Course Resources
September: Foundations of Ministry Leadership & Training
Explore how pastors are shaped through traditional training, practical experience, coaching, and mentoring — and begin mapping the formation patterns influencing your leadership today.
Book Reading Section:
Pt 1. Leadership and Ministry Training
NOTE: To maintain formatting integrity, all tables and footnotes are presented in full within the downloadable PDF.
LIVE Monthly Session: Leadership & Ministry
This session helps you untangle the leadership dilemmas pastors face and identify what healthy leadership requires.
The Power of Coaching & Mentoring for Modern Pastors
In this session, Pastor Glyn explores one of the most quietly transformative practices in pastoral leadership: coaching and mentoring.
This module invites you to pause and reflect on a simple but often neglected question: Who is helping you grow right now?
Podcast: Pastoral Leadership Formation Re-imagined
In this conversation, Paul Reid is joined by Simon Jarvis and Lilly Brightwell to explore a critical distinction shaping healthy churches today: the difference between ministry and leadership.
Using Psalm 78’s picture of David leading with integrity of heart and skillful hands, the discussion unpacks why ministry works in the church, while leadership works on the church—and why both are essential. When one is elevated without the other, leaders either burn out or lose depth.
Podcast: 5 Leadership Questions by Lifeway Leadership
This session draws on Episode 23 of The 5 Leadership Questions Podcast by Lifeway Leadership, offering a practical framework for differentiating coaching from mentoring in a ministry context. The episode highlights a helpful distinction: coaching sharpens skills and outcomes, while mentoring shapes identity, wisdom, and long-term growth. Use this resource to reflect on who has coached you, who has mentored you, and how each has formed your leadership journey — and consider where each approach is needed in your church today.
Podcast: Frontline Training Solutions: Mentoring vs Coaching
This podcast from Frontline Training Solutions explores the real-world differences between coaching and mentoring in everyday leadership settings. Through workplace examples and practical insights, it highlights how coaching drives skill development and immediate performance, while mentoring shapes long-term growth, character, and discernment.
Use this resource to reflect on how each approach functions within ministry, and consider where coaching or mentoring might strengthen your current leadership responsibilities.
Podcast: Leadership Equips Others for Ministry
Building on the distinction between working in the church and working on the church, this episode examines how leaders steward people, systems, and seasons so that ministry can multiply without exhausting a few. Drawing from real pastoral experience across multi-campus and multi-church contexts, the conversation surfaces the tensions leaders face as churches grow and roles evolve.
October: Understanding Leadership
Gain clarity on what leadership is, how it has evolved, and why modern ministry requires situational and adaptive skills to respond wisely to complexity and change.
Book Reading Section:
Pt 2. Leadership Definition, History & Collocation
NOTE: To maintain formatting integrity, all tables and footnotes are presented in full within the downloadable PDF.
LIVE: Monthly Session - Situational & Adaptive Leadership
In this webinar, Pastor Glyn offers leaders something often missing in the pressure of ministry: perspective.
When Leaders Have Time to Think: Doctoral Definitions of Leadership
Explore how, this time with forewarning, some doctoral students in leadership define leadership.
When Leaders Have Time to Think: Doctoral Definitions of Leadership
Explore how, this time with forewarning, some doctoral students in leadership define leadership
- Leaders make it possible for people to be transformed. I think of leadership as a verb, not a noun. It’s an action that comes out of one’s presence. So when you are calm, courageous, and connected, leadership arises out of that integrated, coherent presence. Strategies don’t transform people. Presence does. You’ve felt it before. A leader walks into the room, and without saying a word, the atmosphere shifts. Sometimes it settles into calm. Sometimes it sharpens into tension. Sometimes it scatters into confusion. That’s because presence is contagious. People don’t just respond to what you do; they resonate with who you are in the moment you show up… The HeartMath Institute calls coherence a “high performance and healthy state—physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually—that brings out the very best in us.” (1) In this state, your rhythms are smooth and ordered, your mind is clear, your emotions are steady, and you can adapt with balance and poise. Integrity—which is when parts form a strong, solid whole—aligns your values and actions. Coherence—which connotes “stickiness”—aligns your body and mind so you can live those values with presence. Together, they allow you to lead in ways that are calm (non-anxious), courageous (undefended), and deeply connected (based on rooted belovedness by God)—ways that transform not only you, but everyone you impact and influence.
- Leadership is a purposeful and relational process characterized by courageous and empathetic engagement with others, fostering trust, authenticity, and the collective capacity to navigate uncertainty with confidence and grit.
- Leadership is ‘a transformational process of gathering, guiding and influencing diverse people to achieve common goals’. Influenced by adaptive, transformational leadership, emotional and cultural intelligence, and the way of Jesus, and Hebrews 13:7-8.
