Setting the Tone for Spiritual Growth
The app provides a balanced structure to help others grow spiritually. But there’s more to spiritual growth than content and actions. A good spiritual growth coach or mentor also sets the tone for relationships where people can grow spiritually.
People grow in environments where they feel welcomed, loved, valued, supported, and challenged in healthy ways. As the pod coach, you can practice these things. You can also help create a space where everyone in the group can contribute to this growth environment.
Here are some simple practices that help create a community environment critical for people to grow spiritually.
Foster Relational Joy
First, create a space where people share relational joy—giving and receiving welcome and gladness to be part of something together.
Welcome each person warmly and personally, calling to mind what you appreciate about them so you greet them with authentic 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, even in hard times.
Share thankful moments. 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 thankful for or took joy in 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.
Facilitate Bonds of Christian Love
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 - more than talking about your separate experiences and lives, do something together in the world to build a shared history.
Recall shared memories together to celebrate your shared history.
Develop a Pod Identity
If the pod is more than one-on-one, develop a pod identity.
Give your pod a fun name!
Send notes to people in the pod and call them by their individual names and by pod name.
In each starter and celebration convo, recall together what you all have in a common as a pod and anything that makes this particular pod unique.
In a starter convo, spend 5-10 minutes talking about pod values—what do you all care about together, and what kind of people do you all want to be (character, values, behavioral commitments).
In Celebration convos, bring to light and discuss any unwritten rules anyone has noticed in the pod. Consider any of these you want to keep, and name any you want to challenge.
Be a Full Participant Coach
We learn from each other’s journeys, insights, and experiences of God’s work in our lives. For this reason, coaches for the Whole Life app are participant coaches. You do everything that everyone in the pod does, including the meditations, Photo Journal entries, Bible discussion, and action steps.
As you feel is appropriate, also let others in the group “speak into your life” in the Speak Into My Life section of the conversation. It helps others to grow in noticing the Holy Spirit’s work, and it helps bind us all together in Christian love.
Everyone grows in different ways. But no one is ever done growing, and what you share from your experiences is a crucial part of the “content” of spiritual formation, in addition to the Bible readings and action steps.
Fully participate in doing the action steps and sharing your God Stories, even if you struggled in it.
One exception to the principle of full participation is that where there are group choices to be made—like what Scripture, what topic, what meditation, etc.—let the other participants make those choices. It’s important that participants feel a sense of ownership over the journey. You already have that because you’re the coach. Let others make content choices wherever possible.
Practice Wise & Healthy Correction As Needed
Finally, create a safe space for healthy correction—a resilient space where people feel personally valued, still loved even in error, and part of a pod growing towards your shared identity together.
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. The OIA framework is helpful: Observation, Impact, Ask. Fill in the a,b,c,x,y below with the facts of your situation.
Observation - Share a visible behavior you have noticed, along with the when and where. “When a, I noticed that you b. Did I have that right?”
Impact - Share the impact you see that behavior has had on anyone in the pod or in their life, and what responses make you conclude that is the impact they are having. “I’m concerned that when you b, it had x effect on y.”
Ask - Make a specific ask for how they might do something differently. “When you’re doing a, would you be willing to c instead of b?”
Leave space for the person/people to process.
Reaffirm the bonds of love after a correction.
Consider using biblical Bold Love principles (see reference below) appropriately for the person, and don’t mix them up:
gentle correction for someone with an intact conscience
shine a clear spotlight of consequences for someone blinded in the thrall of a person or a substance
disempower someone who delights in causing others pain
Ask for help if the person is dealing with ongoing serious mental or behavioral health challenges.
Discuss 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, first say what you appreciate about their contribution. Then share your concern about the part you don’t agree with.
Reject any form of condemnation of a whole person, by anyone.
If someone ever seems to have felt humiliated in the group, follow up with them and reaffirm your love
Recommended Reading
The Other Half of Church, by Jim Wilder and Michel Hendricks
Bold Love, by Dan B. Allender and Tremper Longman.
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, et al.
