Seminars, Workshops and Retreats
Presented by Bob Withers
The Potter’s Wheel – Spiritual Formation in the Workplace: The marketplace Christian spends more time at work than in church or with his or her family. Yet, the secular-sacred dichotomy that most of us buy into causes us to view the workplace as a fishing pond of evangelism at best, and as something functionally separate from the Christian life at worst. The workplace, however, is one of the three primary venues in which God desires to mold us into the image of Christ, along with family and church. If we fail to partner with Christ at work we miss much of the transformational work of the Holy Spirit This process will equip the participant to think about work from a Biblical worldview and will enable him or her to experience the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in vocation.
Charting the Course for Business: This workshop is designed for business environments whether or not they have a Christian ethos. In our post-modern culture in which thinking is fragmented, businesses, including individual executives, are fighting the riptide of short attention spans, electronic distractions, and an inability to connect the dots in planning and operations. Charting the Course for Business is designed to assist employees, managers, and executives to think individually and collectively about the mission of their organization and to incorporate that thinking into decisions and actions. It is also a tool for career development and management, a process by which supervisors can relate to their employees and gauge their vocational progress.
Charting the Course for Kingdom and Church: What is the story of your church? Where have you been, where are you, and where are you likely to go if things stay the same? What are the areas of victory, challenge, anxiety and pain in your DNA? Through constructing a narrative of your church you will develop a Biblical paradigm for charting a course for worship, mutual edification, and mission – thereby inviting your entire congregation to participate in a Pilgrim’s Progress of koinonia and Divine purpose.
Refocusing: Drawing on the synthetic work of Easum and Bandy this is a process designed to help Christians see themselves as leaders of influence and to understand their trajectory in vocation, church, family, and community. This is especially valuable when experienced by congregational leadership and then offered to the entire congregation.
ALPHA: Bob has facilitated a number of ALPHA programs and is available to assist you in assessing ALPHA for your church. ALPHA is a wonderful tool with which to strengthen your congregation internally and to reach your community. It develops leadership, is a natural training ground for small group facilitators, I a natural launching pad for small groups, develops a witnessing church, and engages people in the Holy Spirit.
Small Group Strategic Development and Training: Do you want to launch a small group ministry but don’t know how to do it? There is so much material and advice available, how do we sort through it? How do we train small group facilitators? How do we ensure a quality of ministry in small groups? Bob has worked with small groups for over 40 years and has seen the good, the bad and the ugly. While with Needle’s Eye Ministries he was responsible for 25 small groups that met on a weekly basis. Bob has an organic approach to small groups that takes into account the DNA of the church or organization, its leadership culture, and it goals. His aim is to provide a small group model that is sustainable and adaptable – easily understood and visualized and shared with others.
Charting the Course for Mentoring: Mentoring should be as natural as breathing in our churches; Christ mentored, Paul mentored, and Timothy was instructed to mentor. Yet most of us get that deer in the headlights look when the subject is broached. In a cubical society in which relationships are all too rare, how can we teach our leaders to mentor and be mentored? What would your church look like if each of your leaders was mentoring and teaching others to mentor? What would your church look like if every young couple was being mentored? What would your church look like if every young Christian was being mentored? How can we employ mentoring in marriage and family ministry? We should all be in at least three levels of mentoring relationships, but are we? This workshop will challenge and equip the participants to make mentoring a way of life.
Triage – Taking the Vital Signs: Is your leadership taking the vital signs of your congregation? Does it know the true spiritual health of your church? Are your elders and deacons engaging your church in spiritual conversation? The Methodists used to ask each other, “Brother, how is your soul?” Most Christian leaders are afraid to ask that question today – and if our leaders can’t ask it how can our people ask it of each other? Learn how to incorporate spiritual vital signs into every day conversation, teaching your folks how to enjoy spiritual conversation focused on Christ.
Lectio Divina – The Practice of Spiritual Reading: Few people know how to read; therefore few people know how to read the Bible – including many of our congregational leaders. We substitute data for comprehension, and we substitute Bible study notes for engagement with the Holy Spirit in the Biblical text. Experience the wonder of submitting to the Biblical text and learn how to teach your leaders and congregation the practice of spiritual reading. This can revolutionize your ministry, your leadership group, and your church.
Preaching the Epistles as Narrative – Constructing A Story for Postmodern Culture: Sustained attention is a challenge in a culture hooked on nanosecond communication, yet the Bible calls us into the story of Redemption. Explore how to construct a narrative framework within which to preach and teach the Epistles, giving your congregation a frame of reference within which to respond to the Biblical text, thereby enhancing understanding, retention, and a shared experienced as a church. Your congregation may be able to tell others the story of Matthew, Mark, and Luke; but can it tell others the story of Colossians, Thessalonians, and 1 Peter?
