Practicing Congregation Leadership: Designing Healthy Boards and Ministry Systems

About this course

This practicum develops advanced competencies in congregational leadership through the intentional design of healthy boards, ministry structures, and decision-making systems. Building upon foundational work in polity, moderating, and family systems theory, the course equips students to move beyond maintaining inherited structures toward shaping governance systems that support mission, clarity, and shared leadership.

Attention is given to the architecture of leadership within Presbyterian congregations, including the role of session, committees, staff, and volunteers. Students examine how poorly designed systems generate confusion, burnout, and chronic conflict, while well-structured systems clarify authority, reduce anxiety, and foster trust. The course explores agenda design, role clarity, accountability structures, communication pathways, and alignment between vision and governance.

Students analyze real congregational leadership models and reflect on how size, context, and congregational history influence structural decisions. Particular emphasis is placed on balancing front-seat leadership (vision, relationships, discernment) with back-seat leadership (policy, administration, compliance), and on designing systems that sustain healthy pastoral leadership over time.

Designed for Commissioned Ruling Elders serving as congregational pastors, this practicum prepares students to shape leadership environments that are faithful to Presbyterian polity while responsive to the lived realities of local ministry.

Course objectives

• Describe the purpose and function of healthy leadership systems within Presbyterian congregations.
• Analyze the relationship between mission, vision, governance, and organizational structure.
• Evaluate existing congregational leadership structures and identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas requiring redesign.
• Distinguish between front-seat leadership (vision, relationships, and discernment) and back-seat leadership (policy, administration, and compliance), and appropriately integrate both within congregational life.
• Design meeting agendas, leadership processes, and decision-making systems that support clarity, participation, and mission effectiveness.
• Clarify roles, responsibilities, authority, and accountability among sessions, committees, staff, and volunteers.
• Recognize organizational patterns that contribute to confusion, burnout, conflict, or leadership bottlenecks and propose constructive interventions.
• Develop communication pathways and accountability systems that foster trust, transparency, and shared ownership.
• Apply principles of family systems theory and Presbyterian polity to congregational leadership challenges.
• Assess how congregational size, history, culture, and context influence leadership structure and governance decisions.
• Create or revise a ministry system, leadership process, or governance structure designed to support healthier and more sustainable congregational leadership.
• Equip elders, committees, and ministry teams to lead effectively within a shared leadership model.

Who may participate?

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