The Executive Certificate in Faith Leadership is a six-week learning experience from the Reverend Charlie Curb Center for Faith Leadership.
Participants of this course will leave with the tools to become a better and more effective leader for their church or nonprofit organization.
Classes
Classes will be offered in the Spring and Fall every year on Monday evenings from 5:30 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. each week. Class sizes are limited to 20.
Tuition for the certificate is $599. A discount of $200 will be subtracted to any additional participants from the same sponsoring organization.
- Level 1 – Essential Leadership Skill Development
- Level 2 – Building Blocks of Effective Leadership
- Level 3 – Refining Leadership Skills for Career Success
Level 1 Classes Offered (Fall 2018)
Behind the Numbers: Understanding the Role of Finance in the Organization | Dr. John Gonas
This course will focus on spreadsheet literacy and the financial management of an organization. Students will learn about capital budgeting, risk and return analysis, and business plan development.
Entrepreneurial Visioning and Financial Sustainability | Dr. John Gonas, Dr. Bernard Turner
This class will explore the problems and challenges of sustainability for faith-based organizations. It will provide the student with the skills to discover and identify new sources of revenue. Students will also discover effective business modeling and evaluation. Students will learn the process of effective grant writing.
Understanding Compassion Fatigue and Moral Injury | Dr. Erin Shankel & Dr. Stan Campbell
This course introduces participants to two phenomena which pose a risk to those in helping professions. Compassion fatigue, a combination of burnout and secondary traumatic stress, results in the gradual lessening of compassion over time. Moral injury refers to a violation of moral agreement with one’s own moral identity; invisible (spiritual/soul) wounds that occur from having done something, or failed to stop something, that violates one’s moral code. Veterans and 1st responders can be especially susceptible to moral injury. This course offers practical tools to identify, prevent, and manage these conditions in yourself and colleagues.
Understanding the Times and How to Minister Effectively | Dr. Jon Roebuck
There are two groups within our cultural context whose needs, ambitions, and priorities must be addressed by the local church. They are: the growing dechurched population and the millennial generation. This class will explore the dynamics and trends in culture, attendance, and mentality that currently affect ministry organizations. Students will discover effective ways to adjusting to new paradigms for effectively meeting these groups.
Pastoral Counseling: Understanding Addictive Behavior | Dr. Tom Knowles-Bagwell
This course will explore some of the traditional reasons behind the need for pastoral care based on self-understanding and the relationship to sin and brokenness paired with the ways in which individuals are drawn into lives of addiction.
Missional Visioning | Dr. Bill Wilson
Missional Visioning is the key ingredient of a healthy church. Without a clear and compelling vision, churches and people perish and fracture. We will discern a process by which congregations can discern and live into a powerful vision of what God intends them to become.
Level 2 Classes Offered (Spring 2019)
Cognitive Coaching & Collaborative Leadership | Dr. Bill Owen
This class will identify and practice basic tools needed in cognitive coaching and its impact on creating a high trust, collaborative culture.
Discernment & Devices: How to Focus the Unfocused | Dr. Beverly Schneller & Dr. Larry Wacholtz
This class will explore the needs and disposition of the Millennial and Generation Z youth and young adult population and suggest ways to teach them critical thinking, openness to faith through risk-taking, and engage in discussions that will plant seeds for how pastors and youth leaders can focus the unfocused.
Understanding Personality and How It Affects the Way You Lead | Dr. Tom Knowles-Bagwell
This class will help participants identify their unique personality profile and they ways in which specific personality traits affect leadership style and practice.
Harnessing the Power of the Pulpit by Improving How You Communicate the Gospel | Dr. Matt Pearson
This course will help the students in the basics of exegeting both text and congregation so as to best present the truths of the Word in a way that enables the hearer to understand and apply what is being communicated.
The Art of Listening & Expressing | Mike Cortese
This course is designed to help you eliminate habits that discourage positive communication. Be refining your interpersonal skills, we will increase your ability to create positive outcomes in your company and community.
How to Brand, Market, and Build Buzz Around Your Ministry Initiative | Mick Rowland
This class will provide an understanding of how participants can launch, build, grow, and maintain excitement and momentum for their ministry brands.
Level 3 Classes Offered (Spring 2018: February 12 - March 19)
The Art of Story-telling | Dr. Jon Roebuck
Let’s be honest… very few people will remember your message moments after it has been proclaimed. Sure. They might glom onto a single idea or a well-turned phrase. But it’s the stories they will remember long after the PowerPoint dims and the sanctuary empties. Stories connect to the mind, stir the heart, and inspire the spirit. So how do we infuse better stories into our presentations? Where do we discover meaningful tales? And how can we become better at the art of using them to reinforce our topics? This class will explore how to find and record great stories and offer practical ways to practice the art of story-telling more effectively.
Establishing Healthy Boundaries for Clergy and Churches | Dr. Bill Wilson
Clergy and congregations are finding that boundary awareness and guidance is a significant challenge and opportunity. Boundary awareness involves sexual harassment and moral behavior, life balance, social media habits, family time, Sabbath-keeping, youth and child-care policies, and a host of other issues. Gaining clarity around these issues and creating a healthy culture around boundaries is essential if we are to accomplish the mission God has for us. We will talk about the importance of healthy boundaries and how to incorporate them into the full life of a faith community.
Reclaiming Your Life | Dr. Darrell Gwaltney
How much of your life should you give away and how much can you keep for yourself? We all face this question in ministry. It is almost impossible to set boundaries in ministry today with mobile phones and email following us wherever we find ourselves on the planet. How do you rest and restore and recreate yourself? How do you recharge your creative impulses? How do you reinvent yourself if you feel like you have given all there is to give in ministry? This class will focus on reclaiming your life and your future and finding the horizon God has drawn ahead of you.
The Art of Negotiation | Dr. Lee Warren
Anything you can’t decide unilaterally becomes a negotiation. All of us negotiate all the time. So, it is worthwhile to hone our negotiation skillset. Using the tactics developed by the Harvard Program on Negotiation, we will develop a step-by-step approach that works in all contexts. We will both explore the principals and engage in some practice as you begin to make this method your own.
Adolescents in Crisis | Dr. Wade Rowatt
This class will focus on meeting the current difficulties & pressures faced by today’s Teenagers and Young Adults. In a world where violence among young people is becoming increasingly prevalent, G. Wade Rowatt offers solid direction for solutions to many of the issues adolescents face, including sexual promiscuity, substance abuse, depression, and suicide, as well as their sometimes, violent tendencies. Integrating not only clinical research and experience, but Biblical insights as well, Dr. Rowatt will provide helpful insight and teaching for those who minister to this critical age group within our culture.
Getting Your Message Out | Lougan Bishop
During this course participants will learn the basics of social media including the various networks available and best practices in using those networks to further a church's brand. We will also discuss several recent social media crises and how to deal with them should the worst happen.