Fellows Program faculty and practitioners consist of a community of carefully selected, highly-skilled resource leaders drawn from area universities, leadership consultant groups, and the church. A team of church leaders and education professionals whose careers focus on leadership development developed the curriculum.
Year 1
Living as a Spiritual Leader (Retreat)
Instructors: LuAnn Charlton and Dennis Adams
This retreat provides an opportunity for Fellows to meet and form a covenant community that will journey together through this two-year program. The retreat offers time for spiritual re-connection and alignment centered in the idea of sustainable, spiritual leadership. Participants will discover new perspectives about spiritual leadership and how it is lived out in Being as well as Doing. During the retreat, Fellows will experience some spiritual practices that create an environment where God can more deeply work and transform. Fellows will also begin to explore and plan how to replicate, practice, and grow Spiritual Leadership in their own congregations.
Self-Awareness and Self-Care
Instructor: Korrel Kanoy
Effective leadership requires you to understand yourself and engage in the type of self-care that will keep you energized, healthy, and connected to your faith and the important people in your life. In this session, you’ll learn about your emotional intelligence (EI) and how you can further develop EI skills to ensure your success both at work in and in your personal life. Emotional intelligence is grounded in self-awareness and is known to be more predictive of career success than your intelligence or technical abilities – and, it can be learned at any age! By the end of this session, you’ll identify which areas of emotional intelligence you want to develop and create a plan to do so.
Relationships and Team Building
Instructor: Ronda Moore
The Relationship and Team Building session is a dynamic course offering participants the opportunity to learn, practice, apply, and reflect on the key skills needed to build successful relationships and teams. During the first half of this session, participants will discuss the importance of relationship building in their role as laity and pastor. Participants will also discuss the characteristics of successful relationships and the challenges of building relationships. Participants will apply Servant Leadership concepts to improve relationships using a case study exercise. During the second half of the session, participants will build on relationship building knowledge and skills to gain an understanding of the stages of team development. Key attributes and challenges at each stage of team development will be identified, and participants will engage in activities to apply this knowledge to an existing team or committee within their church.
Conflict Management
Instructor: Teresa Holder
Ministry means working with people, and working with people means conflict! In this session, you’ll examine how your own background and personality play a role in how you approach conflict as a leader. You’ll develop your conflict management skills to enhance your communication with individuals and groups. As a result of this session, you’ll be able to analyze situations and identify when, how, and why to intervene when working with others in ministry settings.
Servant Leadership and Communication
Instructor: Patrick Soter O’Neil
This session focuses on leadership, communication, and coaching. Participants explore definitions of leadership and three important theories of leadership: situational leadership, servant leadership, and authentic leadership. Through the exploration of leadership, participants create a personal definition of leadership as well as a vision to guide their future work. In addition to the focus on leadership, participants learn a coaching model to help them support the development of key constituents within their churches. At the foundation of the coaching model is communication, so participants practice communication skills, such as feedback and feedforward.
Intercultural Competency and Cultural Humility
Instructor: Ismael Ruiz-Millan
In the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, one finds a powerful description of Jesus’s ministry. In this workshop, we will explore the implications of this description as it relates to leading with cultural humility. Specifically, we will reflect on questions around what is the right posture one should adopt as one engages in conversations with people from different cultures, ethnicities, and races—or different from ourselves in any other way. Participants will also do the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and receive both, group and individual, profile feedback. Ultimately, participants will develop an action plan as individuals, as a clergy-lay team to move toward cultural humility, but more significantly to facilitate a journey with their congregations to move toward cultural humility.
Best Practices in Leading People
Instructor: Ronda Moore
This session will expand on the Relationship and Team session to address the practical aspects of day-to-day management of employees and volunteers. The session will explore ways to engage and retain volunteers and will provide participants with several tools to use when working with employees and volunteers. Participants will discuss the importance of working with teams, and will learn ideas and techniques to implement with teams and committees. Participants will identify and use best practices, tools, and techniques throughout the course that can be applied to their leadership roles at church.
Year 2
Reaching More and Diverse People
Instructor: Lisa Yebuah
Evangelism today must begin with “R”…for relationships. This session will explore new and non-traditional ways and settings for reaching more people for Christ, including younger and more diverse people. Participants will think about the places in their community, the seasons in people’s lives, and the times in the church year that provide the best opportunities for church members and specific ministries to reach out and build relationships as the “bridge” to faith in Christ. Intentional methods and resources will be addressed for equipping this “new” congregational reach, as well as how to prepare for receiving, equipping, and sending these new people to share with more new people.
Holistic Stewardship
Instructors: Rick Clayton and Lynn Benson
The first day, participants will be immersed in the Christian vision of holistic stewardship by examining how to create and develop a church culture rooted in biblical stewardship. The second day, participants will focus on finances, tithing, building budgets to reflect ministry priorities, financial campaigns, generosity, and legacy building.
Relational Discipleship and Small Group Ministries
Instructor: Marty Cauley
The Methodist movement has historically been grounded in covenant discipleship. Covenant communities provide three essential elements that help disciples grow. These groups hold us up to live God’s best for our lives, hold us accountable to be who God calls us to be, and hold us together when our world falls apart. During these sessions we will explore the historical foundations of Wesley’s model for discipleship, learn the elements of creating a culture of covenant disciple making, and be able to identify skills and strategies to recruit lay leaders and empower them to become effective disciple makers within your local community.
Missional Ministry
Instructor: Denise Honeycutt
During Missional Ministry, participants explore how the church can be a different kind of witness in the world, following the model of Jesus and Jesus’s teachings. Keeping in clear view the data and statistics about church growth and in the midst of change, how can church leaders be involved in their community in new and creative ways that are life-giving for both the community and congregations? Fellows will explore how to communicate this shift in perspective in order to lead congregations into a paradigm shift that proclaims a hope-filled future for the church and the world.
Shaping Servant Leaders and Building Ministry Teams
Instructors: Carl Frazier and Martha McLean
Scripture teaches that ministry belongs to the whole people of God and is the work of the baptized, not simply the ordained and the commissioned. In this session, participants will learn the biblical principles undergirding “the priesthood of all believers,” be equipped with models of discernment and call for lay leadership engagement, examine potential methodologies for training and equipping lay leaders, and discuss potential challenges to implementing the vision in the context of a local church.
Leading Change
Instructor: Ronda Moore
Participants will gain an understanding of the difference between growth and fixed mindset and apply this understanding to how they manage change. By the end of the first day, participants will have a completed change management plan, including a stakeholder analysis, risk and barrier analysis, and a change impact analysis. Day two will be spent practicing a number of growth mindset techniques related to change. Participants will write growth goals and will even begin to envision future changes by exploring the power of “what if” questions (a great change and innovation technique!).
How to Measure What Matters
Instructor: Gray Southern
Participants will review case studies of various church sizes and modes of operation including traditional systems as well as the biblical, organic paradigm of diversity, shared power, ownership, accountability, and support. Topics include discussions about who makes decisions, the distribution of power and control, core values, setting priorities, and the ministry vision of a congregation.