After several months of cleaning and polishing, we’re about to relaunch a new and improved version of our 2017 CIT Next course Onboarding 101. This course has been super popular. It helps team leaders and field leaders get ready for being purposeful and committed to excellence as they prepare to bring someone new onto their team or field. A big idea of the course is that onboarding a new missionary is a form of disciple-making.
I’m confident that the changes we’ve made are going to make this big winner of a course an even better experience for those who will participate in the future. We have really upped the game by expecting those in the course to spend a good amount of time doing some intentional, real-life personal prep work for the onboarding task that lies ahead of them. It may seem to the student that we are adding a bunch of extra work, but the dividends that it will pay should be well worth it!
We’re putting into practice one of our beliefs about adult learning, namely “challenge.” During learning events, good trainers will create opportunities for the students to practice use of the skills being developed and to concretely apply the principals being promoted. A learner is asked to enter into a challenge activity that guides them into beginning to put into practice, right now, the very things they are learning. When this successfully happens, the likelihood of future ongoing application (and life/perspective change) grows exponentially!
For the Onboarding 101 course, this means students build an onboarding checklist that is uniquely designed with their ministry, context, team and the new missionary in mind. Every new missionary will ideally be taken through an onboarding process that is uniquely empowering to them. And that is what becomes possible through building and implementing an onboarding checklist.
It’s not too late to sign up for the course. It starts next week, but we also offer the course at least 4 times every year. You can find out more and sign up here: www.grow2serve.com/ob101
As you build your next learning module or lesson, take a little time and think about how you can realign some of your instructional time into engaging your learners into a “put it into practice now” kind of an activity. I guarantee it will be worth the time invested.
Mark Morgenstern
I'm a Christ-follower, a husband, a dad, a member of my community (Apple Valley, MN) and with a little of the rest of my time I help out as the senior director of Grow2Serve.