Breakout D

Description: Leading leaders can become a lonely calling, but can it be less lonely when pursued within a synergetic team? Discover the Mosaic strategy of coaching and caring for small group leaders through the use of MPAC teams.

Speaker’s Bio: Dave Auda is a Pastor of Developers at Mosaic in Los Angeles, C.A. He has served in this dynamic community of faith, love, and hope for over 30 years. Dave has helped pioneer and champion Small Group communities since 1977. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from California Baptist University, and a Master of Theological Studies from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. He is husband to Tamra, and father to four daughters, Sarah, Ruthi, Rebekah, and Deborah. His superhero identity at Mosaic is “Adrenalin”. His ministry and life motto is “Excel still more!”

Notes:

Two of five core values at Mosaic: 1) Mission is why the Church exists. Love is the context for all mission.

Jesus accomplished a lot of things in his earthly ministry.

• Miraculous healing
• Raised the dead
• Fed the 5,000
• Obeyed the Father
• Taught/led a team
• Lived a life that we’re supposed to model
• Cast out demons

There are a lot of things that we can’t emulate instantly, but Luke 19:10 encapsulates why Jesus came, to seek and save the lost.  That was Jesus’ primary objective, and as he was working toward this, he obtained a lot of collateral blessing.

Living out the the Great Commandment and carrying out the Great Commission.  That’s why we have small groups.  That’s what we get a chance to be: life savers.  It’s exciting to sit at Starbucks and hear stories of transformed lives.

Today I want to talk a little bit about how we at Mosaic care for and mobilize our small group leaders.

We discovered that the Leader Standing Alone model didn’t work.  I was having too many conversations with good people who wanted to step down, to quit, to be let go.  There wasn’t commonality among the people who were saying this.  It wasn’t just one type of person/leader.

Leaders had different skills, and instead of trying to train an individual in multiple things, which they may not be good at, why don’t we just team together multiple people.

God reveals Himself as a team, different roles, aspects, same God.  Different approaches, same mission.

Two people can accomplish more than twice as much as one.  A person standing alone can be attacked and be defeated, but two standing back to back can be attacked an conquered.  Three are even better because a triple braided cord is not easily broken.

This is just a model.  It is not normative.

There are things that core team coaching can accomplish that are superior to other models.

It minimizes burnout of coaches and small group leaders.  You’re not calling the coach to draw from a well that they don’t have, and it doesn’t require small group leaders to be coached by someone with whom they don’t connect.  It minimizes blind spots.

It maximizes spiritual gifts and strengths. As proverbs says, two is better than one and three is even better than two.

It expands the coaching capacity of each of the individual coaches.  In some models an isolated coach is expected to cast vision and mission to anywhere from 8-15 leaders.  In some contexts the numbers even go higher.  At Mosaic, we have a coaching team that oversees 25-35 small group leaders.

It’s a whole lot more fun to serve others with others than to serve others alone.

There are also some downsides to this model.

Like any type of relationship/bonding thing you do, there is a honeymoon period after a coaching core team comes together, but then they hit a reality wall.  All of the sudden there is conflict on the team.  They work together well on their best moments, but their best moments aren’t 24×7.  You have to help them work through these things.  At the other end of it you end up with a team of people that grow to depend on one another (interdependency, not codependency).

The styles of leadership are not evenly dispersed among the Body of Christ.  You don’t have an equal number of each leadership style within the community.  Generally speaking, you’ll have about 50% of your leaders who are pastors, about 40% who are assimilators, and maybe 10% who are catalysts.  A disclaimer in regards to catalysts: they don’t usually play well with others.  They’re your mavericks.  They’re self-motivated, self-driven, self-correcting and don’t have a lot of time to deal with people who aren’t.  They are going to be actively doing leading catalyzing, changing things.  Generally speaking, church leadership structures are not friendly, warm environments for catalytic leaders. Look in places that you wouldn’t think to look for catalytic leaders.  They might be leading your pre-school ministry, but probably not.  You want to look for leaders in other environments outside of church.  You want to look for marginalized, focused people who are trying to do something.  You want to look for zealots.  They may not be doing something actually significant, but they believe they are.  That’s why they’re doing it.

These core teams are used in all ministries, not just small groups.

Coaches meet with each other every other month, and with their small group leaders on the off months.

People rarely fit cleanly into one of the three categories, but there’s bleed over.  Sometimes you find the most catalytic person you can and help them develop their catalytic side.

Core team doesn’t only get involved when there’s a problem.  They’re also in a supportive role.

The small group leaders are trained through involvement in groups, developmental mentoring within small groups.  The supplemental level is that we provided a 101 class every other month.

Some of our groups are open-ended and continue to exist.  Some are semester groups.  Most are open, but some are closed (such as recovery groups).

We don’t force coaching on anyone, but people want it.

What are Mosaic’s qualifications for small group leaders?  Before we jsut launched 200 groups, I could answer this very well.  At Mosaic we have our volunteer staff process.  Most congregations have a membership process.  Everyone who comes to Mosaic is a member.  We’re here to love you, care for you, serve you, teach you, etc.  Once you’re in, if you want to move into the inner core, you come on volunteer staff.  They apply to that process.  It’s a rather rigorous process, but at the end of being commississioned, you have the keys of the kingdom.  You can be connected to any area of ministry at which you can be connected.  If you have not done that, there are still many areas of ministry that you can be connected, you just can’t take an oversight position over people.  What about small group leaders that aren’t on volunteer staff.  Basically, everyone can lead a small group based on relational influence.  You can have as many groups/clubs as you want based on how many people you can get to show up.  It’s a fairly low bar of training but a high bar of relational influence.  The only groups that we would post on our website or have on our kiosk at the small groups ministry table are groups that are led by people on volunteer staff.

What kind of a process of training or experience do you walk your core team members through?  I wish I could tell you that I have a 300 page highly structured manual.

Our coaches may or may not lead small groups.

The system is organic.  It’s like a marriage.  The division of roles and responsibilities isn’t set in stone.

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