Letter from Senate Professional Effectiveness Committee

Dear Colleagues,

The committee for Professional Effectiveness wants to touch base with you after our time together at the Ministers Council Senate in Green Lake, Wisconsin. We know that for some, the Minister’s Council has been nebulous. Some have struggled to figure out if there was any benefit or support that was available from the Council for their own context. Sometimes, pastors have no idea where to go with problems or who to contact when needing support. We guess they are not alone.

The Professional Effectiveness committee laments over our lack of attention to you and your ministry. We mourn the fact that we have been out of contact with you and have not fully vested ourselves in your ministry. The deepest desire of the Minister’s Council is to change our culture and our conversation. We are a group of ministers who are bound together by a sacred calling and by shared experiences. Although it might sound simple, we have come to understand that God calls us to be in ministry together. Isolation has never been a part of the vision God has for His Church. God’s plan involves not just you, but you in community with others. We want to be a community of called ministerial leaders who seek to deepen our spiritual journey with Jesus Christ and to empower each other for a lifetime of service and learning. God’s plan is for us to embrace our ministry, together.

Much of our time at the Ministers Council Senate in August was focused around Communities of Practice. Perhaps some of you have heard the term before. In all sincerity, some of the Senators were skeptical about the roll out of another program. So often we have been given material and told, “Hey, this will really help your ministry”, and “We are here for you.” These responses have become cliché, and most of us feel we don’t have time for “another program.” Fortunately, the Minister’s Council has developed some resources to familiarize you with what a Community of Practice might look like. Even so, void of relationships, it is just another piece of paper.

With this in mind, we are asking that each Minister’s Council executive committee plan a retreat that Joe Kutter, our Acting Executive Director, can attend, in an effort to give you an experience of a Community of Practice. We believe it is best when the idea is “caught,” rather than just “taught.”

It is our hope that this will be the beginning of an ever-increasing awareness of what we bring to one another, and that every ministerial leader in American Baptist churches will drink deeply at this well and see your own ministry thrive. Pastor, whether or not you are currently active in the Ministers Council, we need you to partner with us for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Please prayerfully consider our request and we will follow up in the next month.

In His Service,

The Professional Effectiveness Committee