Building leadership capacity among lay leaders is essential for the long-term health and sustainability of both the congregation and its pastoral staff. By intentionally building a bench of trusted leaders, churches create a deeper pool of support, insight, and energy to carry forward important initiatives. Developing common language and shared frameworks fosters clarity and unity, allowing lay leaders and clergy to collaborate more effectively. This shared leadership model not only distributes responsibility but also helps prevent burnout among pastors by ensuring the work of ministry is shared and sustained across the whole body. Ultimately, it cultivates a resilient, mission-driven community that can thrive together.
Using proven building blocks from the Iron Sharpening Iron curriculum, we will customize a learning plan for your lay leaders that allow pastoral leaders to be a participant, not just a presenter.
Topics we cover
GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN GIVING AND GOVERNING
Creating capacity for greater understanding and less frustration.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Understanding the reasons behind why some ideas fly and others fail.
HEALTHY TEAM DYNAMICS
Sharing best practices for collaboration and implementation in church systems.
LAUNCHING AND EVALUATING PROGRAMS
Offering a mix of design thinking, asset mapping, and impact measurement to help congregations prioritize and strategize.
Have another topic you’d like to see covered? Let’s talk!
Our approach
Translating Resources for Congregational Contexts
These workshops are designed to bring the curriculum from Iron Sharpening Iron, translating executive leadership best practices into the unique context of church life, to both pastors and lay leaders. Participants will explore principles such as strategic visioning, effective communication, team alignment, and adaptive leadership. The sessions foster spiritual discernment alongside practical skills, helping leaders steward their roles with clarity, compassion, and accountability. Tools from the corporate world, such as feedback models, decision-making frameworks, and conflict resolution techniques, are reinterpreted through a theological lens. Lay leaders will leave equipped to lead with confidence, collaborate more effectively with clergy and peers, and support the flourishing of their congregation.
Healthy Leaders are Essential to Church Vitality
A vibrant, engaged lay leadership provides essential support and shared responsibility, preventing burnout and isolation for pastors. When lay leaders are active partners in ministry, congregational vision and care are more widely owned, leading to deeper community engagement and resilience. This collaborative leadership model fosters a healthier church culture where both clergy and laity can thrive together in mission and ministry.
Learning Focused on Tools, Not Outcomes
We don’t come with answers to common church issues, but rather, provide frameworks and common language that create the conditions needed for congregations to problem solve together and find ways forward that work best for their context.
our facilitators
Rev. Dr. Anne Stewart
Anne serves as Executive Vice President of Princeton Theological Seminary and is the Project Director of Iron Sharpening Iron. She is a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the author of Poetic Ethics in Proverbs: Wisdom Literature and the Shaping of the Moral Self (Cambridge, 2015). She is a proud alumna of Smith College, Princeton Seminary (MDiv), and Emory University (PhD, Old Testament).
Thais Carter, MPA
Thais is the Director for Strategic Initiatives at Princeton Theological Seminary. In this role, she guides initiatives that extend the Seminary’s reach and engagement with a broader public. She comes to this work after building dynamic organizations and strategic processes across a variety of fields, including publishing, marketing, higher-ed, businesses, and nonprofits. In addition to the strategic work, she helps direct Iron Sharpening Iron. She has a Masters in Public Administration from NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, where she specialized in assessment and organizational management, with an emphasis on equity related to gender, race, and accessibility.
Modality & Investment
QUESTIONS? Email leadership.learning@ptsem.edu
