I think it's time for us to define our terms. I'm working on the revisions to the survey and the terms we need for that are listed below. I'm curious to see how you define them and what you see is the general overview of each of their activities (as in what do they do). I have started my definitions, but I think it would be good for us to define them independently first, then collaboratively second. This way our definitions are not influenced by the other's ideas and we have a better shot at coming up with something unique.
Here are the terms that will help define some survey questions:
One-on-one professional ministry coach
Ministry consultancy (organization)
Ministry consultant (person)
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1:1 professional ministry coach-- a person who comes along side someone in ministry to guide and prod them to achieve new goals in ministry and consider new ways for doing ministry.
ReplyDeleteMinistry Consultancy-- a group helps a pastor/leader, program, church, or para-church organization to effectively minister in todays culture.
Ministry Consultant-- a person with a talent for helping spiritual leaders and faith organizations effectively utilize strengths, confront weaknesses, and imagine new paths for doing ministry.
Obviously I have kept these broad. A coach's job seems to be ongoing, play the role of sounding board and imaginative reflection. The consultant seems to be someone that addresses specific problems that churches or leaders may have and tries to help them conceive effective solutions.
Sorry, I didn't realize you had posted on here. For whatever reason I was checking the email instead of the blog. Anyway, I think that we are thinking along the same lines on the definitions. I also think of coaching as some kind of ongoing relationship and consulting as more of a temporal problem-specific kind of relationship. Here's what I came up with:
ReplyDeleteMinistry Consultancy - professional organization that enables churches to eliminate weaknesses, enhance administrative excellence, and establish sustainable systems of ministry
Ministry Consultant - works primarily with individual ministry leaders or small leadership teams to solve a specific set of problems; focuses on ministry systems
Ministry Coach - professional who works one-on-one with a ministry leader to enhance their personal leadership skill and their effectiveness in ministry administration and pastoring; relationship spans longer period of time and deals with mostly personal-level issues; less expensive than consulting
I suppose there's not a lot of difference between a consultancy and an individual consultant; I guess I was just thinking a team of consultants (i.e. consultancy) would work more with a larger client set, say maybe the whole church staff, rather than an individual consultant who would work just within one specific ministry on one specific issue or small set of issues.