Finding and Developing Leaders

Leaders in many faith organizations are typically appointed for a period of time, often three years. This frequently happens once a year and often as a process of seeking people to fill open leadership roles. At Assurance UMC, we seek to grow leaders through an intentional process of identifying, encouraging, equipping, and apprenticing leaders through a year around process. This process combines aspects of leadership succession planning and the apprenticeship process to build a culture of relational discipleship.

Pastor Chris Westmoreland, AUMC's Lead Pastor this past year, believes that "the combination of lay leadership succession planning and apprenticeship has grown leaders and significantly smoothed out the lay leaders nominations process. We are blessed to have leaders identified and developed as leaders for our extensive ministry and administrative teams."  Hope Maske, the Church Council Chair is a product of this on-going and intentional process: "As one of the church leaders, I am constantly in awe of the amazing lay leadership at Assurance. Through my mentor's apprenticeship, I grew spiritually, learned about my passions, and answered calls to co-lead and then lead teams, growing my successors through the same process along the way." 

One of the key leadership development initiatives is in deepening discipleship to develop current and future leaders through intentional identification of apprentices; create candidate pools in order to ensure adequate numbers of equipped candidates; and provide training/equipping opportunities. This LEAD process: ‘L’  Learn Leadership Skills; ‘E’ Encourage SHAPE; ‘A’ Apprentice Others; and ‘D’ Disciple Through Grow & GO.

The process is tied to the church’s singular mission to follow Jesus to “Grow and Go”. Assurance is Growing Disciples (followers) of Jesus Christ so that we can Go serve Christ in the world. In “Growing and Going”, we emphasize the 3 S’s: Spirit, Serve, and Share. We grow our Spirit in worship, prayer, and small group connections. We grow by Serving others inside and outside the walls of the church. And we Share our gifts and the good News that God loves us all.

These are some key results from this LEAD process:

Identification of Apprentices - We continue to find future leaders to work alongside current leaders through intentional invitation. We explore member gifts through SHAPE, participation in small group and ministry work, and a heart for leadership.

Candidate Pools – We create pools of candidates for leadership positions that have been pre-identified as candidates last year and throughout this year, many of whom have received encouragement and development opportunities during the following year. We believe in co-chairs for our administrative teams for continuity of leadership. We believe ministries we are called to start should have three leaders at their inception: one who is the visionary leader, one who is the logistics and equipping leader, and one who is the inviter/nurturer of volunteers and partners to come alongside.

Leadership Training & Development Opportunities - We continue to develop manuals and training events for our leadership. We believe a leader at Assurance should serve where God has equipped them and have a heart for Grow and Go.

This is what we hope will be accomplished by our year around lay leadership team:

·         Fill the key leadership roles with our church community

·         Discuss and recommend that a new leadership structure be adopted that is more conducive to successful missional and vital UMC congregations

·         Support the future leadership needs of a multi-site church

·         Recommend Leadership Celebration and Development Days

·         Affirm GROW & GO characteristics of Spirit, Serve, And Share as a part of leadership

We seek to build the leadership of the faith community intentionally all year long.

There are so many examples of successful apprenticeship and succession planning successes. Hope provides one such example: 

• Moved from leading a ministry to apprenticing as a small group leaders to leading the small group
• Identified a co-leader for the small group and apprenticed her into a leader
• Moved on to SPRC, apprenticed as a SPRC co-leader, moved to SPRC leader and helped with lay leadership identify a co-leader whom Hope apprenticed
• Selected to be co-chair of Church Council and apprenticed to become the Church Council Chair, then apprenticed the new co-leader identifed

At Assurance UMC, we seek to grow leaders through an intentional process of identifying, encouraging, equipping, and apprenticing leaders through a year around process. This process combines aspects of leadership succession planning and the apprenticeship process to build a culture of relational discipleship.

If you are interested in more information, please feel free to contact Dave Zietlow. Director - Leadership Development AUMC (dave@assuranceumc.org) or visit his leadership website at www.dpzleadership.com (dave@dpzleadership.com)

Living Out Go Share Jesus

We are a church that lives out its mission to Grow and Go in so many unique and powerful ways. These last two weeks I have been blessed with the opportunity to experience the Go Share piece of this mission. We are equipped and called as individuals and as a faith community to share the Good News that Jesus loves us. We do that in a multitude of ways throughout the year and perhaps most powerfully during the summer months in the community around our two campuses: Northlake and Connections.

Our role, as Christians and active participants in the Assurance community, is to be witnesses for Jesus Christ – spreading the good news of Jesus Christ and God’s love to those who need to experience God’s transforming love. Assurance shares the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8 John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism,  spoke of this Go Share: “I look on all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty, to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation.” 

We share Jesus and connect with our community at Northlake through our Vacation Bible School where near four hundred children and their families experience the love of Jesus for a week. Most of those attending are not part of our Assurance Faith Community rather people drawn by God’s grace that calls us to experience Jesus. This Go Share ministry of sharing God’s love has the tangible action of Go serve through the collection of over 4.000 food items that supports two of our Go Serve ministries: Love in a Bag and Micah’s Backpack.

Take a moment to hear about some of the Go Share ministries at Assurance: http://emc.mcpile.com/

These are some of the Go Share God’s love in the community I experienced in the last two weeks:

·         Jammin’ with Jesus – our weekly Tuesday afternoon summer Children’s programming on the Connections community shares God’s love with children through stories of Christ and activities designed to touch the heart of the children and their families.

·         God’s Garden – our summer camp program on our Northlake campus allows us to share God’s love to any families in our community in a safe and fun environment. This is an extension of one of our strong community ministries – our pre-school and after-school programs.

·         Matthew’s Closet – our clothing ministry based at our Northlake Campus has opened a distribution and community engagement day on the last Sunday of the month on the Connections campus where the need is acute. We draw so many families who are not connected with our faith community and allow us to share God’s love. This ministry greatly benefits from our community consignment sales in the spring and fall.

·         SOAR – our summer reading program on the Connections campus allows us to reach children and families in our community through a critical need. This sharing of God’s love continues in the community through our other community activities like Love in a Bag.

·         Mission Guatemala – This annual mission trip allows the Assurance faith community to touch people in another country who long to hear and see God’s love in action. As a year around response a small group called Reach Out shares God’s love throughout the two campus communities as well as other parts of our local community.

·         Love in a Bag – our summer community engagement and feeding ministry allows us to share God’s love in multiple neighborhoods within our community who need a word of hop and love. Both Northlake and Connections small groups support this ministry throughout the summer. During the school year Micah’s Backpack in Northlake supports a feeding ministry.

·         Recreational Ministries – our Tuesday community open gym is a wonderful example of Go Sharing God’s love through sharing a resource He has given us. Our Peace on the Streets basketball ministry bring youth off the streets to compete in opportunities to learn about Jesus.

·         Sharing Gardens – our community sharing gardens on both campuses allow us to connect with the community in a tangible way and share the love of Jesus. They also provide food for the community as part of our Go Serve mission.

All of God’s people are called to Grow in Spirit through weekly worship, daily prayer and small group experiences; Go serve others through our outreach ministries inside and outside our church communities; and Go Share God’s love to others that need Jesus! Contact one of our pastors or lay leaders about how you might live out this community commitment. Contact Dave Zietlow – dave@assuranceumc.org.