2024 Leaders of Christian Organisations (Emerging) Network
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The Leaders of Christian Organizations Network: Emerging Leaders Track seeks to equip emerging leaders to direct the continent’s Christian churches and organizations in a way that ensures the greatest impact for God’s Kingdom. This Network seeks to provide practical wisdom, useful leadership insights, and biblically-based solutions to key problem areas, as well as to encourage leaders facing key organisational challenges. This Network also addresses significant issues that new leaders may encounter, from how to deal with their own assumptions of personal integrity and virtue, to topics like strategic planning, vision-casting, time management, and delegation, prioritising organisational objectives, and assessing finances and resource development.
Each day will incorporate mixed modes of learning, combining expert input, working on live leadership issues, working through tools and frameworks that you can take away and apply back home, time for peer learning exchange, and the opportunity to pray together as fellow leaders. We hope this will enable each participant to contribute from the richness of their own experience in leadership, as well as providing space and support to apply learning to the specific leadership challenges and opportunities you face.
The theme for 2024 will be “Leadership Authority.” We recognise that any discussion of authority needs to explore the question of power; we also recognise that different national cultures will have very different attitudes to and experiences of authority being exercised.
Prior preparation will be set for all applicants.
What Network Participants Are Saying
- "I participated in ELF this year for the first time, after 28 years of full time ministry. The leadership training has been fantastic and the worship God-focused. I have connected with many like-minded brothers and sisters. I plan to come back next year, hopefully with my entire leadership team."
- Laszlo Kazar, Director of Word of Life, Hungary - "Being at the European Leadership Forum is a great opportunity to meet people who inspire me, receive information that instructs and informs my work, and to be in an environment that energizes me in so many ways. My perspectives are broadened and my heart is stretched in positive ways. This is a great help to me in the different leadership roles that I serve in in Romania."
- Adiel Bunescu, Pastor, Romania
Applicants should be leading or helping to lead Christian organisations or churches. They should be seeking practical tools and biblically-based solutions in key problem areas of the leader's role.
Network Leadership
Network Speakers
Jen Charteris, originally from South Africa, is the executive director of Crosslands, which provides in-context theological training from Foundation to PhD level across the UK, Europe, and beyond. Previously she spent over 25 years working in strategic change, organisational consulting, and… Read more
Stefan Gustavsson is a member of the European Leadership Forum Steering Committee. He is the director for Apologia – Centre for Christian Apologetics and makes his home in Stockholm. He was the founding general secretary for 16 years of the Swedish Evangelical Alliance. Stefan travels widely… Read more
Dave Patty has been involved in training youth leaders and leading national and international youth movements in Europe for over 30 years. He serves as the president of Josiah Venture. He is also a founding member of Concentric, which mobilizes and equips youth ministry trainers in over 60… Read more
Jeremy Taylor spent much of his professional life in Christian publishing, working as an editor at Tyndale House Publishers for nearly twenty years, assisting many of the industry’s top authors in making their messages clear and compelling. Currently, he serves as president of Tyndale House… Read more
Network Programme
Sunday, 26 May
What does the Bible say about what authority is and where it comes from? How does that compare with the assumptions of the cultures we inhabit? In this session, we will explore how authority is gained, earned, conferred, and lost. We will examine the limits of authority and its relationship with power.
This session will give time for small groups to work through a case study related to having authority, with time for discussion and questions.
Monday, 27 May
Why do leaders exercise authority? What enables or works against the healthy use of authority in Christian leadership? This session will examine how a biblical worldview shapes the way we make decisions and how we can lead well when we lack formal authority.
This session will give time for small groups to work through a case study related to exercising authority, with time for discussion and questions.
Tuesday, 28 May
A key aspect of leadership involves enabling others to act. To do this, authority must be delegated, just as Jesus gave his disciples authority when he sent them out to minister two by two. Sometimes authority is given and the outcomes are poor or not what was expected. Other times a leader feels they have delegated authority, but the rest of the team still feels that they still have no power to act. When and how should we delegate authority? How can authority be coupled with accountability? When should authority not be given, and what do you do when you need to take it back? In this session, we will attempt to answer these questions by looking at Scripture as well as current leadership literature.
This session will give time for small groups to work through a case study related to delegating authority, with time for discussion and questions.
Wednesday, 29 May
Authority is a good thing. It is a gift from God and has a purpose. Used well, authority can provide needed leadership and structure to an organization, network, church, or community. But history shows how easily authority can be abused or wasted. The Bible is clear that ultimate authority belongs to Jesus. As leaders, we have a responsibility to steward the authority that has been entrusted to us. But what does that look like in everyday leadership? How can we steward our time, our legacy, our mission, and our goals in ways that complement the biblical view of authority and enable us to work in partnership and not in opposition to God’s plan for biblical leadership? In this session, we will look at what the Bible teaches about how we can steward authority, embrace accountability, and become the leaders God wants us to be.
This session will give time for small groups to work through a case study related to stewarding authority, with time for discussion and questions.