Simon Cox Blog: Missions Sunday: Enhancing Character Development through Soul Care (Part Two)

Sunday, 17 September 2017

Missions Sunday: Enhancing Character Development through Soul Care (Part Two)

Soul Care is a lifestyle of regular, ongoing, non-crisis activity that promotes growth and development of the whole person into maturity.

Read Part One (The Importance of Character and Character Development; Understanding Soul Care; Setting the Scene for Soul Care—What Leadership Must Think About).

Three Approaches to Building a Soul Care Movement

The end goal of establishing a Soul Care movement is to shape the mission’s culture by establishing a community of like-minded people who are committed to a life-long pursuit of Christ-likeness. Supported by colleagues, missionaries within the movement strive to continually learn and grow and mentor others toward maturity, independent of coaxing or incentives from outside sources.

Three different approaches to launch movements, each representing different levels of intentionality, have been observed.

First, as part of its ongoing professional development program, one agency offers Soul Care training to regional and local mission leaders via a series of INTERACTIVE WEBINARS. This strategy first asks leaders to put Soul Care into practice and then disseminate the principles to the missionaries under their charge. This approach has both economic and logistical advantages. Furthermore, modeling of the Soul Care lifestyle piques interest and motivates members to learn and practice the principles.

A second and more intentional approach involves an organizational STRUCTURE CHANGE. By dividing the membership into teams consisting of at least three missionary units each, another agency asks teams to form goals which center on building community and promoting personal growth. Team leaders meet annually for training, and work plans require establishing personal goals reflecting Soul Care values. Changes in organizational structure can be hard to implement, but the advantage is the entire membership is regularly challenged ...