Terry Shue is director for leadership development of Mennonite Church USA
By Terry Shue
Congregations are where women and men become pastors. Oh don’t take that wrong, our schools for pastoral education are important. But it is in the congregation where the formational and transformational work of becoming a pastor happens.
Across the church there is a growing recognition of the important role that congregations must play in training missional pastoral leaders. Pastors are raising up pastoral leaders from within their congregations, supervising seminary interns, and offering ministry opportunities for people to discern a pastoral call.
To encourage our congregations to engage in pastoral development a free webinar is being planned. It will help grow the capacity of pastors who want to intentionally work at pastoral leadership development in their congregations. I will be partnering with Duane Beck to lead a webinar to introduce the concept of coaching cohorts of pastors while they work at pastoral leadership development. The free webinar will be May 7, 2014 at 10:00 a.m., Eastern Standard Time.
Areas explored in the webinar will be:
- the pastor/intern relationship
- awareness of multiple roles a pastor takes in relationship to intern
- help with good evaluation and feedback
- assisting the congregation to own their teaching role
The outcome of this introductory webinar is to learn more about the unique ministry of developing leaders and to invite pastors interested in developing pastoral leaders to join an online cohort coached by Duane Beck. If you are interested in being a part of this introductory conversation please send me an email at TerryS@MennoniteUSA.org. Follow up instructions and details will follow. If you are interested in this topic but can’t make the May 7 date, please let me know.