Free Methodist Church

The session with the BOB focused on introducing the foundational tools included Cloud & Box and the Future Team Journey.  As an introductory session, Covid-19 had seriously impacted the church as many churches had stopped meeting for 2-3 Sundays gathered at this time.

The GOT meeting started with a devotional and the moved to  clarifying a convergence moment in Free Methodism with the opportunity to ask, “Who are we?” and “Where are we going?” Will shared about his life work with clarity and vision and discussed early learning with Covid-19.

We introduced an immediate planning tools and a small book called Innovating Discipleship to help denominational and church leaders during this disruption. The primary time was dedicated to training with the Cloud & Box for both GOT and the BOA with time for dialogue. Our schedule for the week was as as follows:

Tuesday, March 31
11:00a – 5:00p processing with the Board of Bishops
7:00 – 9:00p presentation to the Global Overseers Team (renamed SLT or “SaLT” Superintendent Leadership Team

Friday, April 3
1:30 – 2:30p presentation to the National Board of Administration (shorter version of the GOT presentation)

INNOVATING DISCIPLESHIP 2020

Covid Ministry Planning Grid

Invest Phase Goal Selection (by Sept. 15th 2020)

During the first session after the kick-off week the discussion started discussing the challenging days of leading with Covid-19. (Bishop’s word, Facebook live events) Will asked several questions to get an orientation to how the BOB is working together functionally, logistically and relationally.

We spent a significant amount of time training on the Value Map. This brought us to a dedicated discussion on the importance of and loss of Idealogical Value.

In terms of continued orientation we discussed:

• Ongoing immediate actions steps of the BOB (task force on diversity, structure and effectiveness, study commission on doctrine, etc.)
•  History of the Free Methodist Church
• The Four Freedoms
• The new Five Freedoms
• Name meaning national and globally
• Set Free, Living Free, Bringing Freedom
• Church Planting
• Reach Conference
• The large church conference in January 2021 was put on Will Mancini’s calendar

In session two we built on the Cloud & Box and the Value Map with the 5 Levels of Engagement. As we discussed this tool we acknowledged that we would relabel the levels for Free Methodism.

• Out of denomination
• Affiliate church (possible church plant)
• Line of membership
• Undercover church
• Loyalist church
• ‘Generate’ for church

In addition, we discussed logistics toward the idea of clarifying how decisions in the Denominee process would be made:

1. BOB
2. Advisors (3-6 people)
3. BOA & GOT

We discussed a significant checkpoint in October where a roadmap could be communicated more broadly.

During this meeting Will gave the BOB the assignment for the Founding Charism via email.

We dedicated this day to working on the Founding Charism tool specifically working through the Tribal Identity process work. The assignment was as follows:

Make a long list of the possible ideas for our top distinctives as a faith tribe. Consider the questions:

• A) What does the broader movement of Wesleyan or Methodist practice add to Protestantism in general?
• B) Why does the kingdom need a Free Methodist kind of disciple today?
• C) What value is most demonstrated at our creation story?
• D) What would be missing in the world if all Free Methodist churches were suddenly uprooted from the planet?
• E) How are our original freedoms perfectly articulated or today? 
• F) What do you like best about the recent attempts to recapture our original freedoms? 

Refine the list to a top five using the filtering questions below: 

1. Record any stories, historical or contemporary that have vividly mark these ideas in your mind. What value do they highlight? 
2. Think of Free Methodist heroes. What values do they exhibit? What was the nature of their integrity and contribution to discipleship?
3. What is a tool, method, or ministry that overflowed out of Free Methodism to reach other evangelicals? 
4. If Free Methodism was birthed in 2020, tell what the creation story would be. How would the the value or distinctive of the “big bang” be if articulated today?
5. What value do we have that is most realized? What value do we have that is most aspirational? 
6. If you were the sole bishop, what are the best top five ideas that you would champion today?
7. Refine your list so that each of the five ideas is be made up of either: a) a single word, b) two words, or c) a short phrase

We dedicated this day to working on the Founding Charism tool specifically working through the Tribal Identity process work.

We sent considerable time discussing the racial crisis in our country as well as praying for the family needs of the bishops.

We dedicated this day to working on the Founding Charism tool specifically working through the Tribal Identity process work.

Free Methodist Tribal Identity

Future Church Book_cohort_only

These two days flowed very quickly as we framed our discussion by two priorities: 1) What are the immediate priorities and decisions in the week following? and 2) What are the continued foundational “paradigm tools” that we need to explore?

The easiest way to follow the flow of content is to review the flip chart pictures downloadable at the button to the left. The following are highlight bullets from the time:

• Goldmine observations as breakthrough insights are recorded below.
• We discussed the 2-day expectations the application of which is broader than just our 2-days in July.
• We reviewed Cloud & Box, the Value Map and finalized our own Engagement Pyramid.
• The Free Methodist Engagement Pyramid places “Affiliate Towards” at the bottom and three equal lanes that churches may be on as we call them to generative partnership (“Generate For”): “Skeptical About, Undercover In or Loyal To.”
• We discussed the personality of the BOB and distributed the Insights Discovery Individual Reports
• We spent a great deal of time reviewing Size Culture which and assessing Smart Segmentation. We plotted churches that are 800+ (17 of them) and churches that are 400-800 (17 of them).
• We reviewed the Growth Challenge Tree
• We reviewed Pastor Tenure Dynamics and seasons of sevens.
• We reviewed the Next Step Operating System basics
• We discussed the Fixed Distance Principle; the idea that the health of the whole is determined by the strength of the few.