Planning A Year’s Preaching: In partnership with the Holy Spirit explore how planning a year’s preaching benefits both the pastor and the congregation. Learn how to provide your people with a balanced Biblical diet, to make sure you deal with the hard Biblical passages, and to construct a congregational narrative upon which you can build in the years ahead. Explore how a prayerfully prepared planning schedule can assist in integrated worship, allowing your musical worship leaders to also prayerfully plan and look for material that supports your Biblical preaching. There is a reason people use maxims such as: If you fail to plan you plan to fail, and If you don’t know what you’re aiming at you’re bound to hit it.
The Intercessory Life – An Exploration of the Cross of Christ: We hear a lot about intercessory prayer, but what about intercessory living? We hear a lot about what we can get from Christ, but what about what Christ calls us to give to others? We hear a lot about personal blessing; but what about the Cross-centered life? Suppose our congregations were centered on others rather than on self? Suppose we took seriously Christ’s command to deny ourselves? What would that mean in terms of conflict; the stewardship of finances, time, and talent; evangelism; marriage and family; and commitment to the local church? Explore Biblical paradigms of the Cross-centered life and how they can be inculcated into leadership and the congregation.
Spiritual Formation – Understanding the Traditions and Models and How to Translate Them Into Your Church: The term “spiritual formation” has become popular in recent years, and yet few people understand that the concept is not only rooted in Scripture, but that it has been with the church since its inception. Few people realize that there are different traditions and different approaches to the subject of transformation into the image of Christ, and that a “one size fits all” approach is not likely to work in congregational life. This workshop provides an introduction to the subject, with particular attention to different models and how leadership can incorporate those models into congregational life.
Spiritual Theology for the Pastor – Developing a Philosophy of Ministry: Calling, Preaching, Leadership, Congregational Life, Spiritual Formation – how well thought out is your pastoral theology? What Biblical paradigms do you employ in ministry? Do you have to think about Biblical perspectives on preaching, leadership, and spiritual growth or do you have a well-developed Biblical matrix within which to shepherd your people? Few pastors have an actual Philosophy of Ministry – this workshop is designed to help you begin the process, refresh what you already have, and equip you to guide your leadership in developing a congregational philosophy of ministry.
Becoming A Healthy Church: This process-oriented evaluation of congregational life is based on Steve Macchia’s work and book, Becoming a Healthy Church – 10 Characteristics. While there are many fine approaches to congregational assessment, I prefer Becoming A Healthy Church because it uses non-technical language, incorporates real-life examples from congregations, is interactive, and is Biblically based. Also, unlike some assessment tools, it can be utilized at minimal cost and implemented almost immediately.
The Apostolic Fathers – A Critical Introduction: The Apostolic Fathers represent early Christian writings from the late First Century to the Late Second Century. As such they demonstrate Christian thought and practice in the generations immediately succeeding the original apostles. Did the church embark on new trajectories after the close of the New Testament canon? Can we discern the age-old struggle between law and grace in these writings? If so, which line of thought and practice was gaining ascendancy? Does our thinking and practice more nearly approximate the New Testament or some of the thinking expressed in the Apostolic Fathers?
C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, and Charles Williams – The Search for Beauty and Joy: Lewis, MacDonald and Williams were drawn to Christ by beauty and joy, not beauty and joy as they are usually understood in our culture, but by a sense of the transcendent, a sense of the timeless, the pull of the eternal. In our postmodern culture understanding the attraction of this pull, and engaging others in dialogue concerning the search for significance, is a key avenue in sharing the Gospel – but first we need to understand not only what Lewis, MacDonald and Williams were writing about and experiencing, we need to know what it looks like in our own lives.
C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and Blaise Pascal – Why My Dog Has Never Wanted To Be A Lion: These three giants of Christian thought all realized that man lives in tension between depravity and greatness and that evidence of this tension is written within humanity – plain to those who will take the time to observe and question. They used this tension as an avenue of sharing the Gospel, in engaging skeptics, and in strengthening the faith of Christians. It isn’t rocket science, for as Chesterton pointed out, everything he really needed to know he learned in the nursery. But what exactly did he mean by that?
Narnia And The Shadowlands – Images of Christ and Eternity: If you think Narnia is exclusively a children’s story, think again. The spiritual applications for church and individual, the glimpses of Christ, go far beyond the Stone Table of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Learn why the movie, Prince Caspian, did the book and The Chronicles a disservice – “see” the reality behind the book that the movie-makers didn’t portray. Learn to use The Chronicles as a way to share the Gospel with young and old alike.
