Leaders in the church face the deep challenge of cultivating Christian identity, practice, and community in a pluralistic, divided culture in which people tend to seek the good without God. They must lead their communities through processes of adaptation, learning, and innovation in mission.
Meaningful engagement with complex challenges like these functions best in communities of peers who mutually encourage, support, challenge and deepen one another, while being held accountable to a disciplined structure of action and reflection under the guidance of experienced mentors and coaches.
The Missional Leadership Cohort is a structured learning community that offers teaching, mentorship and accountability for church leaders in partnership with committed peers and faculty and staff.
Outcomes
- Understand more deeply contemporary cultures and the challenges and opportunities they pose to the formation of Christian identity and practice.
- Gain biblical and theological insight into the triune God’s mission and the church’s missionary identity.
- Engage key social science literatures in organization and leadership in relation to church life and leadership.
- Reflect critically on specific missionary challenges of the participants’ contexts.
- Engage in action/reflection experiments intended to address those challenges.
- Articulate a renewed understanding of one’s pastoral identity and practice for 21st-century ministry.
Gatherings
Each session will include spiritual practices, framing presentations, discussion of readings, worship, shared meals, and informal conversation in addition to the specific engagement activities unique to each session.
- Session 1: Date Online Retreat:
- March 10 3 PM – 7 PM
- March 11 10 AM – 5 PM
- Monthly Coaching Online April – October w/ dates set during the first retreat
- Session 2: Online Retreat
- June 16 3 PM – 7 PM
- June 17 10 AM – 5 PM
- Session 3: October/November – Spirit of the Desert?
- M-W, need meeting space Weds morning, no lunch, no rooms that night
