parts fit together: elders, coaches, and congregation. This will hopefully put us in a good position this September to have a fully-functioning Discipleship Coaching Ministry!

When we launched this concept, the goal was to become a multiplying church: a place where every person who calls Western Hills home functions as more than just a consumer, but as a Kingdom Ministry Partner. We know that this intersection of the Great Commandment and Great Commission is where real life happens. This is where Love, Live, Serve, and Multiply come to life, and it’s where real change can occur. Therefore, we want to do everything we can to empower people to live in that place.

This is still the goal, and we will get there!! There is so much at stake, much more than just church growth. I firmly believe that every single Christ-follower is gifted and called for a specific plan that will further His Kingdom. We want to be a church that empowers that kind of life. This tool of discipleship coaching can be a huge help for us in becoming this kind of church.

Thank you for being patient with us as we figure this out. We are committed to making this work because we know what is at stake.

Let’s keep chopping wood and praying to the Lord of the harvest!