Learning Labs
Jesus Collective is excited to host Five Learning Lab experiences beginning in February.
Each Learning Lab will consist of a group of 15 – 20 practitioners who will gather around a big Jesus-centred question for a set period of time with a commitment to experimentation, implementation, and shared learning.
Together, we’ll lean into the shared value of courage, in order to build Jesus-centred discipleship resources and cultures for our churches and organizations.
All Learning Labs begin in March 2023 with the exception of the Learning Lab discussing Human Sexuality which launches in February. Participants will work with the Learning Lab facilitators to determine a day and time that works for the Learning Lab to meet.
# What are Learning Labs?
Learning Labs are Designed to Help You Implement New Ideas and Innovations
No one is lacking information in our current digital world. But often, we lack like-minded conversation partners who can help us take the information and apply it in innovative ways to the complexities of our cultural moment.
Learning Labs come together around a specific and shared challenge on how to apply Jesus-centred approaches and theology to our own hearts, minds, and leadership context.
Learning Labs will pull from Jesus Collective resources and practitioners to inspire learning and action. Each Learning Lab participant will commit to create, design, and implement an experiment in their leadership context over the course of six months.
A four step process of Learning, Planning, Executing and Debriefing can generate new resources to share with the Learning Lab and equip a greater Jesus-centred movement in your context and in the world.
# Who Are They For?
Learning Labs Are Designed for…
- Experimenters — You are a church leader, non-profit leader, lay leader, or business leader who is familiar with and excited about Jesus Centred theology and practices. You are ready to get down to the nitty gritty of making Jesus-centred approaches happen in a tangible way. Your major commitment is to implement experiments drawn from the shared challenges birthed from the Learning Lab.
- Guides — You are a church leader, non-profit leader, lay leader, or business leader familiar with and excited about Jesus Centred theology and practices, and have already been experimenting in your local context. Learning Labs will help you build on your experience by sharing your learnings and refining what you’re already doing, to make it better. This is a place for you to share resources that you’ve developed in your context. For example, if the big question is: “How do we do Jesus centred small groups?” — you can be a guide and will have a resource to share with the group that shows how you teach or train in Jesus-centred ways.
# What Does It Look Like?
Listen to / Read / Watch the resources curated to help you participate well in the Learning Lab
- Meet for 1.5 hours every week, for 6 weeks
- Spend time with ministry experts and other Jesus centred practitioners to expand your range of options and design your experiment
- Try out, in your local context, what you’ve prepared
- Share your learnings with your Learning Lab
- Turn your learning into resources and tools that might be helpful to pass onto others
- Share what you’ve learned, and receive from others
# Application and Pricing
Why an application?
We want to ensure those who join are the right fit for the outcome based approach we are utilizing in each Learning Lab.
Applications are open until January 27, 2023 and payment must be submitted by February 6, 2023 for the following Learning Labs:
How Do We Honour People, Process and Scripture in Our Conversations on Sexuality and Discipleship?
Applications are open until February 27, 2023 and payment must be submitted by March 6, 2023 for the following Learning Labs:
How Do We Do Jesus Centred Church Membership?
How Do Jesus Centred Leaders Empower and Equip Communities to Make Good Decisions Together?
Applications are open until March 13, 2023 and payment must be submitted by March 17, 2023 for the following Learning Labs:
How Do We Do Jesus Centred Kids Ministry?
How Do We Do Jesus Centred Youth Ministry?
What does it cost?
Valued at $200, Jesus Collective is offering a 40% discount to participants to help us pilot this Learning Labs project.
Individual Rate: $120 CAD / *Team Rate (3 or more people): $100 CAD
Free for Jesus Collective Partners
*Studies show that innovation and implementation are more effective when teams from the same organization learn together.
Each Learning Lab Consists Of:
10+ hours of shared wisdom, resourcing, and learning from highly skilled practitioners
Curated resources to prepare and equip the learning process
Facilitated equipping conversations
A four-step iterative process, and shared accountability to help move each person from learning to implementation, over the course of the Learning Lab
Shared tools
Resource creation
# Upcoming Learning Labs
As many of our churches and traditions approach membership through a bounded set paradigm, we want to explore and experiment into centred set alternatives.
— Led by John Hau
As church leaders, we have a unique invitation in this season to cultivate processes that foster both a more robust biblical ethic of marriage, sexuality, and gender and to provide leadership to our churches as they desire to be a safe and compassionate environments for LGBTQ+ people, their families, and anyone wrestling with their sexuality or gender identity.
- Led by Brad Sumner
This lab is for any leader looking to reimagine the role Kids Ministry plays in the Church family, and how to build community, discipleship, and leadership bench for a thriving Church in the future.
- Led by Christie Penner Worden
Politics is people figuring out how to live together – whether it’s interpreting scripture in Sunday school, or determining a budget in a board meeting, or choosing a time to meet around the kitchen table – and as many Christians seek to (re)cast leadership in terms of servanthood and mutual submission, we will explore centred-set alternatives that enable communities and their leaders to share power in appropriate ways that contribute to flourishing wholeness.
- Led by J. Janzen
What does Jesus-centred youth ministry look like? Explore alongside two Youth Pastors as we focus a discussion on Jesus in the world of teens and their families. As a community we will listen, discuss, and respond to how the Spirit may be inviting us to make Jesus more central in the formation of youth living in a rapidly changing world.
- Led by Mitch Claassen and Sarah Lyew