Running an effective community course

Every year when Wimbledon comes on the TV, I get the urge to go out and play tennis. I don’t think I’m alone in that. But pretty soon reality crashes in and I remember that I’m not a good tennis player. I’m not even a reasonable tennis player. If I want to play anything like the players at Wimbledon, what I really need is some serious coaching.

In most areas of life, we accept we need some training - whether it’s learning to drive or going to an ante-natal class. But when it comes to our private lives, we can find it embarrassing to admit we’re attending a marriage course, or a course to improve our parenting skills. We may even resent being invited on such a course - after all who are ‘they’ to tell me how to have a good marriage, or be a better parent?

Churches need to try to overcome this natural reaction, and offer a course about family life that will change lives.

The difference between a ‘good’ and a ‘great’ course is often an issue of attitude. It’s wonderful when everyone who turns up is keen and enthusiastic to take part, but you can’t guarantee that will happen. If you’re running the course, the only attitude you can really work on is yours (and possibly those of your co-facilitators).

So what kind of attitude helps?

Be a fellow learner, not a teacher

Recently I was talking with a leader whose church was making huge strides in engaging their community through running courses. She said, “When we reach out as experts, people draw back. When we reach out from our experience, people are drawn in.”

It’s always easier if we offer to stand alongside people, admit our faults and look to discover solutions together. To be effective in engagement through courses, we need to identify with people. We’ll find people are much more likely to start asking questions, open up, share their own story, and value what we say. 

This underlines what Care for the Family has discovered over the years - what people are looking for more than anything is to know that they’re not alone in the challenges they face. People often want to hear someone say “I’ve been there, too, and this is what I’ve learned.”

Help without strings

The help we offer needs to be precisely what it says it is. If it’s about family, it shouldn’t depart from this agenda, even if we’re tempted to do so.

Another leader said, “As we connect with people’s most pressing, most immediate concerns, it’s amazing how often trust grows and they begin to share more hidden struggles.”

Open hand

Many churches are finding that when they offer help with an open hand, curiosity is aroused and people want to know why they’re doing this. It’s always best to let people set the pace and reach that point in their own time, if they choose to do so at all. Coercion and Christianity have never been comfortable companions.

Don’t count the cost

We have to be prepared for the fact that serving our communities will probably cost us something, whether that’s time, money, or other commitments. A course which takes up an evening a week for four weeks is a significant commitment for everybody concerned.

Offer your course to the community in this spirit, and people’s embarrassment and resentment will probably disappear – along with the feelings of ‘us’ and ‘them’!

Richard Hardy

Last Updated 03 December 2010