Leaders who accompany growth
When people encounter difficult questions, competing convictions, or new responsibilities, are your leaders prepared to help them reflect, exercise faithful judgment, and remain connected to Christian community?
Consulting · How We Work
Build a church that supports
lifelong discipleship.
We help your church connect the formation of its leaders with the life of its congregation. Together, we understand what is happening, shape a practical pathway, and support your leaders as they put it into practice.
Questions that guide consulting
How does your church
help people grow in Christ?
Your church gathers for worship, teaches Scripture, and invites people to serve. Through that shared life, you hope to see people becoming like Christ—in their relationships, their decisions, and the way they carry faith into everyday life.
Supporting that growth requires looking closely at the people leading your church, the experiences your ministries create, and the culture that surrounds them.
Practices that reach everyday life
How do worship, teaching, groups, service, and spiritual disciplines—such as prayer, Scripture reading, confession, and Sabbath—help people bring their faith into work, family, conflict, and the choices they face throughout the week?
A culture that supports formation
Does your church offer a secure sense of belonging while inviting people to examine assumptions, engage different perspectives, and take meaningful responsibility? Do its relationships and shared practices provide the challenge, reflection, and ongoing support people need to discern faithfully and grow in Christ?
These questions give us a starting point for understanding how your church can support discipleship more intentionally.
The engagement process
From the first conversation
to local ownership.
The full engagement follows six connected stages. Leadership formation continues throughout, and experience can lead us to revisit earlier decisions. A focused engagement includes the stages relevant to the work your church commissions.
Discovery
Uncover the underlying questions and scope the work ahead.
We begin with your church’s concerns, history, theological commitments, and capacity. Existing assessments, ministry evaluations, and plans help us understand what is already known and what needs attention.
Together, we identify the people who need to participate, the decisions the work should support, and the scope, responsibilities, schedule, and fees. Your church provides a lead contact, access to relevant people and materials, and time for learning and decisions.
What this produces
A clear engagement scope, participation plan, and agreed deliverables.
Assessment and initial learning
Understand how leaders lead and how the church works.
Leadership assessments and formation occur alongside organizational inquiry. Each stream retains its own methods, records, and findings.
Leadership Assessment and Training
Ministry-context interviews, team dialogue, and individual Subject-Object Interviews for the primary leadership team explore how leaders carry convictions, responsibility, uncertainty, and relationships. SOIs are conducted by a trained assessor. Private feedback helps leaders identify their learning priorities. 7Mile leads initial formation through theological reflection, lived practice, listening, and preparation to accompany others.
Organizational and Systems Assessment
Congregant and leadership interviews, ministry materials, and observation help us understand how church life is experienced. We examine worship, preaching, groups, service, culture, governance, roles, communication, and resources. Recurring patterns, feedback loops, and points where change could make a difference guide the inquiry.
What this produces
Private leadership feedback and a formation plan where commissioned; an account of the church’s strengths, patterns, constraints, and participant experience within the organizational scope.
Findings and priorities
Translate assessment findings into clear priorities.
We discuss the findings with your leaders, test interpretations against their experience, and identify what is well supported and what needs further inquiry. In a combined engagement, leadership and organizational insights inform shared priorities while individual assessment findings remain separate from the organizational report.
What this produces
A findings report, recommendations, and priorities that help your leaders decide what to preserve, change, or investigate.
Framework and pathway design
Turn priorities into a practical pathway.
Together, we build a discipleship framework that explains how theological purpose, spiritual practices, relationships, and systems support life in Christ. The development pathway sets out how your church will move toward its priorities.
We define the selected practices and organizational changes, who will carry them, what preparation and resources they need, and how their effects will be reviewed. Church leaders make the local ministry and governance decisions. Existing practices may be retained, adapted, or complemented by new ones.
What this produces
A church-specific framework, a sequenced pathway, practical ministry designs, and an implementation and review plan.
Implementation and accompaniment
Prepare leaders and put the pathway into practice.
Facilitators rehearse the work, clarify responsibilities, and establish participant support. We normally begin with a pathway pilot before wider rollout; church leaders may choose direct implementation with the same attention to review and accompaniment.
7Mile can lead or co-facilitate initial gatherings, then transfer facilitation to prepared local leaders. We listen to participants, support leaders between gatherings, and adjust the work as experience reveals what is needed.
What this produces
Prepared facilitators, supported practices, and a record of learning and adjustments.
Review and confirm local ownership
Learn from the work and establish what comes next.
Together, we review how the practices were carried out, how people experienced them, and what changed in leadership and congregational life. Your leaders decide what to continue, revise, expand, or conclude.
The handoff identifies local owners, materials, unfinished work, and the next review. Continued help can take the form of a defined retainer, periodic reviews, or follow-up on request.
What this produces
A learning summary and continuation plan your church can carry.
A starting point that fits
Choose the scope and commitment
that serve your church.
A full engagement
Agree the scope across assessment, leadership formation, design, implementation, and review in one engagement. Findings guide the specific priorities and changes as the work unfolds.
Work in phases
Commission a focused service or current phase, then decide whether to proceed once its findings and recommendations are in hand. Leadership assessment and organizational and systems assessment are each available independently; neither commits your church to the other service or later phases.
Ask about working with 7Mile
Our shared foundation
Rooted in life in Christ.
Consulting, daily practice, and theological education share a commitment to discipleship: participation in Christ through the practices, relationships, and shared life that form us.
Begin with the questions you already have.
Tell us about your church, the challenges you face, and the growth you want to support.