In spite of a rather cold week, 14 Ridley MA students worked through 16 lectures and workshops on the Ministers Personal Growth and Development from Tuesday 12 to Friday 15 June. The Yarra Valley Conference Centre provided an excellent learning environment with great facilities and excellent food. Highly recommended!
All the notes and presentations for the training course are now in our group Dropbox. Additional resources for assignments will be added over the next few weeks.
Before any church can appoint a pastor it needs to have a clear sense of vision; i.e. who it is and where it is going. Without this sense of vision, clarified and articulated by the community of God’s people, the church is not in a position to discern the right person to lead them towards it. The work of reflecting, discerning and articulating the vision of the church really belongs to the lay leadership in their capacity as representatives of the whole body. This is collective work and work for the long term. The vision of a congregation is broader and longer term than the tenure of any one pastor. It is the basis for selecting, empowering and reviewing the pastor.
The relationship between pastor and church is profoundly important and often transformational for both. The role in relation to any one church however, is never permanent. Discerning whether to stay or leave revolves around spiritual reflection on several key questions. Ideally these should be part of every pastor’s annual reflection.
Do I discern any changes or unsettledness in my sense of call to lead this group of people at this time? What are these changes? What is my reflection on why this is occurring?