Ministry Profile

About this course

This course is an immersive retreat designed to help participants clarify their ministry identity and name their primary ministry function for the current season of life and leadership. Through guided reflection, peer conversation, spiritual practices, and discernment exercises, participants identify the kind of ministry they most readily inhabit—prophetic truth-telling, pastoral care, teaching, counseling, evangelism, chaplaincy, organizing, administration, mentoring, worship leadership, spiritual direction, advocacy, or community building—along with other identities that may be emerging as gifts grow and circumstances change. Ministry identity is approached as a faithful point-in-time reading of how a person is presently wired and called, not a permanent label; participants are invited to mature across the full range of ministry responsibilities while learning to lead from their strengths with humility, clarity, and accountability.

The retreat also makes room for enduring ministry passions and dreams: the people, places, suffering, hopes, or possibilities to which a participant’s heart repeatedly returns. A passion may shape present work, remain a parallel commitment outside formal employment, call for preparation, or become a future ministry horizon. Participants learn to honor such passions without assuming that every dream must immediately become a job, program, or authorized role.

The retreat then helps participants translate identity and passion into ministry function by expanding their imagination for what Commissioned Ruling Elder service can look like in a particular context. Participants explore the many ways Christian leadership can be expressed through and beyond congregational life—equipping elders and ministry teams, developing discipleship pathways, strengthening governance and systems, cultivating prayer and care networks, guiding Bible study and formation, supporting schools and community institutions, partnering with local nonprofits, walking with those in crisis, serving neighbors experiencing poverty, or mobilizing mission in a neighborhood. Ministry function is framed as a provisional vocational focus—what is most needed, most fitting, and most sustainable right now—subject to revision as communities change, opportunities open, and God’s guidance becomes clearer. Because CRE ministry is not a single, uniform model, FORM 101 equips participants to articulate a clear ministry identity, discern how an enduring passion belongs in the present or future, name an appropriate ministry function for their setting, and take concrete next steps toward faithful, integrated service.

Course purpose

Help participants articulate a clear, present-tense ministry identity, honor enduring ministry passions and future horizons, discern a contextual ministry function for this season, test the profile in community, and begin one bounded practice that can be reviewed and revised.

Course objectives

• Articulate a clear, present-tense ministry identity that reflects their gifts, temperament, convictions, and spiritual maturity.
• Name a primary ministry function appropriate to their current context, limitations, and opportunities, and explain why it fits this season.
• Differentiate between identity and function, and describe how each may adapt over time as circumstances, communities, and call evolve.
• Identify core strengths and growth edges for ministry, and practice receiving feedback with humility and accountability.
• Connect ministry identity to concrete practices of leadership, including communication, decision-making, collaboration, and care.
• Develop an expanded theology of vocation that includes congregational leadership and ministry beyond church walls.
• Discern enduring ministry passions and dreams, and determine whether they belong in present work, a parallel commitment, a season of preparation, a future horizon, or faithful release.
• Generate a short list of ministry expressions that match their identity and context (e.g., teaching, care, organizing, systems leadership, community partnership).
• Discern constraints and supports that shape sustainable ministry (time, family/work commitments, boundaries, supervision, and self-care).
• Draft a concise next-step plan for discernment and deployment, including conversations to have, training to pursue, and experiments to try.
• Prepare to communicate their evolving sense of call in a coherent way to mentors, session, and presbytery leaders as part of ongoing discernment.
• Be oriented towards helping the people within their ministry define and refine their ministry profile.

Who may participate?

All church leaders unless a prerequisite or a particular offering states otherwise.