Courses
Grow in your leadership on your own time.
Our goal is to help faith leaders thrive as change leaders, that is why we have partnered with a few incredible organizations to bring you more resources.
Learn more about these programs below and as always if you have questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.
Self-Paced Course
Mastering Practicing Change
Mastering Practicing Change is a self-paced course that walks you through and expands the adaptive leadership framework from Tod Bolsinger’s Practicing Change four-book series. Through engaging conversations and reflective balcony sessions, you’ll learn how to apply adaptive leadership in your own context so you can lead with clarity, courage, and resilience.
Each of the four books in the series focuses on mistakes even good leaders make. In this course, those insights are broken down into short, digestible lessons featuring author and AESL Principal Tod Bolsinger, along with AE Sloan coaches, consultants, and real clients who—like you—are practicing change in their own ministry and organizational settings. The course also incorporates the books’ balcony practices to help you pause, reflect, and apply what you’ve learned, thereby growing your adaptive capacity, not just your knowledge.
Self-Paced Course
Adaptive Capacity Leadership Training
In our rapidly shifting world, the ability to adapt isn't just a skill; it's a necessity. Our signature self-paced course has been specifically tailored to empower faith leaders with the skills and competency to grow their adaptive capacity, so they can foster growth, understanding, and resilience within their teams, churches and organizations
The adaptive leadership skills you will develop:
Identify and distinguish Adaptive Challenges from Technical Problems
Overcome the expert expectation by learning to lead organizational learning
Ability to disrupt the leadership default to old best practices.
Name and navigate competing values
Self-assess using the markers of Adaptive Capacity
Utilize prototypes to create the capacity for ongoing experimentation and learning
Increase your own emotional attunement for leading change processes
Identify and lead through sabotage
Team Retreat
Leadership In A Disrupted World
If you are a team leader looking for a way to bring your team together for a one-day learning experience in Adaptive Change, this may be the perfect resource. We give you videos, discussion questions, excerpts from Canoeing the Mountains and exercises for creating good, guided learning discussions. You provided the location (or Zoom link), the coffee and snacks. This is a turn-key "conference" that has been used by teams as small as a handful and by groups of several hundred.
This series of videos and lessons is based on the work of Tod Bolsinger, author of Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory. It is organized in sessions for each topic. There are four topics to choose each with the same structure, one for each session.
A brief introduction (which can be read by an individual or read aloud by a group convener)
A 20-minute video featuring Tod Bolsinger speaking on one topic for Leadership in a Disrupted World.
Video content for each session
A set of discussion questions for groups to use following the video
A final reflection that features a section Tod’s book, Canoeing the Mountains that can be read aloud to the group to bring that session to a close
Not sure what course is right for you?
Connect with us below, and our team will reach out to help you find the right option for your team.
Other Resources To Explore:
CLI Cohort:
Most church leaders today recognize that we are undergoing an unprecedented change. How can we learn to leverage this moment for even greater transformation of our congregations? What does your team need to learn to come out the other side of the pandemic stronger than ever? If you find yourself overwhelmed by the challenges, you want to learn to lead real adaptive change.
The Church Leadership Institute offers two different modalities of cohorts: a regionally based hybrid cohort (in collaboration with Fresh Expressions) and a fully online cohort. Both of these cohorts offer resourcing, a team approach, a community of fellow travelers, and coaching that can help you take the important steps towards more impactful ministry in a radically changed world.
Seminary Now Online Course
Tod Bolsinger teaches you how to thrive as an effective leader in a rapidly changing world. Based on the bestselling book by Tod Bolsinger (InterVarsity Press), this video curriculum presents wisdom and practical tools to help us rethink what it means to be a great leader in today's quickly changing environment.
