Communication
- Katie Nguyen Palomares
- Apr 24, 2022
- 6 min read
Goal & Reflection
Definition for Communication
DTS values contextualized, effective communication of biblical and theological truth by a variety of means for personal and corporate transformation.
COMMUNICATION GOAL
Because I want to value the Word being taught and expounded upon for all ages, genders, ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, etc I want to continue improving my oral teaching/preaching skills.
STRATEGIES
I will preach shorter, but more learner-centered/engaging sermons bi-monthly at our Youth Ministry group gatherings.
I will lead a time of encouragement/exhortation at our monthly leader gatherings.
I will be more creative in pulling in my classroom, pedagogical training for teaching English into a preaching/teaching scenario for our teens.
I will offer myself to help lead small group style equipping classes for Hope CC.
RESOURCES
All of my old pedagogy textbooks from undergrad.
Old sermon manuscripts for reference.
Thirty Minutes With the Perrys podcast.
AACC/Fuller Youth Pastor cohort.
MEASURES
By December 2021, I will have established a "norm" of what the teaching and meeting time looks like for Sol Life Youth Ministry.
I will have an understanding of how a Fall Semester goes for equipping saints at Hope Community Church and Church of the Cross.
OVERALL REFLECTION STATEMENT
Growing in my oral presentation and speaking skills is important not just for teaching students, but also for training up and equipping leaders to multiply and make disciples themselves.
Learning Reflection
The interesting thing about my communication goal is that as I continued to work at it, it shifted into emphasis on a specific sort of communication: organizational communication. The shifting format and ongoing reflection as a ministry between myself and my leaders necessitated ongoing delegation from me to my leaders not just through communicating expectations of discipleship outside of Sundays, but also equipping individual leaders to teach their own lessons in a series I developed: Words to a Younger Me.
As I continued to build out what Sol Life could look like on a regular basis, I pulled more and more on my pedagogical training as a secondary education teacher to shift our overall format for Sundays. After the first Sunday meeting, I shifted away from sermonettes with discussion questions to having an entirely learner-focused group Bible study time that I think ultimately proved successful.
We started our time with me giving perhaps three minutes of context for the scripture, then split up into high school and middle school groups. After they spent time with making observations about the text, each group would come back and share what they learned before splitting up into age and gender specific discussion groups for application questions.
Throughout the semester, I also prioritized maintaining a monthly check-in meeting with my Sol Life leaders. I intentionally began these meetings with a time of exhortation and celebration of what we had accomplished as a community, and used that time to ask for communal input and brainstorming of event/trip ideas, inviting leaders into greater discipleship responsibilities outside of just a Sunday morning, as well as focusing on growing culture as a team.
During the semester, I also had the opportunity to preach in a more traditional retreat setting for a DNow in Round Rock where I was able to sharpen my preaching skills as the speaker for the weekend. In that way, I was able to build on my communication goal in a direct one-to-one manner.
Thus, with all of that in mind, I've chosen to provide artifacts that focus on not just examples of my own direct oral communication/teaching skills, but the way I also trained up my leaders to communicate and teach effectively as well.
COMMUNICATION GOAL ARTIFACTS
Artifact #1:
Above is an image of when one of my leaders was leading his Words to a Younger Me lesson, focusing on the idea that he doesn't have to constantly seek validation that he's good enough from outside sources because Jesus already made a once and for all declaration of salvation over all of us. In this particular image, he was introducing the concept by using an illustration of a mock trial by putting one of our other leaders "on trial" and gathering "evidence" for whether she was guilty or innocent. It went over really well! I chose this artifact because it was the synthesis of my training of a leader in equipping our students.
Artifact #2:
Above is the curriculum I worked with my leader (pictured above) to help develop to plan out how he was going to frame and teach his lesson, as well as help him develop discussion questions for small groups. I chose this as an additional artifact to pair with the above image to show the work that went into formatting the lesson itself. This particular leader had a good understanding of how to communicate his main idea, and I was able to strengthen his vision for the lesson by giving feedback of how he could restate his main point throughout the lesson.
Artifact #3:
Here is a link to the recording of the sermonette I taught at our first Sol Life Sunday gathering. Although we moved away from the idea of the main content coming from a lesson or sermonette followed by discussion questions for the majority of the year, we did end up returning to a version of the original format during the Words to a Younger Me series. I chose this artifact because it is an example of me teaching a lesson that I worked on myself to teach within this context.
Article #4:
Below is one of the lessons we used on a Sol Life Sunday in the learner-centered format while going through the book of John that I developed myself:
I chose this lesson as an artifact because this was the general format we followed for the majority of going through the book of John. We walked through the book by following the narrative of the seven recorded signs of Jesus in John's book. This helped create a sense of familiarity for youth: even if they missed a Sunday, they still had a basis of understanding of the context of what we were discussing.
Article #5:
Here is a lesson I helped and guided one of my other Sol Life leaders in building out within the Words to a Younger Me series:
This leader had a good starting point for the point he wanted to get across based off of the scripture he had chosen, but needed help with thinking of an engaging illustration to demonstrate the idea. As part of an ongoing dialogue surrounding how best to communicate his main points, we came up together with the idea of using a DnD illustration. That was a particularly fun lesson because in the lesson, the youth had a tactile deliverable to interact with during the lesson.
Artifact #6:
Below are images from the DNow I got to speak at in Round Rock. You can check out the recorded videos of the messages on the "My Work" tab of my website at the top of the page! I chose to include these pictures from this particular event as part of my artifact collection for my communication goal because it did directly correlate to my achieving of this goal.
Also, given that this conference was in early Spring, by the time I was putting these sermons together, I was also challenged to intentionally apply my mindset of developing curriculum that's primarily learner-centered and leader-led into the context of preparing and delivering a traditional sermon. I was able to think more about how to engage with and draw in the youth I was preaching to that weekend in a new, refreshed way because of the way I'd been focusing on learner-centered curriculum all semester.
LIFELONG DEVELOPMENT STATEMENT
As a result of the experience documented by these artifacts (as well as the experiences I don't have artifacts for) I will continue to prioritize pouring into leaders within any ministry I lead in order to train, equip, and empower them to multiply and make disciples themselves: whether that's in a youth ministry, small group ministry, or over multiple ministries within a church staff.
To accomplish the above statement, I will continue to prioritize meeting with leaders as a group in order to help build trust, community, and culture as a team, as well as to help generate communal brainstorm sessions to invite multiple perspectives to engage with a single idea. I will also meet with leaders on a 1:1 or 2:1 basis to provide them guidance with discipling or teaching, as well as to simply check in on them as I would any brother or sister in Christ. Helping to maintain leaders' spiritual health is paramount to any successful ministry.
As I mentioned above, the actual accomplishment of this goal ended up shifting. Instead of focusing solely on direct instruction as the best practice for engaging youth in a ministry setting, I was able to explore my ability to communicate by setting up my leaders for success with detailed curriculum, leader prompts, and meetings outside of Sundays to clarify where we're going with the curriculum.
Through the expansion of this goal, I've realized that I tend toward empowering the few to engage the many in the spirit of a multiplication model. I think when leaders (few) are properly equipped and empowered in a ministry context, the many (youth or "regular attenders" part of a congregation) will be better reached, cared for, and equipped.
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. He will also declare to you what is to come. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything the Father has is mine. This is why I told you that he takes from what is mine and will declare it to you.
John 16:13-15
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