The Need

Pastors and staff members of churches face difficult and often exhausting challenges.  The needs of parishioners, clients and staff are often demanding while resources are limited.  The spiritual, mental, emotional and physical well-being of the pastor is essential to maintaining a healthy, viable organization.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 17, verse 23 Jesus prays to the Father with a concern for the unity of the Church:  “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me…”   A survey of church history reveals the truth that at no time has this prayer been answered.  The history of the Church is littered with strife, fragmentation, mistrust and competition.  Denominations have been created which too often have divided the Church, many times for petty reasons, keeping Christians apart from and distrustful of each other.  The result in our own time and in our communities is a situation of many churches with basically the same belief system but with little or no contact with each other, often in competition with one other, and having practically no enduring impact on the secular community in which they live. 

Besides the lack of church unity and community spirit, pastors often live and work in self-imposed isolation.  A heartbreaking statistic gathered by John Maxwell indicates that 70% of pastors in America do not have someone they consider a close friend.  They are expected to perform in areas where they are not gifted, are subject to depression, and 80% report they are at or near stress-related “burn-out.”  Rarely trained in seminary for leadership and strategic planning, 90% of pastors report being ill-equipped to cope with ministry demands and are unable to discern and cast vision for the people they lead, settling instead into a “maintenance” ministry with little discernable cultural impact.

Compounding the problem is the strength of the status quo:  not having experienced anything else, pastors come to feel that the present situation is the way things always ought to be, thus further frustrating any agent for change.

In our time a new movement of God is being felt around the world, a movement of evangelical activity that is having a remarkable impact in under-developed countries.  Countries in Africa, Asia and South America are experiencing a burst of cooperative evangelical activity unprecedented in church history, as if God were choosing our time to answer Jesus’ prayer for unity.  It is now time for the evangelical church in the West to lay aside the minor differences which divide us, heal the antagonisms of race and culture, and bond together as responsible under-shepherds in the work of the Kingdom.  SLI is poised to help facilitate that process.

Responding to the Need - Our Solution

Strategic Leadership Institute recognizes the unique time in which we live.  Drawing on our experience of providing leadership training to the non-profit sector, the Institute has produced a training program tailored especially for pastors.  It provides a comprehensive, integrated approach to developing the personal integrity and professional ability of church leaders.  The Institute believes that the entire person is involved in developing a leader with integrity and responsibility within the community, therefore our program educates and challenges the individual pastor in four basic areas of training and growth.  These are:

            Community Development – Pastors of a local community grow together in intimate fellowship with each other and are encouraged by each other through accountability and mutual support.  Because leadership is often “lonely at the top,” SLI provides a place for leaders to go to combat feelings of isolation.  The community of pastors provides on-going support for each other long after the training is completed.  While developing community within, the pastor’s certificate program helps to open doors to the community at large, facilitating interaction among leaders in education, business, police, and other civic institutions. 

            Personal Growth - A program of personal goal setting is introduced which encourages intentional growth spiritually, physically, emotionally, intellectually and relationally.  Each participant produces a personal growth plan which balances these five dimensions of their lives.

            Professional Assessment - Each pastor will conduct a realistic assessment of his or her leadership style, identify stress inducers and responses, learn areas of strength, gain skills in team building, board development and group functioning, and learn how to discover and transfer vision.

            Organizational Intentionality - Over the seven month period a strategic plan is developed in conjunction with each participant’s leadership team which may be used for the future benefit of the organization each participant leads.  Each pastor is aware of the plans of all the others; cooperative programming and community involvement is encouraged which leads to collaborative city-reaching intitiatives.

Our Training Program and Course Specifics

The Institute strives to build the pastor’s certificate program with peers who have a likelihood of developing an on-going personal and collaborative working relationship with one other which will remain, for their mutual benefit, after the program is completed.  To help facilitate such cooperation it is now the intention of the Institute to train groups of leaders who are in geographic proximity to each other.  A recent group, consisting of several church leaders from the churches of Tukwila, Washington, exemplify the desired paradigm.

Pastoral Program Results

            With a solid history of success in training non-profit leaders, in December 2002 we began training an initial pilot group in the newly conceived Certificate in Strategic Pastoral Leadership.  Participants represented three non-profit organizations and four churches.  All churches are evangelical and include Presbyterian, Conservative Baptist, Assemblies of God, and Church of God in Christ.

            During the seven month training cycle the leaders bonded together in remarkable fashion.  Each produced a plan to continue growth in spiritual, physical, emotional, intellectual and relational areas.  There has been an earnest growth in community with corporate seasons of prayer, sharing and fellowship.  Each leader is writing a strategic plan for his organization, one of them writing a plan for the continuing and deepening unity they all want to see develop in Tukwila.  The theme expressed is:  “The Church of Tukwila:  One Church, Many Congregations.”

            Throughout the training cycle these spiritual leaders have been in contact with the larger community, spending a day each with the mayor and city council, the chief of police, the superintendent of the school district, and the assistant manager of the largest business in Tukwila.  From these contacts has come a passion to pray for the needs of the city and a new vision for cooperative ministry.

            A pervasive sense of isolation in ministry is being effectively combated and replaced by loving fellowship.  Joint events are being planned for the church community:  a monthly pastor’s day beginning in July plans to incorporate other pastors which were unable to go through SLI training; community-wide participation in “The Purpose-Driven Life Seminar” is being scheduled for this coming fall; a chaplaincy position for the Tukwila Police Department was filled and supported by the Tukwila churches; an over all cooperative spirit of community outreach is developing.  In short, the Tukwila Church is coming alive and beginning to fulfill the prayer of Jesus in John’s gospel.

Synopsis of Program Goals

1.  Develop a sense of community among the pastors and churches of a local

                        area.  

            2.  Encourage personal growth in five areas:  spiritual, physical, emotional,

            intellectual and relational.

            3.  Further leadership skills and enhance performance.