Empowering: Implications of Jesus' leadership in Luke's gospel for the pastoral team at First Assembly of God in Des Moines, Iowa

This project developed and taught an awareness seminar to train the pastoral team of First Assembly of God in Des Moines, Iowa, toward increasing effectiveness as empowering leaders. The project incorporated a two-part approach, establishing a one year strategic planning process that culminated with the empowering leadership seminar.; The strategic planning process served as a tool in determining church growth and pastoral team growth obstacles and as an environment for the team to observe empowering leadership behavior. A one-year plan was presented to the congregation at First Assembly's ALIVE vision celebration (annual business meeting). We based our decision to conduct the seminar on our evaluations of three things: (1) congregational and community surveys, (2) historical trends and data about First Assembly, and (3) informal discussion with members of the pastoral and support team. These three sources revealed that our church was ready to become an empowering culture, led by empowering leaders.; The empowering leadership seminar concentrated on improving the participants' knowledge, skill, and attitudes toward an empowering leadership style of ministry. Jesus' model of empowering leadership in the Gospel of Luke was revealed through lecture, peer group interaction, small group exercises, pre- and postsurveys and tests, and an evaluation of the seminar.; After the seminar, the participants' awareness of empowering leadership improved by eleven percent in the performance of the following five measured behaviors: (1) modeling the way, (2) inspiring a shared vision, (3) challenging the process, (4) enabling others to act, and (5) encouraging the heart. Research of the biblical-theological literature and other relevant literature in the field of empowerment indicated the need for pastoral leadership to transition to an empowering leadership style of ministry.