Transforming Church

Key principles of leadership will be shared in an annual gathering of the entire Leadership Learning Community. Your cohort will choose a Signature Ministry to visit twice a year. You will each set plans in place to act on the learning from your visit, and hold each other accountable for progress at every meeting. Signature Ministries are being recruited that will provide relevant learning for many different contexts.

A Foundation of Coaching and Mentoring
Triads will commit to monthly peer coaching (phone, video IM, Skype) for accountability and support. Within the context of your triad and cohort you will gain a deeper understanding of your gifts, challenge each other to deeper spiritual practices, be accountable for setting concrete goals and achieving them. At each gathering, your cohort will meet with mentors who will review progress of the group.

You will find friends who will pray with you, laugh with you, cry with you, encourage you and strengthen you for the storms that always come. Finding other sojourners on this discipleship journey will bless and strengthen you.

Specifically the learning journey will include the following topics of study:
Self-Awareness • Servant Leadership • Systems Thinking • Coaching • Emotional Intelligence • Discipleship • Mission and Vision • Post Modernity • Strategic Thinking • Contextual Worship • Team Building • Multicultural Ministry • Church Development Systems • Empowerment • Lay Ministry • Lay Mobilization in Life and Vocation • Understanding Ministry Context • Community Outreach.

The journey focuses on outreach and stresses multiplication of disciples. We are working to create an alliance with one or more ELCA seminaries so that participation in the four years of learning and growth gives credit towards a Doctorate of Ministry (DMin) degree.

Lay Leadership will Join the Journey
Your key lay leaders will also commit to a learning journey. We will offer annual gatherings that bring your core lay leadership (5 or 6) together to make sure that shared learning becomes action in the local church. Early in the journey, you will work to develop this leadership team and to clarify mission/vision/values and strategies to achieve them. Together you will review annual progress in achieving the vision.

Support for Spouses
For those of you who are married, you and your spouse will work together to craft a personal vision of your continuing call to ministry. Your spouse will also have the opportunity to join in your learning journey. We will have an annual program specifically designed to support your spouse as s/he supports you. As your primary support, your spouse will learn the key elements of this leadership curriculum. As your worldview adjusts to the learning, your spouse will share your understanding and support the unfolding vision of the path forward.

As part of our network and community, you will also know and be known by many of the thriving churches of the ELCA.

For the Lay Leader:
This initiative is a collaboration between lay and ordained leaders of the ELCA. We have come together to make a difference, as the ELCA continues to suffer significant declines in membership roles year after year. Too many of our churches have plateaued and are moving into decline. Unhealthy churches destroy our pastors, burn out lay leaders, and further the stereotypes that cause many young adults to shun church participation.

Partnered with the Institutions of the Church but Separately Incorporated
TransformingChurch.org is a non-profit (501C-3 application pending) organization created to partner with the official institutions of the church. Its board of governance brings a mix of lay and ordained leaders to the table. We are designing a leadership team that will model the collaboration of lay and ordained that typifies a healthy body of Christ. We hope to replicate that healthy body of Christ at every church in our network of participants.

The voice of the laity on the board will help keep a focus on measurable outcomes from our work to equip leaders. The sole purpose of this non-profit gives lay leaders a channel to direct major financials gifts towards equipping leaders with practical tools of ministry. The organizational structure will keep the focus on the mission, without allowing other priorities to drain the resources from the primary goal and vision.

Discern your Gifts and Calling
In churches that participate in the Learning Journey, the laity will learn to discern their gifts, purpose and calling. You will be invited on a discipleship journey and learn to live out your faith in your life, home and work. No longer will you hear that the only way to live out a call from God is to leave your workplace or business and go to seminary. We embrace the Priesthood of all Believers and the Doctrine of Vocation. (See the article Vocation, What do you mean Vocation?)

Too many pastors are intimidated by successful business leaders and involve them only in the financial support of the church. Our vision is for leaders from all fields to be fully engaged with the missional pastor/leader to grow a vibrant, healthy Christian community. The lay leadership will commit to join the learning journey with their ordained leaders.

For the Congregation:
A community committed to building a healthy body of Christ at the core of each church, connected to the larger church and beyond, to the world. No leader possesses all of the gifts necessary to grow a healthy discipleship community. Only when we lift up the gifts of every disciple, and each finds his/her valued place in the community does a truly healthy body of Christ emerges. Gift-based ministry teams are the organizing principle. These teams draw on diverse personalities, experiences and gifts, coming together to build trusting relationships and develop the synergy of an effective team. (For details, see The Body of Christ as Ministry Team, Building Trust in the Body of Christ, Gift-Oriented Ministry and A Process for Transformational Ministry).

End the Drift.
Robert Fritz says, "In the absence of leadership, organizations inevitably drift towards mediocrity." Those who consult and work with churches see that drift going on all around us. The leverage is leadership. A focused effort to equip the next generation of leaders can have immeasurable impact. We believe this grassroots effort can help spark renewal in the local congregation and the whole church.

Each participant and their lay leadership team will be challenged to move beyond membership and create a discipleship community, a missional church where people are changed, gifted, called, equipped and sent. (See Building Discipleship Communities: Where do we Start?)

Luther, in third article of the Small Catechism, tells us the Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies and keeps us. Healthy churches engage in that work of the Spirit.

Bill Easum describes it this way. In a healthy church community, people are drawn in as they are invited by their friends or family. They are changed by an experience of the living God. With the help, guidance and support of the community, they discover how they are gifted, discern what God is calling forth from their gifts, are equipped to use the gifts, and sent out to serve the community and draw others to Christ.

We are a Community committed to learning:
Drawing deeper into discipleship,
Deeper into service to others,
Deeper into relationships where we can share our faith journeys,
Sharing best practices across our network.

