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In April, more than 30 missionaries and eight staff members gathered in Belgium for five days to train together. The goal was to explore creative ways to build a stronger community between our missionary family that ministers all around the world. The group was hosted by ZavCentre, a training facility just outside of Brussels, which is operated by Operation Mobilization (OM). The center provided an excellent and cost-effective venue for this event. The theme of the gathering came from Hebrews 10:23, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.”

The core of the event was three days of training in Christian coaching. This training helped the participants develop tools and a mindset that will help them as they engage people in various ministry and personal relationships. By asking good questions and resisting the temptation to inject one’s own ideas, a coaching approach helps draw out ideas from the person, really setting a context where the Holy Spirit can speak into a person’s heart and mind, and lead them regarding the issue at hand.

The Field Ministry staff brought in the coach training primarily to help enable missionaries to be equipped to build stronger communities across the miles. Rather than move toward a top-down structure where missionaries are dependent primarily on the staff for connection, input, and growth, we want to build more horizontal connections between missionaries. The missionaries represent a wide variety of experience, expertise, and contexts of ministry. By increasing the level of community between them, they then become resources to one another, encouragers of one another, and to the entire organization. The communications skills taught by the coaching trainers are a key component of enabling this process.

On the final day of the gathering, the group brainstormed how such an approach might work in practice. The group was introduced to the software platform The Mission Society has chosen to provide the ability for the community to stay connected across the miles. Sakai is an open-source collaboration software tool used by many educational institutions. It has multiple tools to allow missionaries to interact in a secure way with one another, forming communities not just around where they live, but also around passions and common ministry contexts. The Brussels group will help the Field Ministry staff test and further explore the software, as well as the concepts of coaching over the coming months. Our goal is to launch this to the entire missionary community of The Mission Society later in 2011, enabling us to more live out the possibilities of Hebrews 10:23. 

Pictured from left-to-right: Travis Curry (Namibia), Ben Reyes (Brazil), and Michael Mozley (senior director of international mobilization).