About Jerry L. Hampton and Community Building

Jerry Hampton's workshop facilitation experience began in 1973 when he volunteered to train phone counselors in how to listen and be compassionate on the phone for Tarrant County Contact Teleministry. Contact was crisis intervention hot line [known internationally as Lifeline]. He trained 300 phone counselors over 4 years. This was his first "public" workshop concerning relationships. In the past 30 years Jerry has facilitated over 900 groups, including over 285 community building workshops and has provided facilitator training for a number of people. In conjunction with Contact, Jerry received one on one group dynamics training from John Powell, a jesuit and professor at Loyola University in Chicago. Jerry will tell you that John seems one of the most compassionate people he has ever met.

In 1975 Jerry trained with Dr. Cecil Osborne, of Yokefellow's Inc., in how to facilitate and organize small groups. In the 80's, Yokefellow's had over 10,000 small groups wordwide. From the training, Jerry formed more than 50 small "community-share" and "growth" and "spiritual growth" groups. This included 9 yokefellow groups in his church. He facilitated one of these groups for 9 years. He teaches facilitation and leadership skills related to small groups as well as for Community Building. His book, Ongoing Community --Formation and Maintenance (presently out of print) was written in 1993 to help small groups with their process by providing community building resources.
In the late 70's Jerry started presenting a one-day workshop titled Unconditional Love. This lead to creating other workshops with titles such as:

He has continued to develop relationship/communications workshops with many special designs and exercises to meet the specific needs of each group. Hampton and Associates was formed in the late 80's to market these workshops.

In 1987, Dr. M. Scott Peck MD selected Jerry for intensive training as facilitator of the various Community Building workshops for Peck's Foundation for Community Encouragement (FCE). Jerry facilitated the Community Building Workshops (CBW) and the Community Building Skills Seminars (CBSS) for FCE for over 10 years. He has done more than 285 of CB type workshops in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany and England and in 31 U.S. states. He redesigned the CBSS workshop format for FCE in the mid 90's. He was a member of FCE's training team. He resigned from FCE in early 1998. Jerry takes a highly professional approach to facilitation. He has taught group facilitation skills in Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the U. S. His most recent workshops have been with youth in prision in New Orleans and there staff. (See more here) He has also trained the facilitators of Project Return, a group that does special community building for people that have spent time in jail and are trying to rebuild their lives. (See more here)

Jerry work has been influenced by two Quakers, Elton Trueblood and Parker Palmer. Jerry had the opportunity to spend one on one time with Elton when he was in his 80's and this was like a wise old man giving life advice to a young man. Jerry has read many of Parker Palmer's books and has visited with him briefly in the early 90's.

By profession, Jerry was a manager of people for over 40 years, primarily in the publishing field, with budget responsibilities of over 75 million dollars in a year (2000 year dollars) and the supervision of 125 specialized people. Jerry retired from Northrop-Grumman Corporation of Dallas Texas in 1995 to do the relationship workshops full time. Jerry authored over 200 technical books during his publications career including a number of pilot's manuals. Jerry was a military and commercial pilot and had flown more than 25 different airplanes.

Jerry is a family man with four adult children and nine grandchildren and one great grand child (born June 1, 2006), all in or close to his home in Arlington Texas, except for one that is dead. Family life occupies much of his time. His wife, Marjorie Hampton, is a family therapist and retired as Director of a private church sponsored preschool in June 2005. Her school, with an enrollment of 220 students, was the only church school in Arlington to be nationally accredited by NAEYC. Marge also does workshops related to preschools, Emotional Intelligence, and resiliency among children. Jerry has always been active in his church and was a session member for a number of years. Jerry and Marjorie are Christians and members the First United Methodist Church in Mansfield TX. as are eight members of their family.

Jerry has a B. S. Degree in Technical Journalism from Kansas State University. His wife Marge has a B.A. degree in education and a MS in Social Work and Therapy, speciality is early childhood learning. See Marge's website here: http://www.believeinfamily.com

Contact Jerry at: CONTACT