The Synergy Commons offers members insightful presentations focused on the themes of global collaboration, mission partnerships, and network leadership. These webinars are brought to you by community members and guest speakers with experience launching and leading collaborative initiatives around the world. Register for upcoming webinars and browse the list of past webinars.
Past Webinars
Can You Hear Me Now? Facilitating Effective Virtual Network Meetings
Facilitating effective network meetings in a collaborative, multi-cultural environment is challenging. It gets even more difficult when you need to do it all through your computer!
In this webinar, Warren Janzen, International Director for SEND and a key partnership facilitator, will be sharing practical strategies for facilitating virtual meetings that encourage cross-cultural collaboration, strong relationships and high levels of trust.
Preventing Collaborative Burnout: How to Manage the Stresses of Collaborative Burnout
In this webinar, Harry Hoffmann, Coordinator of the WEA Global Member Care Network, describes the unique circumstances of network leadership, the external and internal challenges, and its cumulative, long-term effects on the health and well being of a network leader or leadership team. Harry also discusses preventative steps leaders can use and introduces the Pyramid of Care, a model of care that can be applied to both network leaders and members.
Rooting for Rivals
Peter Greer, the author of Rooting for Rivals, explores case studies illustrating the power of collaborative partnership. Learn how your multi-organization partnership can multiply its impact through Kingdom collaboration
Designed for Impact: How Design Thinking Helps Networks Take on Complex Challenges
In this Synergy Commons webinar, Mark Avery shows how design thinking tools can help networks better understand their work’s context, increase engagement, strengthen collaboration, and improve the probability of finding a viable solution by creating a shared understanding of:
1. The context or system your network is trying to impact. 2. How things work in this context, and 3. How you can work together to change the outcomes.
Keeping Prayer Alive at the Heart of Your Network
How persistent and present is prayer in the life of your network? How much is prayer a part of your network’s on-going conversations, decisions, and plans? In this one hour webinar, we will look at practical ways network leaders can: 1. Sustain and grow their network’s prayer life; 2. Weave prayer into the structure and strategy of your network; 3. Explore the role of Prayer Strategist and Prayer Coordinator; and 4. Invite prayer in their network’s conversations, decisions, and planning processes.
Fundraising for Network Leaders
In this 90 minute webinar, Kehinde and Barbara will encourage network leaders to take a biblical approach to fundraising. They will show how these principles can help networks overcome three common network fundraising challenges. Participants will leave with practical strategies that can improve their fundraising efforts.
Time for a Checkup: Assessing your Network’s Health and Vitality
This webinar was not recorded due to the subject matter and breakout room discussion format. Enjoy this link to the Network Health Scorecard tool used in this webinar.
Eat, Pray, Partner: Lessons in Network Facilitation
In this webinar, Tuvya Zaretsky and Bodil Skjøtt describe how a working group became a global network despite intense differences in theology, mission ideology, history, and culture. They address practical network leadership issues such as building a strong facilitation team, fighting tendencies to build an organization, and creating an environment of trust and inclusion.
Developing Network Influence
This webinar will look at practical ways that a network can become the place ministry leaders look to for both reliable information as well as for contacts with potential ministry partners. it also gives an excellent introduction to the world of networks.
Partnering in China
Opportunities for ministry partnership with Christians in China are many, but these efforts at collaboration do not always end well. In this webinar we will examine the cultural and political challenges inherent in partnering in the Chinese context.
Giving Honor—A Key to Fruitful Cross-Cultural Partnerships
In this webinar, Werner Mischke looks at honor competition and rivalry in the New Testament church and the church today. He explores how “giving honor” across cultures and levels of social status can help our networks become healthy relationally and more fruitful.
Worth the Effort: Church and Network Collaboration
In this webinar, Ellen Livingood takes a careful look at the mutual value of incorporating churches into networks while realistically assessing the challenges. Vast resources are sitting untapped in churches, but mining them takes intentional effort and perseverance. We will learn from leaders on both sides of the church/network equation who are successfully working together. Our discussion will finish with practical next steps that both churches and networks can take to strengthen their collaborations.
Network Priorities: How to Use the Priority Roll-Up Process
One of the first steps in building an effective network is turning a diverse set of people from many organizations with many agendas into a focused group with a narrow set of initial objectives that they have consensus to work on together. In this webinar, Dave Hackett shares a Priority “Roll-up” process that has proven effective in helping networks collaboratively define their priorities.
Taking a Network Approach to Equipping Healthy Churches
Presenter, Amanda Jackson is the Secretary General for Church in Community for the WEA. In this role, she encourages collaboration and partnerships between large networks and the local church. Amanda’s webinar explores the role of global networks in equipping the local church.
Millennials in Mission: Engaging the Next Generation of Collaborative Leaders (Member Only)
The next Generation (Gen Y) and the one following fast (Gen Z) are a new type of missionary and easily misunderstood. They are full of passion, ready to take risks, educated, and uniquely gifted and positioned. Unfortunately, generational misunderstandings frequently lead to Millennials being under-utilized and misunderstood on the field. Accordingly many leave or don’t come at all. In this webinar we would like to provoke discussion on the importance of building and fostering the Millennial Generation.
Collaborative Mentoring: Growing Effective Collaboration Leaders (Member Only)
Mentoring collaboration leaders requires a collaborative style of mentoring that goes beyond sharing experience and advice. In this webinar, Tim Brown, Senior Advisor for visionSynergy, will share a partnership-based approach to mentoring collaborative leaders developed over 10 years of working with oral culture leaders to expand their collaboration capacity.
Committed Collaboration: Creating a framework for trust and mutual accountability (Member Only)
Dee Moskoff, Executive Director of the Connect Network, discusses how turning shared values and vision into action requires organizations and networks to build deeper levels of accountability and partnership. This transition is where networks often get stuck. In this webinar, Dee Moskoff shares a 3 stage process for building Kingdom partnership agreements that achieve results while protecting relationships and trust.
Working Together: Using a Lean Canvas Approach to Planning Collaborative Kingdom Projects (Member Only)
In this webinar presented to Synergy Commons members, Cru project specialist Paul Konstanski introduces the Lean Canvas as a valuable tool for strategic planning.
Collaborating to Reach the Muslim World with the Gospel (Member Only)
Can partnerships produce a lasting impact on the Muslim world? In this webinar, Fouad Masri, CEO of Crescent Project, discusses the challenges of leading in the midst of rising fear and anger towards Muslims and the power of partnership to overcome these challenges and reach Muslim Communities with the gospel.
Releasing the Power of Your Network (Member Only)
Phill Butler gives five key network leadership principles that release the power of networks and their leadership teams to accomplish the seemingly impossible task. Filled with practical stories and anecdotes, this webinar is an invaluable resource for network leaders looking to start or grow an effective network.
Media and Collaboration (Member Only)
Clyde Taber talks about the impact of media and collaboration on missions. He shares about the Visual Story Network and how media is accelerating, enabling, and supporting ministry collaboration.
Networking and Partnering
Ernie Addicott explains the difference between networks and partnerships and briefly outlines the three key stages of partnership development.
Working Groups
John Blake and Bill Sunderland outline five steps in working group development for networks and partnerships.
Accountability: Who, What, How?
Phill Butler discusses the who, what, and how of accountability in missional networks and partnerships.
Shared Vision
John Blake talks about the process of developing shared vision for a network and outlines four components of a powerful vision.
Mining Your Network
Lucas King outlines four essentials for increasing the level of engagement, contribution, and sharing within missional networks and partnerships.
Networking and Consultations
Dave Hackett describes four different levels of engagement in missional networks and concludes with a helpful outline for creating a consultation summary report.