What is the Institute for Excellence in Christian Leadership Development?

The Institute for Excellence has been essential for Overseas Council to achieve its goal of assisting training centers around the world to train Christian leaders who make a difference in the church and society. So what is the Institute?

The Institute for Excellence is a 4 day gathering where a 1-4 person team from many training centers in a given region come together to discuss best practices, collaborate on regional focuses, and work through common regional challenges in their efforts to train effective Christian leaders.

This year, including an institute that starts next week in Ukraine, we will have completed 7 institutes, covering 5 continents. If we amalgamate the totals to display the overall impact of these Institutes, we will have had 148 training centers represented from 74 countries.

All 407 participants came to discuss Organizational Change and Financial Sustainability. Training Centers in Africa learned about innovative ways one school is using some of their property for a banana plantation that assists the school financially. Training Centers in South America are working on a collaborative training program. In India, several training centers are beginning to share trainers with one another in order to collaborate and be better stewards.

Here are a few updates on improvements the Institute over the past year:

Opt-In Model: Learning will more likely occur if it responds to a perceived need and is “owned” by the learner. A school should participate in an Institute because it is “pulled” to do so, not because we are “pushing” it. They should anticipate value and relevance in the Institute. They will participate because they want to learn about the topic of the Institute and be ready to make improvements.

More Participants Per Seminary: Organizational change is more likely to take place if there is a “guiding coalition” within the seminary

Pre-Institute Learning Activities: Learning will more likely take place where there are multiple interventions both prior to and after the Institute.

Ministry Action Plan: The MAP has four objectives. It facilitates learning during the Institute as participants from the same school wrestle with the implications of the content for their own situation, it provides a way for each school to identify and articulate the action steps as a result of the Institute, it provides a starting point for post-Institute interaction between the RD and seminaries which desire collaboration in the implementation of their plans. Finally, it provides a basis for discerning observable outcomes attributable to the Institute.

Regional Director Involvement, Regional Attentiveness and Communities of Learning were three other factors that will become increasingly influential in charting the Institute’s effectiveness.