What You Get With The People Process

Introduction to The People Process We are proud to invite you on this short journey through a practical and spiritual process that could yield lifetime results in your quest to find more joy and effectiveness in your life and faith. Effectiveness is a keyword in our program. We will discuss it more momentarily. First, we want you to become acquainted with the aim and format of this program. You may have started reading our companion book, Character, Conflict, and Influence: Pleasing God Through Building Effective Relationships. If not, you may read it at your leisure; the same information and so much more can be found in The People Process. Here is how we recommend you experience it. The program consists of 40 sections. Each section is divided into 4 parts, each one a bite-sized portion that you can easily read and interact with. As with any growth program, The People Process requires effort and focus, but not so much that you get discouraged and quit halfway through. Instead, it is meant to give you a fresh perspective of timeless biblical principles designed to inspire you toward simple mindset adjustments that can make a big difference in a relatively short amount of time. A good minimal effort would be one part of a section each day, which would give you three-quarters of a year of learning and practice for four days per week. You may want a faster pace, and that’s okay. Just don’t go through it so quickly that you don’t absorb the concepts and benefit from the transformative principles God has available. For those who want even more skill-based insight into effective influence, we have an additional 8 sections devoted entirely to biblical influence and strategy skills. That’s almost a year’s journey of learning how to be more effective as a person of faith in a beautiful world afflicted with dysfunction and chaos. God doesn’t want your life to reflect that dysfunction and chaos. He wants you to reflect his goodness and accomplish the unique mission he gave you. That is why he gave us his word in scripture. In that word, there are some powerful directives for us to live by. 95FIVE hasn’t discovered them; neither has anyone else. They have been around from the beginning and have been taught in countless lives, works, and materials throughout the generations. Christians have access to many tools now that teach these principles. So, why The People Process? If there are so many tools available, why did 95FIVE feel it needed to contribute one more? Here’s why: We live in a post-Christian age and have for some time. During the previous few generations, we have seen the genuine influence of God’s collective people wane considerably in the Western societies that used to be guided by our faith tradition. They weren’t perfect then and they aren’t now, but what churches used to resist as products of faith breakdown are now tolerated and, in some cases, embraced. It’s as if broken families and behaviors that produce regret are just byproducts of living in modern times and we can’t do much about it, so we mainly focus on applying emotional bandages and praying for healing while steering as many people away from wrong choices as we can. That is part of our ministry as churches, for sure, but doesn’t it wear us out when it becomes excessive within our own congregations? Of course, it does, and the problem is only growing worse. Some individuals are even reluctant to add to that burden and opt instead to find ways to cope on their own. They live in unnecessary misery while their congregations may not even be aware of what’s going on inside them. Therefore, we feel that a better question is, does it have to be this way? The answer for society is yes, we will continue to slide further into moral confusion and relational chaos until collectively we grow tired of our cynical worldview and turn back toward morality and spiritual meaning again. For the church, however, the answer is no, our ministry doesn’t have to feel on the defensive all the time by being weighed down with spiritual triage, where it seems it is characterized more and more by emotional and spiritual first aid. 95FIVE believes that teaching effective information will help us turn around the troubling trend where unfortunate statistics in the church closely align with those outside of it. Most churches teach great information - biblical information! However, we wonder whether that teaching of it is always delivered as effective information. In other words, churches teach the right doctrine and encourage devotion to the way of Christ, as they should, but do they also teach strategically? Jesus did. Treating others as we want to be treated, showing kindness to our enemies, and praying simply and in secret are all examples of moral behaviors Jesus taught that are also strategic behaviors. He knew that life in this world as a person of faith is ultimately effectiveness, not only for survival but also for success in living out our purpose. “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:8b-9 ESV). “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16 ESV). The way of Christ is strategic in the truest sense, without being manipulative. This brings us to the word effective. Christianity correctly views matter in terms of right and wrong, moral and immoral, righteous and unrighteous. But what about effective and ineffective? Do we ever think in those terms? Isn’t that a worldly way of thinking? Doesn’t it merely bring spiritual matters down to the level of just being practical? Isn’t that way of viewing our faith self-serving? Not at all! We believe faith should be effective, and not what always brings outcomes we find preferable. The results we desire are not always what God desires but we trust in his ability to know what is best. Does God believe in effectiveness? Here’s what scripture says: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11, ESV). God is effective in what he does and in how he guides us. He expects us to learn how to live and model effectiveness, just like Christ did. We might say that not everything that is effective is of God, but everything that is of God is effective. Effectiveness is the heart of The People Process. If we are to live effectively, we must learn to be strategic about our approach to our lives, our challenges, and our relationships with others. 95FIVE views strategy as beginning with knowledge and leading to skilled practice. That is how we designed this experience. Each section contains four parts. Each part will have: A short reading section to familiarize you with our concepts. One or more questions to prompt you to analyze where you are now in your effectiveness in Christian influence. Access to your People Process Log Book where you can record your answers and list actions you believe will help improve your character and influence. The Log Book is not a journal per se, but it contains sections where you can keep track of your thoughts and experiences through this journey if you want. We will have many other resources available to you on our website, and we will be adding more there and in this program. These include: An archive of expanded reading sections giving more insight into our principles Weekly Bible studies Model stories designed around each principle to show how they operate in everyday life Recorded discussion sessions for each part of the program A glossary for all of our terms A skills gift book containing summaries and memory points about the relationship skills we teach In section one, we will look at what we believe are the objectives of our lives of faith, the understanding of which will launch you into a more satisfying and God-pleasing life. Just a few simple mindset shifts and the practice of some spiritual skills could be all you need to bring you from the results you’ve always gotten to a life that might not have seemed possible before.