Images of the Divine; The Role of Image and Narrative in the Bible and Christian Literature: The Bible speaks in images from Genesis to Revelation, and intertwined with those images is story, often termed narrative. However, in our technological and data-driven society we tend to look for information first, and then we look for understanding and wisdom if we think we have time – which isn’t often. John Bunyan, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Walter Wangerin, George MacDonald, Dante, and others have communicated the Gospel through images and narrative – and yet more often than not we don’t get it – we don’t see the story behind the images. This is an introduction to the rich texture of image and story and how the Bible, along with Christian writers, invites us to become participants in God’s story through Biblical and literary images.
C.S. Lewis – An Introduction to His Life and Thought: An overview of Jack’s life from childhood to conversion, and then from conversion to his death in 1963, is coupled with attention to his thought as expressed in his writing and letters. Particular attention is paid to the different literary genres that he utilized.
Dorothy L. Sayers – An Introduction to Her Life and Thought: Sayers is known to some as one of the 20th century’s great mystery writers, to others as a sharp theological thinker, to some as a translator of Dante, and to others as a vivid play writer. She counted Charles Williams and C.S. Lewis among her correspondents, and Lewis claimed to read her series of plays, The Man Born to be King, every Lenten season. Just who was this remarkable women, and what does she have to say to us in the 21st Century?
George MacDonald – An Introduction to His Life and Thought: MacDonald is unfamiliar to most Christians today, and yet C.S. Lewis acknowledged MacDonald as his “master”. In fact, one could argue that what MacDonald began, Tolkien and then Charles Williams continued in the life of C.S. Lewis. It was reading MacDonald’s book Phantastes as a teenager that awakened within Lewis what he would come to describe as “joy”. The introduction focuses on MacDonald’s life and three areas of his writing; children’s fantasy, adult fantasy, and his Unspoken Sermons.
Francois Fenelon – An Introduction to His Life and Thought: Many Protestants are familiar with Oswald Chambers, A.W. Tozer, and Andrew Murray; these great devotional preachers and writers have influenced millions of Christians the world over. Few know that they were influenced by Francois Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambrai, tutor to the grandsons of Louis IX, and friend of Jeanne Guyon who was imprisoned for her faith in Jesus Christ. Fenelon accepted banishment to his diocese rather than abandon his friend Guyon and recant what he knew to be the foundation of an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Fenelon stood at the throne of the most powerful monarch in Europe, looked in the eye of unimaginable wealth and prestige, and held fast to the Christ of the Cross. His life and words are especially relevant for our materialistic society with its emphasis on image, spin, power, and wealth.
The Keirsey Temperament Sorter – II
The following is a list of workshops and seminars based on the KTS-II.
Temperament and Team: Most of us are engaging in an ongoing Pygmalion Project with others – we want to transform them into our own image. Understanding how we are hard-wired in terms of differences and similarities not only results in respecting the Biblical truth that God made each of us as unique individuals, but helps us function as members of the Body of Christ. Areas covered include conflict, communication styles, decision-making preferences, natural intelligence, and baseline motivations. The goal of this process is to provide you with an understanding of the strengths and short suits (if any) of your team. It will also help you assemble project-specific teams in the future. This process is driven by the Keirsey Temperament Sorter – II.
Preaching and Teaching and the KTS-II: Your temperament influences your preaching and teaching style – but what if you never take into account the learning styles of your congregation? You may be primarily communicating in a style that is not the primary learning style of most of your people – this is especially true if you are an abstract thinker (they comprise about 20% of the population). How can you take this into account while continuing to be who you are while also honoring the learning styles of others?
Spiritual Formation and the KTS-II: Different temperaments gravitate toward different avenues of spiritual formation. Have you ever wondered why a method of prayer that excites you leaves others cold? They are wired differently. Have you ever been frustrated that some of your best friends can’t get into a book that turns you on? They have different hard-wired preferences – and they aren’t going to change! Learn to recognize your own and others preferences – thus enabling you as a leader to minister to others via their strengths and natural prayer and learning preferences, rather than frustrate others and yourself. Maybe one reason there are four Gospels is that each naturally appeals to one of the four temperaments?
Using the KTS-II in Marriage and Pre-Marital Counseling: This workshop will introduce the pastor, counselor, and congregational leader to the KTS-II and its use in working with couples with an emphasis on communication and decision-making preferences. Once couples give up trying to change each other – the Pygmalion Project – they can start understanding each other; and once they start understanding each other, they can give up trying to change each other. In the KTS-II you can give couples lifelong tools to work with.
The KTS-II for Married and Engaged Couples: This is a seminar in which couples actually take the KTS-II and then explore its results. Its primary focus is on communication and understanding the differences in communication and decision-making preferences.
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