Why a Peer Learning Accelerator?
Experience shows bringing the innovators of a new idea together in “Learning Communities” over an extended period of time will accelerate the learning curve for all. The Missions 3.0 Peer Learning Community is a two-year Learning Community made up of teams of 4-6 people from 6-8 highly innovative churches and other Christian organizations from around the country already working in some way on sustainable solutions through church missions. The basic assumption of the group is that there are no single experts on the matter, just some highly motivated people using “informed experimentation” to figure things out. Here’s what you can expect:
- Accelerated progress through an act-and-learn process that pushes problem-solving and the pace of discovery.
- A chance to learn from the models of other highly motivated and effective leaders working on sustainability.
- The opportunity to network and collaborate with other innovative churches/orgs 4 times over a 2 year span.
- A chance to accelerate your learning curve and create a working knowledge base for other churches/orgs.
- Access to subject matter experts in various aspects pertaining to sustainability in church missions.
How It All Works
Our experience has shown that moving a church’s missions work toward more sustainable solutions takes 3-5 years of hard work on the “inside” with the help of an “outside” resource for 2 years. The biggest reason it takes this much time and support is because the early work of any group of innovators is largely about “proof of concepts.” Missions 3.0 Peer Learning Communities and the staff of Significant Matters provide that “outside” support for churches serious about making sustainability central to their mission’s outcomes. They are designed to allow a small group to learn from one another what works and what doesn’t work through execution. The commitment is to meet for two days, 4 different times over the course of 2 years to listen, learn and share and ultimately develop execution plans for the following 6 months. The length of the overall commitment and the frequency of meetings serve to deepen relationships for networking purposes and push the pace of discovery. Each of the 4 gatherings includes training, extended time for individual teams to work on strategic plans, collective problem solving, group sharing and debriefing. At the end of every gathering we create a video for each church that includes key thoughts and insights along with their Action Plans for the next six months like the one on the right…..
Six-Month Action Plans
The General Framework
The work of sustainability in Church missions can be broken into four distinct but inter-related domains. Each must be understood separately and then integrated into a cohesive, comprehensive strategy that makes sense for the church, the people they are discipling, the missional partners they work with in the field and the actual communities in which that mission work is taking place. In addition to the four domains we have identified Four Practices every church has to focus on if they want to move their missions work into the realm of sustainable solutions. The video to the right gives you a great summary of these four domains and practices.
Who Is This For?
This Missions 3.0 Peer Learning Accelerator is for a limited number of churches and Christian organizations who are actively pursuing sustainability, including economic development strategies. To maximize the impact of the peer-to-peer learning dynamic, this Learning Community is limited to 6-8 churches/orgs with teams of 4-6 people. It is important that your team be made up of key leaders who have the authority to execute on action plans.
For More Information
For more information about the cost and availability of the next Peer Learning Community or how to set one up for a group of churches please contact Tom Bassford at 816-419-3291 or at tom@significantmatters.com