Ed Choy is a husband, father, pastor, writer and V3 Church Planter. Currently he’s in the early stages of planting Restoration Church in Baltimore, Maryland. The Restoration website describes their hope for the church to become “a diverse community of faith joining God in the restoration of all things.”
As a part of his preparation to plant, Ed has been participating in a V3 Learning Cohort. Here’s what he has to say about it so far.
What originally drew you to the V3 learning cohort experience?
JR’s leadership and willingness to work with us. We felt that we had a somewhat unique “model” and didn’t fit in a plug and play kind of network. He was open and willing to help us develop our unique calling and equip us to make disciples in our context.
We also loved the learning cohort component and felt we needed the support and help as we make disciples and form leaders. The coaches are excellent and we felt warmly embraced.
How has the learning cohort experience benefitted your church community?
The learning cohort has helped our leadership team develop language and discuss disciple making intentionally. My teammate and I are in the same cohort, which gives us the opportunity to learn and grow together and debrief the cohort discussions regularly.
What is one lesson you learned in your cohort that you are applying?
The APEST shared leadership model assumes that each leader needs to learn and grow from the other gifted leaders on the team. My teammate and I have grown so much as we’ve taken time to listen to one another and allow the other to help shape our thinking and ministry. This alone has been worth the investment of time and resources.
Who would benefit from being a part of a V3 Learning Cohort?
Anyone looking to be equipped to make disciples in a missional incarnational way, anyone needing the accountability of others to learn and grow as a leader, anyone who wants to swim in the shared leadership stream.
Anything else you want to share about the experience?
The V3 Learning Cohort is definitely an environment where my thinking has been stretched. This is NOT a nuts and bolts toolbox kind of ministry. That’s got to take place on your team or supplemented with others. But what I find most church planters lacking in is taking time to really think through their models and programs and how to actually make disciples in their context. V3 provides leadership articles each week and excellent coaches that facilitate conversations that bring the thinking down to the bottom shelf, where we can actually put it into practice.
I highly recommend that all church planters commit to a cohort like V3’s. It’s definitely making a huge impact on me personally, our team, and ultimately the influence and impact our church is and will make in the future.
“I want to be in a learning cohort!”
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