Course Introduction
Welcome to Discovering Leadership
We are excited you have decided to participate in Discovering Leadership, a course primarily focused on character formation; we believe that through it you will be challenged and encouraged as you pursue Jesus personally and within your ministry. In order to participate in this course, it is likely that you have been recommended by a staff pastor, life circle leader, or ministry coordinator who sees something in you that desires to grow and be challenged. We hope this will be an enriching experience for you!
The basic format of the course might be new to you in that we have “flipped the classroom”. By this we mean that instead of using time together to instruct you in new material, where you are a passive learner as in a traditional classroom setting, we have found that the best way to learn is by using time with others to process and respond to material you have already learned. In short, this class is organized so that you will watch videos and complete homework on your own, then meet twice to process the material together with others. We have found the learning to be much deeper and transformative in this way.
Clarifying Expectations
Clarifying expectations, no matter what the context, simply serves everyone involved. To that end, our desire is to clarify the expectations we have for you in Discovering Leadership. Our primary concern would be that, at some point in your future leadership within our churches, you would be “surprised” by some thought or assumption that has been made in regards to what it means to lead in MHV. For instance, say you become a life circle leader; the last thing we would want is for you to be surprised that we talk to you about your marriage, or your anxiety, or how you show up on social media. We believe that leadership is primarily about character therefore, as stated above, Discovering Leadership is a character formation course.
Attendance
You will only meet twice: once about halfway through and once at the end of the course. Since this is our leadership class, we want to make sure you are committed to coming to both meetings. If for some reason you can’t make the classes, please talk with the person who sent you ahead of time.
Homework
Each video will take approximately 30 minutes to watch plus additional time to respond to the homework questions. Please give yourself one week per lesson to complete all work. You will need to finish Lessons 1-3 prior to your first meeting; complete Lessons 4-7 prior to your second meeting.
Mentoring
After the Discovering Leadership classes are finished and all homework turned in, you will be assigned a mentor. This one time appointment is crucial to wrapping up the experience because it will be a time to review your homework with a mentor, talk and pray through any issues that have come up, and also give you some next steps to move forward. Afterwards, you will write-up a summary of your time with your mentor; this will be sent to your mentor and your pastor. The mentor will also add any additional thoughts they might want to share. All of this is to serve you, both giving you tools (through the course) and mapping a plan moving forward (through mentoring) in your life with Jesus and the ministry you serve in.