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The Transforming Leaders Initiative: How will we select our participants?
Last month, I described whom we are trying to reach with our Transforming Leaders Initiative. This month, I will describe our evolving candidate recruitment and selection process. We are in a design-build process with the TLi. Teams are working on Candidate Recruitment, Learning Journey, Operations and Resource Development. So, we are early in our development stage and our selection process will be less refined and process oriented this year than it will be next year. That is the nature of design build. We are mapping the terrain as we go.
A network of leaders across the church is growing as we bring together people with a passion for leadership and a passion for the future of the ELCA. The network expands with each trip we make to a new city for a meeting of pastors and leaders, with each church meeting we attend. We are networking together proven, effective leaders across the church. Conference hosts and Signature Ministry mentoring sites are emerging. Everywhere we go, we ask these leaders to identify for us potential candidates for our Learning Journey. Recommendations from respected leaders will open the door to participation.
We are working our network now. We get few inquiries over the website. For our own sustainability, we must create a track record of success. For these first cohorts, a primary filter will be proven ability to grow ministry. The donors we are meeting know have no track record to study. These folks will cast a very critical eye on our results. So we look for people with a track record. Recommendations are coming from Large Church pastors, mission directors, bishops and staff, and our board and liaisons. We will be developing our processes, but I suspect most of those coming in next spring will be known directly by someone in the network that’s coming together.
People on the ground in each region will be making the first pass at vetting the candidates. Bishops will have to bless the candidate, and Synods will be expected to invest if they will be sending cohorts of participants. We are asking $5K for partner synods, covering three cohorts (18 participants). We will ask an investment of $2K for a cohort, $500 for a participant. We need a number of stakeholders with skin in the game to help convince foundations and private donors to help us get air under our wings. For that reason, we will ask each participant to introduce us to at least one donor capable of investing $5 to $50K in our vision.
We are on a tight time schedule. Our first national conference will be April 14-19,2009. Our board gathers next at the end of July. By then, we hope to have a pool of candidates from which we can find 54 qualified to start the journey. We will be asking those interested to submit an essay, written by the leadership of their church, telling us why their church would be a good choice for our initiative. Letters of recommendation will be required from the Council President, the spouse (if there is one), and from the Bishop. We will refine the information we need to see the track record of potential candidates and gather that into the early fall. Our goal is to settle on a group of candidates and notify them of their acceptance into the program by Reformation Sunday. That timing will allow the church to incorporate the annual program fees ($2000 per church plus $1000 from the Clergy couple) into their budget and make preparations to start the learning journey. We will have some scholarship money available for mission churches and those facing significant financial hurdles, but see raising this support as a test of the leadership ability of potential participants.
So, do you know someone you would like to recommend? If so, contact Gregg Burch (greggburch@gmail.com) or Dave Daubert (DDaubert@ARenewalEnterprise.com).
To see and learn more about Transforming Leaders Initiative on its home website, click here.
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