Sustaining Pastoral Excellence

This week missionaries from the Latin America region of the Evangelical Covenant Church’s Department of World Mission are gathering in Mexico for a time of personal renewal, community building, and strategic planning. The first half of this gathering is designed as an SPE Caring Seminar, the first of the 2008-2009 competence cycle, geared specifically for missionaries. For more information about this gathering see the Covenant Newswire Story.

Congregant Feedback Can Improve Pastors’ Sermons, SPE Study Finds

By Bob Wells

With a structured program of feedback from parishioners, peers and outside experts, pastors can become transformative preachers, delivering sermons that more effectively challenge listeners to make real changes in their lives, according to preliminary results from an SPE-affiliated sermon study. (more…)

This spring the Africa region gathering for Covenant World Mission brought individuals from all over the continent, serving as career, project, and short-term missionaries in a variety of capacities. SPE was excited to join the partnership with these individuals, as we have had the privilege to do in Southeast Asia and Europe, and will do this summer in Latin America. This gathering included a workshop that focused on the pastoral art of teaching, as the North American workshops have done this past year. “Teaching the Bible in Traditional Oral Cultures” was led by Rev. Reuben Ezemadu from Nigeria, who serves as African continent coordinator for Movement for African National Initiatives (MANI). Read the full story from the Covenant News Service here.

This article originally appeared on the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence website. Dan Pietrzyk is director of the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence program for the Evangelical Covenant Church.

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by Dan Pietrzyk

In all the learning that we have experienced in the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence program of the Evangelical Covenant Church, one of the most powerful has been the recognition that the life cycle of pastoral ministry takes place in fairly predictable stages. This “aha” moment was gleaned through general readings on church ministry, work being done by other denominations, books about clergy, discussions with retired Covenant pastors, our own anecdotal evidence, and statistical research that we conducted about our ministerial community.Our findings, presented below in broad brush strokes, have clearly resonated with our pastors. In sharing this ministerial life cycle with more than 400 Covenant pastors, we received no words of dissent, only affirmation. The discussions around this life cycle have been so compelling that we have been asked by pastors to do presentations at their fall conference gatherings. One pastor, with 10 years of history in a particular district, told us their district cluster used the life-cycle for discussion and it created the most open, honest, and personal discussion they had ever had. Frankly, we have been surprised at the kind of chord this has hit.

Generally, we have found that the ministerial life cycle occurs in three predictable formational stages. Individual pastors may enter any of these stages earlier or later, depending on their particular life circumstances, but overall we find that these transitions take place in Years 5-8, Years 13-15, and Years 20-25. Whether a pastor is called to ministry as either a first- or second-career does not appear to make any difference in how these stages are encountered. Each stage is defined by a key question and a key word. Like rapids in a river, where the water moves faster and more intensely, these formational stages are filled with turbulence, unfolding quickly for pastors paddling in the river.

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The complete text and streaming video of Bishop William H. Willimon’s sermon delivered February 5, 2007, at the Covenant Midwinter Conference, is available online. The theme of the conference was “Sustaining Pastoral Excellence: Pastoral Competence and Congregational Vitality.”

By Bryan P. Stone

In 2002, when Boston University School of Theology began to consider how it could contribute to a large national project on pastoral excellence, I and others at the school naturally and immediately focused on the unique particularities of urban life. Snaking through the city of Boston, our campus lies with the Charles River at our backs and the hustle and bustle of Commonwealth Avenue and a busy subway and trolley line right out our front doors. Just a few blocks away, sharing this same urban environment, is Fenway Park, one of the few remaining “urban” ball parks in major league baseball, with all the charm and challenges that status entails. (read more)