Component #3: Mentor Coaching
A mentor coach is an individual those in your group can meet with on a regular basis to receive helpful feedback and practical coaching for their growth as a preacher. The hope would be that this coach can commit to two things: 1) Be present to hear the preacher’s sermon each month and then 2) find an additional time to grab lunch or coffee to talk about the sermon and any other issues related specifically to the area of preaching.
With the help of the cohort leader, each preacher in the group is responsible for finding their own mentor coach. This coach may be your pastor, another leader in the church, or perhaps a pastor from a different congregation in the area. The bottom line is that having a preaching coach who can serve as a friend and mentor through this cohort experience will be a great encouragement to those in the group, helping them to get the most out of the cohort experience.
Your Church Can Do This!
Our world needs the faithful preaching of God’s Word perhaps more than ever. But for this to happen, we must develop preachers of this Word. Local churches, just like yours, are desperately needed to help in the raising up and training of these preachers. Sadly, very few congregations have an intentional and carefully crafted strategy to see this kind of equipping become reality in the lives of those exploring the call to preach the Gospel.
My prayer is that through the launching of a preaching cohort, your congregation can become a place that is proactively raising up preachers who can take the truth of the Gospel to the ends of the earth! Preachers who will rightly and joyfully feed God’s Word to God’s people. Preachers who will proclaim the truth and goodness of God to those who have yet to know Christ as Lord and Savior. Preachers who will bring hope to the hopeless and healing to the broken. Preachers who will lift high the Gospel in such a way that lives, communities and the world are transformed by the Spirit of God for the glory of God.
