The Next Generation Leadership Initiative (NGLI) journey includes the following features at no cost to the pastor or their congregation:
Years 1-4 include an in-person Core Curriculum Course and Field Trip each year
The annual core curriculum course assists pastors in evolving their transformational ministry skills:
- Year One: Navigating the Waters: Bowen Family Systems Theory as Foundation for Thriving Leadership is about understanding a congregation as an emotional system and identifying pathways of effective leadership that are responsive to real needs in a congregation. Pastors will start to see how their family of origin informs their leadership and learn the difference between feeling and thinking, as well as reacting and responding.
- Year Two: Art of Adaptive Leadership is about co-creating with God and community an equitable, purposeful church that makes positive change in the world through a lens of love, even amid church and social conflicts.
- Year Three: Relational Leadership: Strengthening Skills and Heart for Team Building and Community Engagement is about learning and practicing methodologies and frameworks that foster connection, wisdom, experimentation and purpose in diverse teams and communities.
- Year Four: Next Faithful Step Leadership is about naming and claiming a theology of leadership that will be a guide for evolving and sustaining pastoral ministry.
An annual field trip to experience God’s presence in and call upon the today’s world as well as opportunities to build on theories, methods, and practices learned in the core curriculum classes.
Years 5-6 include funds to pursue self-identified leadership or spiritual development opportunities
- Pastors engage in a guided reflection process that leads to the creation of learning goals and action plans that deepen and widen a pastor’s transformational leadership skills or spirituality. Each pastor receives up to $2,000 per year to pursue their individual action plan.
Additional offerings:
- NGLI begins with an “Orientation” in Year 0 and ends with a celebratory event called “Benediction” in Year 7. These in-person gatherings offer pastors the space and time to form and grow relationships as a cohort, which are often relied upon and treasured for years to come.
- In support of pastors that are raising families during this time, each pastor is eligible for up to $1,000 per year for child-care/family expenses in Years 1-4.
- A formal assessment tool that is developmental, not judgmental about a pastor’s character, competence, and contribution in ministry is utilized three times throughout a pastor’s NGLI journey. Feedback is gathered from both the pastor and lay leaders in the congregation.
- A $6,000 contribution to the pastor’s Annuity Plan account occurs during Year 1 to help seed the pastor’s retirement savings. It is estimated that the contribution will be valued at $45,000 at the end of a 35-year career. The seed money is 50% vested in Year 5 and fully vested at the end of Year 6. (These figures are calculated based on an assumed growth rate of 6% per year over a 35-year period.)
