Church leaders from across the South Pacific Division (SPD) gathered for a leadership program retreat over the weekend of August 29–September 1.
Attendees came from the spheres of ministry, administration, finance, education, from institutions such as ADRA, Adventist Media and Sanitarium, and from missions and conferences right across the SPD.
The retreat is part of a 12-month formal leadership program involving up to 40 leaders that has been run each year since 2021. Participants of this year’s program are undertaking business coaching throughout the year and many got to meet their coaches in person at the retreat.
“While much of the course takes place online, the retreat is face-to-face and has a highly spiritual focus, allowing leaders to reflect and share together on how God has impacted their leadership journey,” said Dean Banks, SPD Leadership strategy leader.
“The focus [of this year’s summit] was on leading self and how God has led in my life. Rarely do leaders get a chance to have uninterrupted time to reflect, journal, be vulnerable and share with each other in a trusted environment.”
Mr Banks said every organisation, including the Church, faces the challenge of keeping pace with a rapidly changing society. “To stay relevant and reach our community to share the gospel, we need leaders with courage, that can adapt quickly, embrace change and try different things,” he said. “To ensure we don’t have leadership gaps, we’re also focusing on identifying young and future leaders, and being very intentional about growing them.”
Presenters for the weekend were Drs Erich Baumgartner and Randy Siebold, co-directors of the Global Leadership Institute, based at Andrews University.
“Leadership is not so much doing things well,” Dr Baumgartner told attendees. “It is more to do with who we are.”
Along with writing parts of their life stories to see where God had led them to become leaders, participants were also challenged to connect with each other, especially with the people in the room they thought they had the least in common with.
“Given we’re the most culturally diverse division in the world, our leaders need to be able to influence and collaborate with people across our different cultures to get things done,” said Mr Banks. “The diversity of program participants allowed different perspectives to be shared and authentic relationship bonds to develop so we can do this better together.”
Pastor Wayne Boehm, director of Hope Channel in the South Pacific, reflected on his experience of the leadership development program as “a really rewarding experience—to learn, to listen, not just from the lecturers, but from the other participants. It just enriches and broadens your own leadership experience.”
According to Pastor Boehm, leaders who are undertaking this training will now take back the knowledge and tools they have learned, such as active listening and growth mindsets, to their local contexts.
“One of the key things I took away from the weekend was really meeting new leaders from the different unions. To see them in a different capacity, to hear their input, to see how they’re currently contributing to the church and then will carry on contributing as their skills are honed through this leadership conference. That was pretty rewarding to see.”
