Senior church leaders throughout the British Union Conference (BUC), gathered at the Hay’s Wood Retreat Centre, Kings Lynn this week (28-29 September), to glean spiritual wisdom, sound business acumen and experience the benefits of collaboration with their counterparts around the territory.
Over the past three months, significant personnel changes in almost every entity and institution in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the United Kingdom and Ireland has highlighted the need for specialised and intentional leadership training. This is to ensure greater unity throughout the various fields represented and ultimately for greater mission and outreach possibilities.
With a population of 70 million in the United Kingdom and over 5 million in Ireland, the 48,000 members have a mighty work to do in countries where Christianity is no longer the dominant religion, the need for more effective leaders is now more urgent than ever.
Addressing this issue of the five key components of effective leadership, Pastor Freddie Russell, Principal, True North Leadership, guided the participants through a framework with its core foundation built on trust, acknowledging the benefit of healthy conflict that contributes to growth, consistent commitment, the ongoing need for accountability and the need for results and impact. Participants were encouraged to be self-reflective and this was supported by a personalised workbook and guide based on a pre-training personal development survey, as well as to share perspectives in group activities.
The Desperate Need for Ethical and Moral Leadership was a key session and Russell emphasised that it was imperative for Christian leaders have a moral compass that was in line with the values that they held. His closing session focused on creating margin (the space between our load and our limit) in our lives, to spend time with our families and most importantly to spend time with God. The two-day session ended with the Frances Ridley Havergal hymn, ‘Live Out Thy Life Within Me’.
Other spiritual moments throughout the two-day training were the devotional by Dr Kirk Thomas, BUC President on Monday morning and the one by Pastor Kwesi Moore, South England Conference President on Tuesday. Quoting from 2 Samuel 7:18-19, “Who am I, O Lord God...” Dr Thomas invited the attendees to be introspective with the Almighty in the “quiet closet moments” and continued, “Unless God and you agree in the quiet moments, you can’t be blessed openly.” Pastor Moore used Ephesians 3 as his foundational scripture and concluded that leaders, “have a responsibility to ensure that the world gets a clear message of the character of God from our behaviour as leaders.”
“I found the training beneficial for my learning and for my growth as a leader” one attendee reflected, “and I hope that this kind of training will be repeated in the future.” Another commented that the training was an “excellent experience.”