Cafeteria KEY: Friendship Skills

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When you hear Jesus give us His new commandment – to love one another as He has loved us – does your jaw hit the floor? If it doesn’t, maybe you don’t quite grasp the enormity of it. Jesus loved us by giving EVERYTHING to us on the Cross. So when He calls us to love as He loved, He is really telling us to give EVERYTHING we are in love. How do we do that? Well, first of all we can only do that through grace – by loving with the love of Christ. But as with all things that have to do with grace, we need to cooperate with grace and learn how to love.

Core Curriculum – the Keys to Spiritual Growth Program

The workshop and course are scheduled for completion in the fall of 2018. Click here to see the project schedule for the Keys to Spiritual Growth program

Click the button below to get notified when each part of the program becomes available.
Go to the Head of the Line

From the Abbey can help you grow in the skills you need to open yourself to the grace of Charity. There are three steps to the Keys to Spiritual Growth program. You can follow the steps in order, or you can save a little money by purchasing the entire Key to the Entryway package.

Step 1: The Free “Strengthening Relationships” toolkit. This toolkit will show you where most people go wrong as they approach their relationships and why seeing friendship as a matter of fate is a horrible mistake. It will also show you how to avoid some of the most common pitfalls, myths and mistakes people make when they’re trying to form solid friendships.

Step 2: The “Forgiveness” online Workshop. Online workshops are designed to give you quick, easy wins to help you build momentum toward real change. The “Forgiveness” online workshop will teach you what forgiveness really is (and isn’t), why you should forgive, and how to forgive effectively.

Step 3: The “From Friendship to Faith” online course will walk you step-by-step through the process of building solid relationships. You’ll learn the stages that every relationship goes through, and specific skills you can develop to strengthen your relationships in each of those stages. Whether you want to strengthen your marriage, your relationship with your children, or your friendships you’ll find the skills and strategies you learn in this course will take the mystery out of building healthy, lasting relationships. But most importantly you’ll find that as you exercise these skills and strategies, you’ll be exercising your “heart muscle” in preparation for being able to love as Christ loves.

There are three options for this course.

The Bronze level of From Friendship to Faith course is completely self-directed. In addition to the video course there are learning activities and journal entries to help you implement each step in the process. You will also get my help through an online plan that you’ll develop as you go through the course and I’ll offer feedback on. This level isn’t recommended, since it offers the least amount of support. But it’s available for those who don’t feel they need much coaching, or who just can’t invest in the Gold level.

The Gold level of From Friendship to Faith isn’t just an online course – it’s an online spiritual coaching program. You get the same videos and learning activities that are in the Bronze level, but instead of journal entries you have the opportunity to submit each step of the process to me for review. Instead of just a single review of your plan, I will help you create a personalized plan for building solid relationships based on your particular circumstances, obstacles and goals. You will also have access to weekly “open office hours” when you can speak to me directly via Google Hangouts to ask your questions and to discuss your plan. Even though the Gold Level of Planning for Grace is high-touch, it is still at your own pace, and you still share only what you feel comfortable sharing. But you get the guidance, support and encouragement you really need to make changes in your life.

The Platinum Level of From Faith to Friendship includes everything from the Bronze and Gold levels, plus four 30-minute sessions with me where we walk through the implementation of the strategies and skills you learn in each unit. We’ll actually build and implement your relationship plan together. This option is the ultimate in personalized guidance and support.

While You’re Waiting for this Course

While you’re waiting for the From Friendship to Faith course to launch, how would you like me to personally help you take the first step in improving your closest relationships and learning how to love?

Jesus calls His disciples to love. We are to love our enemies and our neighbor. So basically, we are called to love everyone – and to love them as Jesus loves us, by making a total gift of self. But we often struggle to love even those closest to us – our family and our friends. How can we love our enemies if we can’t even love our family?

We run into trouble when we assume that love is something we either have or don’t have. In reality, we need to learn how to love. God gives each of us a vocation because He knows we need a “school of love.” He means for us to first learn to love those people who are closest to us – our families and our friends. So that’s where we begin our focus. If we can learn the principles and skills of relationship building and apply them to our closest relationships, we will then be better equipped to apply them to every other relationship as well.

In your private session with me, we’ll choose one of your close relationships to work on together. Do you want to improve your relationship with your spouse? Do you want to have a better relationship with your children? Or maybe you want to rekindle a relationship with an old friend.

We’ll then work on the first principle of relationship building: strengthening trust. I’ll teach you how to strengthen trust by learning specific skills and practices, such as giving the gift of time, building respect and honor, strengthening the virtues of dependability and integrity, and growing in consideration. Then we’ll work together through what’s broken in your relationship and put together a specific strategy to grow in one of these skills. By the end of our time together, you’ll be well on your way to strengthening that relationship. You’ll have less anxiety about the relationship and more security because you’ll know you’re finally doing everything you can to keep that relationship healthy.

You’ll also be building a foundation on which you can build when you enroll in the full “From Friendship to Faith” course.

Other Cafeteria Key Resources

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