Blueprint of A Leader

Wow! We were totally surprised.

We just began our newest workshop series - "Blueprint of a Leader" - this week. After contacting some folks who had gone through our last workshop series, we knew of about 10 people who said that they planned to attend. When everyone had found a place to sit, we had 23 people for our first night. Praise the Lord!

This series was originally intended to be an advanced workshop for teachers. But through several confirmations in November and December, we decided to turn it into a leadership workshop. We've taken some of the principles from the book of Ezra (based on James' extensive research over the past 3 months.)

It is one of my heart's desires to see a new generation of leaders developed in our church. While many of the people who serve in our church have business backgrounds and have had secular leadership training, there is a shortage of leadership training that is based in Scriptural principles. That's what we've set out to do -- to train up new leaders based on God's teaching found in Scripture.

The four sections we've developed are

1. Building on an Unshakable Foundation
2. Developing an Unselfish Team
3. Standing with Uncompromising Courage
4. Serving with Unwavering Purpose

We're into our second week now, and everyone seems to be enjoying it. If no one else is enjoying it, at least James and I are!

Getting the Word Out

The month of December was spent making contacts with churches and developing our next workshop. We produced a marketing package that told everyone a little something about us and CCC, and described our teaching philosophy and workshop offering. In fact, we sent about 70 of them in November and December.

We had the opportunity to speak at the Piedmont Baptist Association's pastors' conference at the end of November. It was an honor to be asked to speak. After giving a brief testimony, James and I took turns talking about our Teaching A Bible Lesson workshop. When the meeting was over, the pastors who were there were very supportive and very interested in our ministry. The downside? There were only about 5 pastors there because it was a holiday weekend. Oh, well. Maybe we'll get to speak again sometime.

We knew that December would be a slow month because most churches are busy with Christmas pageants, plays and special services. So we made up our minds to do what we could to prepare for the first quarter of 2007, and trust God for the results.