The Church in Community: Collaboration Community Transformation Through Incarnational Coaching

The Collaborative Community Transformation (CCT) project focuses upon Christian and Missionary Alliance churches that desire to be transformational in the community yet have been prevented by limited capacity. This project was designed to provide Incarnational Coaching (I-Coaching) for the pastor and training for the church leaders to be with the community for the purpose of transformation. The project provided the process for churches to be engaged in the community and develop collaborations for the purpose of community transformation.

The project provided clear direction and opportunities for the church to learn about the community and to engage in the life of the neighborhood. The dynamics: spiritual formation, new way of living, and mission approach, gave the church a foundation to learn about their assets along with the community's assets and then continue to understand the felt-needs of the community. The church established in the community becomes a launching point of being engaged with the community.

The project does not supply the specific how-tos because there are many tools and established materials provided for the community to use as the assets and felt-needs are determined.

I-Coaching was evaluated through interviews and observations of the pastors. An assessment tool was used to measure the effectiveness of I-Coaching. The training of church leaders was assessed by means of pretest and posttest of the leaders, in addition to my observation of the leaders discussions during the training.

The project established the importance of I-Coaching for pastors to move into action through community engagement. The church leaders through the training shifted focus to long term-solutions, community engagement, and collaborations. The effectiveness of the training of leaders in implementation was not evident due to the need of a longitudinal study to determine implementation of community engagement.