Imagine that you are a church planter in Japan. Imagine that you want your church members to think about a current challenge. What can you do? You can use the GROW process:

• Goal: What’s our goal?
• Reality: What’s going on?
• Options: What can we do?
• Will do’s: What will we do?

When doing coaching workshops for CAJ staff and for missionaries, I teach the GROW process. I was really encouraged by the following email from a church planter who used the GROW process:
 
“I thought you would be interested in what our church did yesterday after worship. We are trying to sell our land and move to an area of Fujisawa that has no church to plant a church there. The denomination hasn’t given their blessing yet on the sale of the land, so we needed to think through things we could do until we get their blessing for selling the land and moving forward.
 
“I led a discussion for about 10 church members using GROW to think through ideas and options. It was fun to do, and interesting to do it in Japanese! The GROW concept worked, and helped to structure a very helpful discussion. I heard the following comments from people:

• ‘This was the first time that I could really say what was on my heart.’
• ‘This gives me hope that there are things that we can be doing and not be stuck in a rut.’
• ‘It was helpful to get things out on the white board to help get my thinking sorted out.’

“Thought you would want to know that your coach training helped a Japanese church to process things.”