Fostering a Spiritual Growth Community

DRAFT

The app provides structure for whole-life conversations. But helping people grow spiritually goes beyond the convos. Coaches also help develop an environment of relationships in which people can grow spiritually.

People grow in environments where they feel welcome, loved and valued, supported, and challenged in healthy ways. As coach you can model these things AND you can help everyone in the group contribute to this kind of growth community.

I recommend The Other Half of the Church for a fuller explanation of the neuroscience behind their approach. Here I offer some ideas for practical ways this can be done in the context of your pods.

Relational Joy

First, create a space where people share relational joy, that sense of being welcome, that people are glad to see each other and glad to be part of something together.

  • Practices to model and promote this relational joy:

    • Welcome each person warmly and personally. Remember what you appreciate about them as you do this, so you can greet them with joy

    • Take opportunities to tell people what specifically you appreciate about them, especially in moments of tension. This is not to manipulate people, but to value something positive in them.

    • Share moments of gratitude. This will naturally come up in many backstories and God stories. You can also give people who don’t have a God story to share the alternative to share something they’re grateful for from the week.

    • Make healthy and non-threatening eye contact. This is trickier over Zoom, but you can give each person your full attention with an open-heartedness over Zoom.

    • Contact people between meetings to let them know you’re thinking of them.

Authentic Bonds

Second, create a space where people have the opportunity to form loyal bonds of friendship and Christian love with one another.

  • Practices that help people form authentic bonds of love

    • Encourage opportunities to connect with people one-on-one where appropriate

    • Pray for one another both in and outside the group

    • Have experiences together in the world. Don’t just talk about your separate experiences and lives, actually do things together to build a shared history.

    • Recall shared memories together to celebrate your shared history

Group Identity

Third, develop a group identity, a sense of what you have in common, what gives the pod its character, and what kind of people you want to be.

  • Practices to develop your group identity:

    • Give your group a name

    • Send notes to people in the group and call them by name and by group name.

    • In each starter and celebration convo, recall together what you all have in a common as a group and anything that makes this particular group unique

    • In a starter convo, spend 5-10 minutes talking about group norms and values, what do you all care about together and what kind of people does this group want to be (character, values, behavioral commitments).

    • In celebration convos, reflect on any “we don’t talk about Bruno” unwritten rules anyone has noticed in the group. Consider any of these you want to keep and any you want to challenge.

Healthy Correction

Finally, create a safe space for healthy correction, space where people feel personally valued, where offering correction is well-considered, that everyone is still loved in the error, and the group humility that you’re all still growing towards your true identities and your shared identity.

  • To model and promote healthy correction:

    • Express specific appreciation before offering a correction

    • Share your concern for the person and their impact when offering a correction

    • Be clear in your correction by using OIA: Observation, Impact, Ask

      • Obervation - Share a visible behavior you have noticed, when and where. “When X, I noticed that you Y. Did I have that right?”

      • Impact - Share the impact you see that behavior has had on anyone in the group or in their life, and what responses make you conclude that is the impact they are having. “I’m concerned that when you Y, it had Z effect on A.”

      • Ask - Make a specific ask for how they might do something differently. “When X, would you be willing to try B instead?”

    • Leave space for the person/people to process

    • Reaffirm the bonds of love after a correction

    • Use Bold Love principles appropriately for the person: gentle correction vs. spotlight vs. disempowerment

    • Normalize (say and model that it’s normal) considering what changes people want to see in the group. In the celebration convo, consider what the group would want to do differently in the next journey.

    • If someone says something you disagree with, model honoring what you value in their contribution. Then share your concern about the part you don’t agree with.

    • Reject any form of condemnation of a whole person.

    • If someone seems to have felt humiliated, follow up with them and reaffirm your love.

Sources

The Other Half of the Church

OIA

Bold Love