Best Practice #3:  Create Ownership 

When it comes to inspiring and equipping people to live out the values of Christlike behavior, the natural inclination for church leaders is to reach for traditional levers such a volunteer programs, small groups, and training for the lay leaders who lead these programs. Not surprisingly, best-practice churches take advantage of all these levers. However, in the countercultural spirit of Jesus, their goal is not to build up these programs. Their goal is to change behavior.

Empower people to be the church.
This is the priesthood-of-all-believers strategy, aiming to break down the mindset that divides pastors and congregants. Blurring those dividing lines involves assigning high levels of ministry accountability to lay leaders and using creative ways to inspire people to explore with Christ-like behavior in their everyday lives.

Equip people to succeed.
It’s not enough to simply empower people. Establishing high standards for performance and accountability is critical, as is educating and giving congregants the tools they need to meet those standards.

​Hold people accountable.
Best-practice churches understand that their attendees need spiritual mirrors, which means safe, relational networks that help them navigate the ups and downs of an expanding journey of faith. Many invest significant time and resources in small-group infrastructures to provide that support.

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Introducing RenewalWorks For Me​

RenewalWorks For Me is a personal guide for the spiritual journey, providing coaching to help individuals grow. 

It begins with a brief online survey which assesses where you are in your spiritual life.

​We call it the Spiritual Life Inventory.

Once your responses have been processed, we’ll email a helpful explanation of our findings, along with some tips for improving your spiritual journey. 

You’ll also be given a chance to sign up for an eight-week series of emails that will offer some suggestions, coaching for how you can grow spiritually, and ways you can go deeper in love of God and neighbor.

To learn more and to get started with ​RenewalWorks For Me go here:   http://renewalworks.org/resources/rw4me/

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​A Spiritual Gifts Inventory:
​Discernment for God’s Empowerment

> Click here for an overview of the Spiritual Gifts Inventory and take the Inventory to discover the special gifts God has given you to do the work you were made for and called to do!

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Contemplative Practice for Just Living
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The Center for Spiritual Imagination exists to deepen and enrich human relationships with God, self and neighbor in new and ancient ways. Our work is rooted in a spiritual ecology that has an ancient rhythm, is committed to nurturing commuaity and is focused on doing justice in the world. We are engaging practices that help us embrace our full humanity and express the love of God by living justly. 

​Our practice exists at the margins of the church (or at its heart) where communion with God and each other eclipses religious affiliations - where the spirituaal needs of seekers, doubters and religious practitioners converge. 

Our experiences, programs and services are open to all. We acknowledge particularly the gifts present in those who identify as Spiritual But Not Religious: a dynamic segment of the human community open to practices at the depths of the Christian tradition who often find official aspects of religion averse to spiritual growth. In an age marked by the institutional decline of Christianity in America, we are reimagining how the church will gather and grow now and in the future.

For information and events go here: https://www.incarnationgc.org/about/csi/
 


Congregational Programs for Revitalization

The Office of Black Ministries’ Congregational Programs for Revitalization (CPR) are designed to equip congregations with tools, training, and coaching to strengthen congregational leadership and ministry.
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OBM has identified 12 significant areaas in which congregations of African descent desire support and programming for future relevance, growth, and positioning for 21st-century mission and ministry:

·         Healing from Internalized Oppression*
·         Basics of Collaborative Leadership and Ministry*
·         Professional Coaching for Clergy & Lay Leadership*
·         Clergy & Lay Leadership Development Training
·         Conflict Management
·         Evangelism through Community Engagement and Ministry
·         Theology of Stewardship and Planned Giving
·         Budget, Finance, and Administration
·         Youth & Young Adult Integration
·         Building and Property Management
·         Tools for Discipleship (SOAP)
·         Human Relationship Management
*Curriculum component currently available

For additional information and to participate in CPR, please contact the Rev. Ronald Charles Byrd, Sr., The Episcopal Church Missioner, Black Ministries, at rbyrd@episcopalchurch.org.

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Sacred Ground: 

WHAT IS THE SACRED GROUND RACE DIALOGUE SERIES?
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• Sacred Ground is a sensitive, prayerful resource that creates space for difficult but respectful and transformative dialogue on race and racism.

• It invites participants to walk back through history in order to peel away the layers that brought us to today, reflecting on family histories and stories, as well as important narratives that shape the collective American story.

• It holds as a guiding star the vision of beloved community – where all people are honored and protected and nurtured as beloved children of God, where we weep at one another’s pain and seek one another’s flourishing.

WHAT IS A DIALOGUE CIRCLE?
The invitation is to form a dialogue circle or circles in your congregation that would meet for 10 sessions to engage with the films, videos, written materials, and each other – a study group essentially. Please arrange for a designated facilitator, co-facilitators, or rotating facilitators. When there are distance constraints, you can consider holding virtual circles.
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HOW OFTEN DO WE MEET?
The frequency of sessions can be according to your group’s needs. Recommended: Every two or three weeks (weekly would be too dense, monthly might be too infrequent).

WHAT IS IN THE CURRICULUM?

• A set of documentary films and short videos, available for free to registered dialogue groups via streaming in a password-protected area on this site;
• A set of readings, also available for free to registered dialogue groups as PDFs in a password-protected area on this site (Note: Participants will also need to acquire or borrow two assigned books);
• The Sacred Ground Study Guide, with suggestions for getting started, tips for facilitators, a session-by-session curriculum with reflections on key themes, and a religious resources section;
• Periodic webinars to support dialogue circle organizers and facilitators and to build a learning community. Stay tuned here.​

​Sacred Ground | Episcopal Church

For more information:
https://episcopalchurch.org/sacred-ground/about

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Episcopal Church Foundation - Vestry Papers

​What is your ministry? What gives you joy in your response to God?