Our signature ministries are mentoring and teaching churches. As we work together, they will bring a physical presence of our learning community into diverse settings across the United States. The growing relationships will connect us in prayer, shared outreach, multiplying the efforts of individuals and local churches.

For Larger Churches
One of the great challenges of our larger churches is to find leaders to follow after those who are nearing the end of their season of leadership. The systematic approach to equipping leaders envisioned in this project will create a pool of leaders capable of growing into these large church leadership roles. We will assist the larger churches meet the staffing challenges they face today, by equipping and bringing visibility to strong emerging leaders.

Visits by our participants to the larger churches in our signature ministry network will create opportunities for emerging leaders to gain a deep understanding of the very different context of a large church. Leaders from the larger churches of the ELCA have been an integral part of the design team for this project. Their continued deep involvement will insure the relevancy of the Learning Journey for their context. Those called to live out their ministry in such a setting will have a chance, as participants, to see several different expressions of such ministries, and develop relationships with key staff and leaders of these signature ministries.

Those larger churches that join our network of signature ministries and mentors will also develop deeper relationships with their peers. Gathering these leaders together will create a mechanism for sharing best practices and peer learning and provide growth opportunities for the leadership teams of these churches.

Those in this network will also see the best of our emerging leaders as they spend four years on the learning journey. We will publish much of the writing coming out of this program, giving further visibility to the thinking and ideas of these participants.

For the Synod:
The Leadership Learning Community creates a developmental journey, beyond First Call Theological Education, that continues the equipping of strong leaders. Synods will benefit from this new channel to equip and support emerging leaders. The impact will spread beyond the local congregation as participants learn the skills of peer coaching. Graduates will become coaching resources within their Synods. They will multiply the impact of their learning beyond our network by coaching nearby church leaders using tools like Natural Church Development and Centered Life, expanding healthy, missional focus like ripples from a stone dropped into a pool.

Synods participating in our project will also attract pastors who desire the opportunity for lifelong learning, mentoring and coaching. Without having to dedicate their resources to creating such opportunities alone, Synods will gain the benefit of collaborating with others in supporting the creation of this Learning Community. Clusters of churches emerging from this experience will bring missional energy and focus to the life of the Synod, influencing many other churches and leaders to move deeper into building discipleship communities.

For the Seminaries:
This initiative will create a pool of candidates who would work through and beyond this process to receive a DMin with the credit received from their participation in this learning journey. Seminaries will benefit from their partnership with a community of practitioners, who are learning together to effective lead healthy churches into the postmodern era. The cross-fertilization of ideas between the seminary community and the community of practice will enrich each in vibrant ways.

Seminaries will also be able to maximize the use of their resources by collaborating with other seminaries around the opportunity to shape a DMin experience around our learning journey. The financial support raised by our community will also help open the door for participation by those who might not be able to afford such an experience otherwise.

Lowering the financial hurdle will help those starting missions, doing urban ministry, and working with smaller financially stressed churches take advantage of the learning opportunity. In our financial models, participants and their local church will only be expected to contribute one third to one half of the cost of the experience. For those in economically challenged contexts, we will have scholarship money to reduce the financial barrier even further.

For our TransformingChurch.com Virtual Community
A virtual community has emerged from the work of the Transformational Leaders Gathering that meets in Orlando every January, and the College of Developers, who have joined the gathering the last two years. Learning from this community flows out through our TransformingChurch web resource. In 2007, we have averaged over 20,000 page views a month, as people tap into our Resource Toolbox and Newsletter Archive to hear the voices of leaders in our community. Ideas flow both ways, as visitors comment on the articles and suggest resources for the Toolbox.

Our annual gathering becomes a place to make new friends, deepen relationships, find mentors and coaches, and learn the best emerging practices of authentic discipleship communities. The growing presence of lay leadership teams at the gathering creates an opportunity for the entire leadership team to share learning and find others with whom to share the discipleship journey. The gathering is an oasis for those who thirst for a deeper walk into discipleship.

As our learning community grows beyond our current network of the Transformational Leaders Gathering and College of Developers, a Connected Church begins to emerge. As we link ourselves together in community, learning begins to flow easily from leader to leader, church to church. These connections provide an anchor and a wellspring of support for the times of trial. (For a deeper understanding of the emergence of the connected church, see the article The Connected Church.)

This virtual community will continue to grow, as we tap into an ever larger pool of writers and contributors, publishing the ideas, best practices and learning that flow from mentors, coaches and participants in our Learning Journey. We are pushing into the next phase of web site development, which, by year end, will broaden the resource to include blogs, user groups, live chat and dialog, video and more to enable cohorts and coaching triads to work collaboratively together. We are already the number one Google listing for searches for Transforming Church, and our reach continues to grow.

For the ELCA:
A Community of healthy churches, networked together, supporting each other in equipping disciples and servant leaders, multiplying in mission, touching and drawing people to Christ, sparking renewal in the church. That’s our goal. We believe the trend towards plateau and decline can be reversed.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America stands at a crossroad. Many of the leaders and institutions of this church are creatively struggling with new strategies for the emerging church that will serve the next generations. The Transforming Church Initiative is but one piece in that quilt of options and possibilities being created to reform and refashion how we are church. We believe that this effort is focused and needed.

Strong, healthy leaders will help reverse the declining membership of the ELCA by drawing a new generation to Christ, and encouraging bright young leaders to consider a calling into ministry, helping to fill the gap by raising up the pastors needed for the future of the church.

Our goal is to equip ordained leaders with the skills to create healthy spiritual communities in their church. Within these communities, people will flourish, growing in discipleship, inviting friends and family, drawing others to Christ. Won’t you join us to make this vision a reality for the ELCA?

To see and learn more about Transforming Leaders Initiative on its home website, click here.