The Peer Coaching Leadership Tool by Easum, Bandy, and Associates has been designed to give church leaders the maximum benefit of both mentoring by EBA's Senior Consultant Bill Tenny-Brittian, as well as providing training for ongoing, effective Peer Coaching that lasts well beyond EBA's tutelage.  The one year program introduces and trains each participant in the basics of church transformation, beginning with the leader's own spiritual well-being and then equipping them with the knowledge and the skills to turn a church around. The Peer Coaching Leadership Tool is not just about education; each month the participants are both mentored and coached so that they not only learn something new, but set realistic goals that they take personal responsibility for and are accountable to the group for achieving.

The Peer Coaching Leadership Tool has been carefully developed and uses a combination or both old and new world technology. Each month, Tenny-Brittian will join the peer coaching group via a conference call (a speaker phone or VOIP enabled computer is required at the peer coaching site) for approximately 90 minutes. Depending on the peer coaching facilities, a remote PowerPoint presentation on the monthly mentoring topic will be available for the group's view during the training. In addition, participants will receive monthly handouts and recommended readings from books, periodicals, as well as other digital and print resources.

Peer Coaching process can be customized and contextualized for each group. A timeline for suggested topics can be found below. Each monthly session is roughly divided into three segments, with the focus and time spent can be shaped for the life of each group.

1. Training. During the training segment, participants are introduced to a new concept and/or skill that can be put into practice during the following thirty days. Conversation focuses on transformational concepts, skills development, and issues of stress that have been prioritized by individual members of the group and the group as a whole. 
2. Coaching/Mentoring. The coaching/mentoring segment takes up most of the conference call time. During this session, conversation focuses on refining missional attitudes and clarifying issues of integrity and teamwork. This helps participants address accountability for mission alignment, lifestyle and professional expectations, and effective team interaction. Participants will address skills and performance issues , discuss the presented training materials, and review or develop SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-Oriented, Time Bound) each month. 
3. Resourcing. The third segment of the Peer Coaching Session begins at the end of each session, but doesn't end until the final month of the Peer Coaching Leadership Tool is complete. At the end of each session, participants are given handouts and other resources to help them achieve their personal SMART goals, provided with a list of recommended resources to peruse, read, and digest during the month, and encouraged to use the ultimate EBA Resource: their EBA Community Membership.

Included for each participant is a complimentary EBA Community Membership for the duration of the Peer Coaching Leadership Tool. This one year membership includes access to monthly on-line coaching seminars that are led by cutting-edge leaders from across the nation (past leaders have included Len Sweet, Brian McLaren, Wayne Cordeiro, Paul Borden, Mark Driscoll, Todd Hunter, Erwin McManus, Alan Hirsch, Sally Morgenthallar, Bill Easum, Bill Tenny-Brittian, and many more).  Membership also includes a subscription to the Advanced Leadership Forum where church leaders from around the world coach each other through church transformation and church start issues. The EBA Community also has access to literally thousands of articles and other resources unavailable anywhere else. In addition, EBA Community Membership includes a complimentary subscription to the digital edition of Net Results magazine, North America's most enduring and effective evangelism and church growth magazine (since 1980).

Participants in the Peer Coaching Leadership Tool are also enrolled in a private listServ for ongoing coaching and encouragement between sessions. By utilizing this tool, participants not only have access to Tenny-Brittian directly and can take advantage of peer coaching between monthly sessions.

Practical Planning: For the EBA Peer Coaching Leadership Tool to be effective, a peer coaching group of six to twelve participants must be formed and covenanted to meet together monthly for a period of at least one year. The meeting place for the monthly meeting must have either a speaker phone or a VOIP enabled computer with external speakers and a omni-directional microphone. In addition, for maximum effectiveness, the meeting site should provide an Internet connection and computer with either a large enough monitor to be easily seen by all the participants or else an LCD projector for projecting the computer image onto a screen. A print-contact person will need to be designated so that the handouts and resource sheets for the coaching sessions can be digitally received and printed for use by the participants during the sessions. 

The price of the EBA Peer Coaching Leadership Tool is $1,000 per participant, with a minimum of six participants.
 
