Helping make decisions pt 5 – the Facilitator’s role

Administrative Skills, Equipping, Facilitation, Good Practice
Facilitation Facilitate means ‘to make easier'. That encapsulates the role of the facilitator; he or she is there to help the discussion flow and to make the whole process as easy as possible to achieve good outcomes. With this in mind it is usually best to have someone facilitating a meeting who has no personal involvement in the topic. It is then possible to be completely ‘outside' the discussion and merely to help people move from one aspect to another by monitoring how it is going and determining when all the juice has been squeezed out of a particular topic. Prepare for informality A discussion of this sort can appear to be relatively unstructured. Indeed, it is important that people do not feel constrained by a rigid structure since different…
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Helping make decisions pt 4 – context and environment

Administrative Skills, Equipping, Facilitation, Good Practice
Furniture! The layout and comfort of chairs are key contributors to the success of a meeting! Yet they are often neglected. This is true of a church meeting as well as of meetings of elders, trustees etc. For instance, prayer and participation in ‘body ministry' is greatly helped by people being able to see each other - a circle or ‘horseshoe' - rather than praying into the back of the head of someone in front of you! An elders' or trustees' meeting can be more effective around a table where there is space for papers and laptops than in relaxed easy chairs. It also brings a helpful ‘formality' to the meeting. The same is also true for group discussions of the type we are considering in this series. It is…
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Helping make decisions pt 3. Facilitation – a living example

Administrative Skills, Equipping, Facilitation, Good Practice, Jubilee+, Newfrontiers
I have just returned from a meeting that is very relevant to this series. So, contrary to what I had anticipated in this posting, I am going to share my experiences as they illustrate what this series is about and how powerful the process of Facilitation can be. What is Jubilee+? I was invited to attend the two-day retreat of the Core Team of Jubilee+ where they were seeking God about their strategy for the next season. Their intention was to end up with an Action Plan. Jubilee+ is an initiative within the UK for facilitating Newfrontiers churches (and others) to launch effective ministry among those who are poor and disadvantaged. What did we do? One of the team members, Andrew Westerman (Emmanuel Church, Durham and Kairos UK Ltd) served…
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