- Leadership, to me, is the act of sharing my confidence to ignite confidence in others. It is about seeing potential where others see uncertainty, and using my belief not just in outcomes, but in people, to help them rise. I lead by affirming worth, modelling resilience, and creating space for growth. My goal is not to command, but to empower; not to be followed, but to walk beside.
I believe that when people feel seen, supported, and trusted, they begin to see themselves differently. That shift from doubt to possibility is where transformation begins. Leadership is not a spotlight—it is a mirror. And I strive to be the kind of leader who helps others see their strength reflected back at them.
- Leadership is moving people toward a unified goal.
- Leadership is a neutral force that can be applied for good or bad, and it only occurs in concert with others who become followers (otherwise, there's nobody to lead). Positive leadership is humble and inviting. It operates with ethics, a growth mindset, assumes the best of others and aims to collaborate for good. Positive leaders are courageous and - an important factor here- they are willing to change their opinion about something as more details are learned. They also strive for the ability to seek and give forgiveness. Positive leaders build bridges, especially with people who are opposites. The counterposition of negative leadership is based on a disposition of anger or a fixed mindset that employs manipulation tactics to attract followers. Negative leaders are typically not bridge builders, nor are they humble or servant leaders. Grace and forgiveness don't come easily, so authentic relationships are rare for leaders with a negative approach.
I do believe people can change their leadership positions over time. For example, in my prison work, we often sought to work with the most angry, negative leaders because we know they already had a following. If we could help them become positive leaders, more people would follow them to Jesus!
- My definition of leadership: The faithful stewardship of influence to guide and cultivate others toward flourishing in purpose and character.
- A leader is a person who influences people, through engaging processes, toward a shared plan for the future, while developing the person. Person (Leader) - People - process - Plan - Person. At the end of the day the most common definition is “influence” but this definition articulates how, toward what end, while developing more leaders.
- Leadership is being willing to stay in and navigate through the grey zone. A leader is always encountering issues that are often neither black nor white, thus learning to navigate people through the grey areas of life becomes a key part of leadership.
- Leadership is a relational process where an individual influences goals, vision, values and purpose towards a positive and sustainable outcome.
Podcast: The Grey Zone: Mark Sayers on Leading Through Uncertainty
In this external podcast episode, Mark Sayers unpacks what he calls the “Grey Zone” — the in-between era where old cultural patterns are breaking down and new ones have not yet formed.
Webinar: Leadership Past and Present
In this webinar, Pastor Glyn offers leaders something often missing in the pressure of ministry: perspective.
Rather than treating leadership as a modern problem with modern solutions, this session traces leadership wisdom from ancient Scripture through to contemporary frameworks—revealing that while the context changes, the core tensions of leadership remain the same: people, pressure, power, and purpose.
Podcast: Unscripted - Real Leaders Respond to “What Is Leadership?”
In this unscripted podcast exercise, a group of ministry leaders and Doctor of Leadership students are asked one simple question with no warning: “What is leadership?” Their spontaneous, unfiltered answers reveal how real leaders instinctively understand influence, responsibility, and calling—before theory or preparation shape their responses. Use this episode to examine your own immediate definition of leadership and what it reveals about how you lead today.
Leadaptive Leadership Flex - Cohort BETA 26
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Resources
2 lessons- Bibliography
- Full Leadership Flex Workbook
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September - Foundations of Ministry Leadership & Training
8 lessons- Book Reading Section: Pt 1 Leadership and Ministry Training
- Webinar: The Power of Coaching & Mentoring for Modern Pastors
- Podcast: Pastoral Leadership Formation Re-imagined
- Podcast: 5 Leadership Questions by Lifeway Leadership
- Podcast: Frontline Training Solutions: Mentoring vs Coaching: Practical Wisdom for Today’s Leaders
- Podcast: Leadership Equips Others for Ministry
- LIVE Monthly Session: Leadership & Ministry – Untangling the Dilemma
- Leadaptive Leadership Flex: Monthly Challenge (Sep 2026)
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October - Understanding Leadership
7 lessons- Book Reading Section: Pt 2 Leadership Definition, History & Collocation
- Webinar: Leadership Past and Present
- Podcast: Unscripted - Real Leaders Respond to “What Is Leadership?”
- When Leaders Have Time to Think: Doctoral Definitions of Leadership
- Podcast: The Grey Zone: Mark Sayers on Leading Through Uncertainty
- LIVE: Monthly Session - Situational & Adaptive Leadership
- Leadaptive Flex Leadership Monthly Challenge (Oct 2026)
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Situational & Adaptive Leadership
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Leadership Styles - Knowing Yourself
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Knowing Yourself to Lead Others
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Leadership Shadow
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Seasons
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Leadership Flexibility
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Toolkit for Flex
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Multiplying Healthy Leadership
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Leadaptive Retreat - Spain (3 Days)
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