Sample Mentoring Topics

Month 1: An Introduction to Peer Coaching
Peer coaching is both similar to and different from standard church leader coaching appointments. For one, peer coaching demands robust participation of the group members. In addition, peer coaching depends on personal responsibility coupled with group accountability. That being said, this month the participants will be introduced to the basics of peer coaching.

Month 2: You Can't Lead Where You're Not Going
The point of coaching is to help leaders reach their potential; however, in the Christian faith, none of that matters if church leaders aren't invested in reaching their own personal spiritual potential. Church transformation depends first on leadership's spiritual transformation. This month the participants will review a variety of spiritual disciplines and be introduced to personal and group accountability.

Month 3: Basics of Renewal and Transformation
The basics of congregational transformation is in the church's DNA. Indeed, the number one reason churches fail to transform is because they have not embraced a healthy DNA. This month the participants will get a crash course in three of the five strands of their DNA. As they do, they will examine their own church's stated DNA.

Month 4: Basics of Renewal and  Transformation (cont)
This month we'll continue looking at the basics of congregational DNA. Although the buzzwords of the past couple of decades have included Mission, Vision, and Values, the missing strand of the DNA has been Expected Behaviors. This month participants will explore both their congregational vision and what it means to embrace expected behaviors as a core DNA strand.
 
Month 5: Role of the Senior Pastor
The job descriptions of most senior or solo pastors are so exhaustive that there's no wonder few churches are transforming (literally 98 percent of churches in North America have plateaued or are declining ). This month participants will review their own job descriptions and see where and how evangelism fits into that description. In addition, participants will be introduced to the basics of evangelism in a post-Christian age.
   
Month 6: Role of the Senior Pastor (cont)
Churches that are growing are not led by pastors who have developed good time-management skills. Instead, growing churches are led by pastors who have reprioritized their responsibilities and let go of every possible task that someone else could do. This month the participants will critically look at their date books and job descriptions to see what they can "give up" in order to lead in their congregation's transformation.

Month 7: Building the Dream Team
One of the barriers to growth always seems to be the lack of available leaders. And yet, in virtually every church there are women and men who could (and would) be leaders if they were trained and recruited in the right order (trained and then recruited). This month the participants will get a fresh look at the leadership pool within their own church and learn how to tap into that pool.

Month 8: Staff & Leadership Development
It's been said that North American Christians are educated beyond their behaviors—we know more than we put into practice. Leadership training in the church has largely reinforced this notion by basing training on education. This month the participants will be introduced to why teaching does not equal training, what the difference is, and how to develop an apprenticeship/mentoring program in their congregation.

Month 9: Staff & Leadership Development
There's more to recruiting ministry leaders than dialing-for-doers. Experience tells us that putting someone into leadership in an area where there is no passion is inviting mediocrity at best and courting a disaster at worst. This month the participants will learn how to identify passionate ministry leaders and then how to recruit them into ministry.

Month 10: Staff & Leadership Development
As the participants learned during the first month, peer coaching is both similar and different to leadership coaching. However, effective leadership coaching is necessary for a successful congregational transformation. This month the participants will be introduced to the art of leadership coaching and given tools that will greatly enhance their coaching opportunities.

Month 11: Barriers to Growth
As stated in months three and four, the number one reason churches fail to transform is that they haven't embraced a healthy DNA. Examined more closely, the missing DNA strand that nixes transformation in most churches is Expected Behaviors. This month the participants will learn how to instill an expectation of Christian behavior and how to handle those who claim the name but don't reflect Christian values in their behaviors.

Month 12: Two Things Grow a Church
A pastor can put 80 percent of their time into evangelizing the community (even effective evangelism) and still not grow their local church. The fact is, there are only two things that grow a church in North America. Great small groups won't do it. Missions involvement won't do it. Friendly folks and great preaching won't do it. The only two things that will grow a church in our culture are Worship that Draws and a dynamic Children's Program. This month the participants will explore the implications of this reality.

Please contact Bill Tenny-Brittian directly if you are interested in exploring this exciting coaching tool. You can reach him at billtb(at)easumbandy.com.