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.