​Chances are good other Episcopalians have written about it with encouragement, tips and sound advice.

Read what others have learned, dreamed of and done: https://www.ecfvp.org/vestry-papers

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Listening Hearts / Grounded in God
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Spiritual discernment for you and your congregation is everyone’s call. Being able to see and discern the movement of God in your life and the life of your congregation is essential to following Jesus. What does God want to have happen here is the primary question of all ministry.

​Learn more about discernment prayer here.
http://listeninghearts.org/resources/open-hearts/do-it-yourself-discernment/

Order Listening Hearts and Grounded in God here: https://www.churchpublishing.org/listeninghearts

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Myers Briggs Type Inventory
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Myers Briggs theory is an adaptation of the theory of psychological types produced by Carl Gustav Jung.

It is based on 16 personality types, which Jung viewed as stereotypes (Jung 1921, p. 405). They act as useful reference points to understand your unique personality (Jung 1957, p. 304).

At the heart of Myers Briggs theory are four preferences.

​Do you prefer to deal with:

• People and things (Extraversion or "E"), or ideas and information (Introversion or "I").
• Facts and reality (Sensing or "S"), or possibilities and potential (Intuition or "N").
• Logic and truth (Thinking or "T"), or values and relationships (Feeling or "F").
• A lifestyle that is well-structured (Judgment or "J"), or one that goes with the flow (Perception or "P").

In Myers Briggs theory, for each pair you prefer one style more than the other. Jung also allowed a middle group where you like an equal balance of the two. You combine the letters associated with your preferences to get your Myers Briggs personality type. For example, having preferences for E, S, T and J gives a personality type of ESTJ.

​Although you have preferences, you still use all eight styles - in the same way that most people are right-handed but they still use both hands.
(Team Technology UK)
 
Discovering your Meyers Briggs type and those of your fellow Vestry or Committee members, can assist you in understanding and assigning accountabilities to strengths and discovering pathways for new growth for everyone.

Discover the ways and wisdom in your leadership by going here: https://www.16personalities.com/personality-types

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More Ideas from RenewalWorks

Ephesians 4:
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.
 
Define Spiritual Gifts:

Offer discernment courses for people to identify their spiritual gifts. One church offered a course called “What in God’s Name are you doing?”which used traditional practices associated with discernment to help people identify their own vocations. Sample curriculum can be found on the RenewalWorks landing page at: www.renewalworks.forwardmovement.org. Scripture, prayer, the counsel of others in the community all emerge as ways to discover meaningful ministry. Small groups have also used the book Listening Hearts as the basis for this kind of discernment, in the recognition that all members of the church have a call. These materials can be found at www.listeninghearts.org.
 
Sermon Dialogue:

Schedule monthly dialogue sermons, with pre-reading and questions to consider before coming to church. In one church, parishioners were encouraged to prepare for worship by reading the passages ahead of time and contemplating questions like: If I wrote this passage, what would be the headlines? Where does the passage touch my life? How is God inviting me to change? Another church has devised an approach to one of its weekend services by which parishioners are given the opportunity to respond to sermons. The preacher offers the homily, and then three standing mikes are available in the nave for people to come forward and offer their responses, either questions or comments. The intent behind these innovative approaches to homiletics is to make preaching/the proclamation of the word relevant to a culture unaccustomed to the one-way communication implicit in traditional preaching.

Ministry Alignment:

Convene every ministry group and committee in the church for an annual conversation on how the efforts of that group contributed to spiritual growth. In every Episcopal church, one can find ongoing ministries that can provide the source of community and spiritual growth. For instance, almost every Episcopal Church has a choir, an altar guild, a Vestry, a group of teachers. These groups can become gatherings for support and mutual encouragement, for challenge in the spiritual journey, for pastoral care. See attached for an example of how one parish provided a template for discussions among each of the groups.

Mentoring:

Consider ways to systematically develop mentoring relationships within the parish. All kinds of ministries can forge deeper relationships within the church by inviting those who are new to the ministry to partner with those who have done the ministry for a while. One parish has done this as a way to welcome new members of the altar guild, inviting new members to shadow more experienced members. The intent is not only to convey knowledge, but also to develop spiritual friendships and to knit that small ministry community more tightly together. Another parish has invited new vestry members to partner with more senior members to learn about the ways the Vestry works. It provides, again, the potential for deeper relationship within that small group community. Older teenagers can be called on to welcome younger teenagers into youth ministries. The possibilities are varied and numerous.
 
Ministry Moments:

Give ministries an opportunity to speak about their work in the church. Include prayers for that particular ministry in the Prayers of the People on Sunday. Such a ministry moment not only helps in communication about the many ministries in a community. It builds on the notion that every member of the church is a minister, and challenges parishioners to talk about the ways that they see God at work in the midst of that ministry.

Workshop Extension:

​Continue the meeting of the workshop team once a month to consider ongoing ways to embed the Bible and teach ways to pray. A community will develop out of the small group working to digest the information from the survey. By design, there are four gatherings of this workshop. But some groups have wanted to continue meeting, on a monthly basis, and are evolving into a standing committee that examines spiritual growth and vitality within the congregation, comparable to a Finance Committee or a Property Committee. Such ongoing ministry elevates the importance of this work within the life of a congregation. At one church, this group meets on the first Wednesday of every month to consider ways to embed the Bible in the life of the community, to teach ways to pray and to help parishioners to grow spiritually. This group is also considering what it means to provide spiritual mentorship.

QUICK LINKS

> Welcome Page

> The Path

> Get People Moving

> Embed the Bible

> Create Ownership

> Pastor the Community
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> Leaders Heart