Transforming Church

Year One: God’s Story in Me
The focus here will be on an awareness of God’s work in the life of the servant leader and helping others to see God at work in their lives as well. Subjects will include building a discipleship community, spiritual gifts and disciplines, self awareness and leadership, personal visioning, team building and lay leadership involvement, and coaching. In addition an initial Natural Church Development assessment will be taken to provide a baseline for congregations to measure progress through the 3 years. Details here.

Year Two: God’s Story in the Church
The focus here is to expand the skills developed with individuals and leadership teams to now put servant leadership into wider practice corporately in the congregation. Work will include discerning God’s vision, discerning gifts and calling, multiplying opportunities for spiritual growth, gift based ministry teams, church as learning organization, change management, and managing anxiety and conflict in the system. In addition, Natural Church Development will be more fully engaged as a tool to assist in improving overall congregational health. Details here.

Year Three: God’s Story in the World
The focus of year three is to deepen awareness of God’s activity in the world and to help servant leaders and congregations engage the world in ways that participate with what God is doing. Key emphases here are demographics and contextual analysis, meeting and interviewing neighbors, sharing God’s story in inviting and relevant ways, identifying effective partners for God’s work, strategic planning that takes context seriously, the integration of the three years of learning to create an ongoing transformational and missional community that is nimble and able to learn and adapt to changing contexts.

Continuous Learning

One of the unique features of 21st Century learning is that it involves not only information but also adaptability. Learning how to learn and how to use new information is even more important than the information itself. We are hoping to teach this aspect of learning in the TLI project. We are also practicing it ourselves as we work toward a launch date of 2009.

There are design build teams working on various aspects of the initiative. These teams include an Operations Team, a Candidate Selection Team, a Resource Development team and a Learning Journey Team. The very nature of these teams is to implement work that will evolve over time.

In addition, we have not solved every issue. In fact, it is our commitment to work on what is needed – not to claim we know all the answers. We are studying how best to include laity in the program, how to support and include spouses of participants, how to include awareness and experience in global and international settings, and even how to implement our first cohort groups – either nationally or on some regional configurations. One strength of this project will be that it will be built on implementing and adapting based on the experiences we cultivate. Not only will participants learn, they will help the leaders of this initiative learn how to facilitate the best learning and how to experiment, adapt and pilot new work.

Delivery

The delivery of this will involve a variety of levels of exposure and processing.
There will be:
a. Cohort Groups will consist of groups of leaders who will covenant to journey together. Cohorts will be used at each of the gatherings and site visits to provide reflective learning and processing. In addition, these cohort groups will work as a unit to decide which sites to visit, how to include lay leaders in those visits, and how to provide accountability and process the goals and work that each leader is doing as a part of this process.
b. Monthly coaching in triads to process and maintain support and accountability. The triads will be established as subsets of the cohort groups. These smaller groups will use a variety of means to meet including face to face sessions, phone conference calling, internet (including interactive real time meeting sites) and other up to date technology to facilitate helpful relationships that are not totally dependent on geography.
c. Two Signature Ministry visits each year to see and learn from effective ministries in their contexts. Each year, cohorts will decide which of the Signature Ministries will also involve the congregational lay leadership team members. Learning from effective leaders in effective congregations, cohorts will interact with pastors and lay leaders in their settings and learn more than what they are doing but also the principles that undergird the work that are transferrable to any setting.
d. Annual Gatherings to include all participants in a larger event where excellent practitioners, motivating and informative speakers, and leading academicians can provide a variety of materials helping teach and develop key themes and directions in church leadership today. Some of these will be general for all participants and others will be in tracks to emphasize the key themes for each specific year of the program. Knowing the significant role(s) and dynamics of being a clergy spouse, they will be included intentionally in this gathering.

Outcomes – Pastors and key lay leaders will learn to:

1. Clarify mission, purpose, vision, values, and beliefs as Spirit-led disciples
2. Lead healthy change while maturely managing anxiety
3. Grow a healthy body of Christ through the gifts, callings, and people that God gives
4. Create teams of spiritual leaders focused on missional outreach
5. Welcome diversity and adapt to changing contexts
6. Engage the world in healthy missional ways
7. Coach & encourage neighboring leaders towards health

Beneficial impact for Synods:

The Transforming Leadership Initiative creates a developmental journey, beyond First Call Theological Education, that continues the equipping of strong leaders. 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. Congregations emerging from this experience will bring missional energy and focus to the life of the synod, influencing many other congregations and leaders to move deeper into building discipleship communities.

Summary and Resource Development Steps:

TransformingChurch.org is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization (application pending) created to partner with other institutions of the church. Its board of governance brings a mix of lay and ordained leaders to the table.

Because the whole church is invested in raising effective leaders, in our financial models, participants and their local congregation will only be expected to contribute one third to one half of the cost of the experience. Agencies, foundations and private donors who believe in the power of faithful and effective leadership are investing significant financial resources in this work. For those in very economically challenged contexts, we will have some scholarship money to reduce the financial barrier even further. The ELCA Office of the Bishop has already contributed $60,000 to provide scholarships to those who will need them most as they enter this work.

Already the names of potential participants are surfacing. Some are being submitted by leaders who see young leaders with potential and want them to get the kind of training they will need to succeed. Other names are coming from people who hear about the program and say, “This is what I have been looking for – how can I get in?” It is clear that the demand is there and people are ready to begin in 2009!

To begin this initiative partners are already at work. Private donors have started to provide financial support. The Evangelical Outreach and Congregational Mission unit and the Office of the Bishop have provided some initial funding from the churchwide organization. Thrivent has provided a startup and exploration grant. Key leaders from some of the largest and most vibrant ELCA congregations have committed financial resources as well. And the board members of TLI have each agreed to not only give their time but to donate financially as well.

In order for this effort to begin training leaders in January 2009 we will need to continue to raise the needed funds to support this initiative. Private donors, church organizations and agencies, committed congregations, and various expressions of the church will all be needed. Now is the time for the serious push that will be needed to move from an idea to implementation.

Are you interested in the Transforming Leaders
Initiative? Visit www.TransformingChurch.com for more information. Are you willing to provide support or to discuss how you can get involved? Contact Dave Daubert at DDaubert@ARenewalEnterprise.com or Gregg Burch at GreggBurch@gmail.com for more information.