Center for Progressive Renewal

Here is a brief overview of the Center for Progressive Renewal and the "Seven Secrets" workshop that I will attend next week.

This past year, the Center for Progressive Renewal (CPR) team assembled an unprecedented portfolio of leadership and church development resources that includes:

• A proven process for assessing, recruiting, training and coaching church leaders, with more than 3,500 people engaged in the process.

• A team of the nation’s best leadership and church development consultants, coaches and trainers dedicated to working with conferences and congregations across all denominations.

• An online learning center offering seminary course work, workshops and more than two dozen webinars.

• An innovative business management and executive skills program to equip church leaders with critical business skills.

• A national database of more than 4,000 prospective church leaders representing more than 20 denominations.

• The fourth annual New Church Leadership Institute, offering training to a record-breaking audience of church planters and renewal specialists.

The mission of The Center for Progressive Renewal is to renew Progressive Christianity by training new entrepreneurial leaders, supporting the birth of new liberal/progressive congregations, and by renewing and strengthening existing progressive churches. The name Progressive Renewal is the articulation of a vision that our organization exists to service the progressive church in a systematic/progressive way. We understand Progressive Christianity as a faith that believes God’s family includes all people; God’s people are responsible for caring for the environment, the poor, sick and vulnerable; that education, health care and civil liberties are vital to abundant life and therefore the desire of God for all people; and that truth is found more often in honest grappling with the questions than in absolute hierarchical pronouncement of the answers. We further believe that this is the type of faith for which millions of Americans hunger.

Revitalization Track

• Re-Branding and New Identity
• Mastering the Media
• Building Your Database - Grow your Church!
• Fundraising and Stewardship
• Re-imagining for Renewal
• Building/Transforming Your Church through Spiritual Practices
• New Spiritual Appetites

Center for Progressive Renewal

Main Sessions

Assets - Beginning Where You Are: Through processes like Asset Mapping and Appreciative Inquiry each individual and church discovers their unique strengths, passions, competencies, and assets. This must be the starting place on the journey to vitality.

Change – Preparing to Follow the Spirit: Having identified our unique strengths we now move to preparing for where the Spirit is leading us. By seeing and accepting the changes we need make, we retool our church for growth.

Mission – Turning the Church Inside Out: Having discovered our strengths and seen the future our church could have we begin the process which moves a church from being internally to externally focused, from a program and management orientation to a service and missional orientation.

Communication – From Identity Formation to Market Saturation: Learning to be “as cunning as a serpent and as innocent as a dove” in terms of branding/re-branding and effectively communicating the values and vision of the church in a way that is irresistibly attractive to those who need its message and ministries.

Connection – Creating Transformational Community: Creating transformation connections by practicing extravagant hospitality. Recognizing the new kinds of connections such as Facebook, the church must offer opportunities for authentic community to in which people are changed

Administration – Managing for Mission: Shifting from managing for maintenance to creating systems and structures that support and enhance the ministry of the church and its mission in the world. Managing data is more important in today’s culture than managing money.

Transformational Worship – The Heart-beat of Vital and Vibrant Church: Any church that offers 52 energetic, relevant, and transformational worship services a year will grow. The community gathers for an authentic experience of God and an hour or so later scatters to be the Church.