Undergirding the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence program are the
themes and values which are reflected in the statements below. We would like
peer learning and continuing education proposals that come to us to be consistent
with these statements. Use these as springboards for proposal ideas.
- Congregations need healthy pastors.
- Healthy pastors need to be both competent and adaptable.
- A healthy church exists not only to sustain its members in faith,
but to serve the world beyond itself.
- Holistic ministry is as much about "being" as "doing."
- Pastors face multiple obstacles in their attempt to maintain
a healthy spiritual life.
- Pastors must learn to be adaptive leaders (not passive or imposing
leaders).
- The CRCNA has the polity and interconnectedness needed to generate
a caring accountability among its leaders.
- Mentoring, peer learning and continuing education are three
ways in which pastors can grow and develop personally and professionally.
- Meaningful lifelong learning for pastors requires a strong and
unified approach from the whole denomination.
- Excellent pastors cultivate their relationship with God through
prayer, godliness, and the fruits of the Spirit.
- Excellent pastors strive to understand the contours of the Christian
faith and to communicate them in meaningful and imaginative ways.
- Excellent pastors practice intrapersonal and interpersonal relational
skills with balance, understanding, and sensitivity.
- Excellent pastors understand that the congregation is a social
system that requires creative and patient leadership.
- Excellent pastors realize that they need structures of accountability.
- Excellent pastors have a commitment to being learners for life.
- Excellent pastors understand that leaders must demonstrate character,
conviction, and competence.
- Excellent pastors understand that effective leadership is the
result of a confluence of leader, congregation, time, place, ministry opportunity
and resources that is a gift of God's Spirit.
