Growth Model Ministries

Growth Model Ministries is a type of process learning designed to help people grow in relationship with God, in relationship with each other, in leadership and in character.

GMM is a paradigm of ministering that incorporates both contemporary and Biblical dynamics.  It recognizes that growth is a process that is best accomplished through the context of groups that have had preexisting connections over time with an aligned insider.

GMM's context is students, that is all students both believers and not-yet-believers.  It operates on the studied premise that because all people were designed by God and made in His image that all people have the same needs.  Just as all people need food to grow so all people, because of their design, need relationship with others and God to be fully human and to grow to maturity.

GMM feeds staff and students to minister to all people without differentiating and necessarily discerning their spiritual nature.  It frees the not-yet-believer to be in process and the believer to be authentic as he/she experiences the process of maturity.

Given the inclusive nature of GMM it allows the minister freedom from traditional contexts of ministry.  We are able to do away with unnecessary separation of Christian and non-Christian audiences.  We are free to love and relate.  the role of "teaching" is reduced in favor of relating.  The role of "selling" the gospel is replaced with guiding others to relationship.

The Acadia Lifelines Summer Project is one strategy spawned by Growth Model Ministries which uses the outdoors as its training field.  One of our goals is to give students and staff GMM skills and principles that they can then reproduce in their own campus context.