MattWhitehead – 26 Motivating Inspirer

KeithCowart – 23 Motivating Director (Classic)

LindaAdams – 47 Helping Inspirer (Accommodating)

Free Methodist – Wheel –

On this zoom call we spent a majority of out time designing our week of October 4th-9th and holding our ground to maximize the experience virtually. The schedule is downloadable below.

Free Methodist Oct. 4-9 Schedule

We did debrief the 2-day onsite in Indianapolis and discussed the Future Church Cohorts that will be launching on Sept. 14th.

We converged in St Louis for session #8 and kicked off at 11:00 on Sunday morning. We started with an expectation list that included spending time on team design for the BOB.

The first movement was spending time on the “ability circle” of the Younique special calling toolbox. Attached you have a chapter from the book on Ability and a PDF fillable worksheet to record date from each tool that we discussed.

Younique Book Chapter 16 on Ability

Ability Circle Inventory PDF

During the ability coaching we did spend time considering the LifeScore of the Health, Love, Work, Play storylines and Psalms spirituality. We share about a where we are thriving, surviving and reviving.

In the afternoon we continued our work on our “Profound Passions” and landed on the top level articulation of five tribal identity values.

NEXT STEP >> Keith will be bringing a paragraph of each value to our next meeting on Sept. 24-25th. 

Our Profound Passions

• Life-giving Holiness
• Love-inspired Justice 
• Pervasive Multiplication 
• Global Synergy 
• Scriptural Authority

We concluded the first day with Mexican food at Nixta!

The next day was dedicated to responding to the Structure and Effectiveness Task Force which we delivered in a 2-1/2 hour zoom call.

We ended with framing a 2020-2021 integrated process where we can design, validate and begin to implement the new Vision Frame and Next Step OS for our denomination.

Key calendaring actions include:

• Using November 16th as our first onsite kick-off day for the design team.
• Using the large church gathering in January for our process
• Combining conference cluster retreats into a combined experience February 10-12; utilizing a Younique retreat format
• Using April meetings at the WMC for our process
• Shooting for June 2021 as the completion of our design work.

We covered many topics during this two days together. The list below is a review of our most important deliverables first and then continues to cover training and perspective topics that were covered through a Q & A style with Will.

• We started with added goldmine observations
• We designed the SLT Agenda for our big October Virtual Retreat
• We spent time on BOB roles, We communication and team design including the idea of a BOB executive assistant to manage the individual assistants
• We covered six staffing maxims
• Will trained on the “progress before order” framework that relates to the staffing maxims
• We discussed how BOB structurally can serve as a leadership pipeline
• We decided to create two documents for SLT: a “milestones document” to see and celebrate progress as well as a “roadmap document” to anticipate the next 12 months
• We covered Insights discovery training as well as the Situational Leadership framework (directing, coaching, supporting, delegating)
• We discussed the basis of having a Pacesetting leaders gathering and to include emerging leaders under age 35 and gender/ethnic unrepresented leaders in 2022
• Will share the inverse investing principle he is using to design a leadership development process for the Southern Baptist Convention

Most of our three days was given to walking the SLT through the Denominee paradigm tools. We spent a great deal of time planning a meaningful and interactive virtual retreat and felt like we had strong results with many positive comments following about the meeting itself. Bishop Matt commented that on superintendent said it was the best denominational meeting of this kind that he had ever experienced.

Afterwards we spent most of our time discussing structure including ongoing conversations on the matrix structure. We discussed the differences in kinds of coaching and consulting. We continued work on designing the pacesetters gathering.

Our primary focus in this session was two fold as we met in Atlanta. We landed the “Free Methodist Way”.  We also introduced the Mission Development Tool as a thinking step that helps us clarify with precision your “One Thing”. Using two-word technology, we brainstormed brainstormed a large list of possible two-word possibilities before narrowing down to the reason the Box exists.

It was fun to host in Houston!!

In this session, we worked through the Pace Setters Gathering Agenda, the ELT Makeup and talked about how to use Vision Frame. Our primary progress was made around filling out the Mission Development tool, including landing the One Thing and identifying four inputs and outputs.

This thinking step sets us up for building out the the Vision Frame, which will inform not only how we think but how we lead into the future.

Completed Mission Development Tool

In this session, we moved from the Mission Development Tool to completing the first draft of the Vision Frame for the “Box”. FM_vision_frame_draft

In this session we continued to refine and update the  “Box Vision Frame”; specifically adding new strategy revolving around a next step approach.

Free Methodist Vision Frame v2.o