2026 Leaders in Christian Organisations Network
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The Leaders in Christian Organisations Network seeks to equip emerging leaders to direct the continent’s Christian churches and organisations 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.
Prior preparation will be set for all applicants.
What Network Participants Are Saying
- "Here at ELF I have met lots of good teachers who have become my mentors and guided me through every step of ministry growth. Our youth ministry has expanded in the last few years. We learned to challenge young people to lead others closer to God, to share the Gospel with their works and words."
- Steponas Davidavicius, Youth Director, Lithuania - "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 in 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
Andrea Aresca holds a Master’s Degree in Management Engineering and an Executive Master in Digital Transformation. After working as a manager in the manufacturing industry, he has been providing training, consulting, and interim management services since 2018, supporting both for-profit and non-… Read more
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
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
Peter Saunders was born in New Zealand and originally trained as a General Surgeon, before serving with the Africa Inland Mission in Kenya and completing two years mission training at All Nations Christian College in the UK. Since 1992 he has worked in full-time Christian ministry first with… Read more
Network Programme
Sunday, 17 May
We can never be taught everything we need to know about leadership. But wouldn't it be great to be able to approach leadership, at any and every level of responsibility, with a comprehensive framework that shapes our response to every situation we might encounter? That's what Scripture gives us! Approaching our practice of leadership by seeing it through the whole of the story of redemption gives Christian leaders a unique, comprehensive, and transformational perspective. Christian leadership is often taught through case studies of Bible leaders, or the metaphors of Scripture (shepherd, servant), or the direct instructions given to leaders in the New Testament, and these are each invaluable but incomplete. In this session, we'll explore how the whole of Scripture gives us an extraordinarily rich and wonderful way to approach leadership - and also gives us a reliable lens for evaluating the trustworthiness and usefulness of secular leadership tools and models.
In this session, more time will be given over to discussion and reflection on how the whole of Scripture gives us an extraordinarily rich and wonderful way to approach leadership and evaluate the trustworthiness and usefulness of secular leadership tools and models.
Monday, 18 May
How can we turn our vision into reality? Defining clear, specific, and time-bound projects is essential for effectively advancing our organisation. In this workshop, we’ll explore how to keep daily tasks aligned with our broader mission and develop practical strategies to communicate essential information to team members and stakeholders. Every project is a creative act, bringing new products, services, and outcomes to life! Together, we’ll draw inspiration from the ultimate Creator, learning how Biblical principles can guide our approach to project-based thinking and purposeful execution.
In this session, more time will be given over to discussion and reflection on executing strategies in our ministries and organisations that help turn our visions into realities in biblical and purposeful ways.
Tuesday, 19 May
Inertia, the tendency for things to stay as they have always been, is a crucial issue in churches, ministries, and organisations throughout our region. Leading change is difficult and will always encounter resistance. Often, the default is to change in fragmenting ways, as the new breaks away and develops in opposition with the old. How can you overcome the powerful forces of inertia and lead change in a way that both opens the future and blesses the past? How can you bring change that causes people to grow and keeps them together?
In this session, more time will be given over to discussion and reflection on leading change that opens the future, blesses the past, and causes people to grow while keeping them together.
Wednesday, 20 May
What does biblical leadership look like when lived out, and how can we learn to adapt as faithful leaders from one season to the next? Drawing from Peter's years of leadership experience, this session will offer illustrations and lessons learned on developing and maintaining a strong biblical foundation so that we can lead others well in a variety of situations.
In the final session of the Network, participants will reflect on the insights and outcomes of the week and will process how to apply key takeaways to their individual contexts. We will discuss ways we can encourage one another and keep one another accountable to the plans we’ve made and spend time together in prayer.