Course Syllabus

There are two REQUIRED SYNCHRONOUS SESSIONS for everyone (Austin & Iliff). Get them into your calendar: Synchronous session #1 Friday Apr 8 @ 5:00pm mtn. and Synchronous session #2 Saturday May 21st @ 8:00-9:15am mountain  

Iliff students ALSO meet in Denver Friday, April 29th 1:00-5:00pm for the hybrid portion of the course. 

Leadership in the UM Church involves working with both technical and adaptive problems at all levels - congregations, conferences, and globally. The Book of Discipline provides excellent tools for almost all of the technical problems that have arisen in the past; it provides few to no tools for adaptive problems. Since leaders deal with both kinds of problems simultaneously, this course will allow students to develop familiarity with tools needed for each kind of problem, as well as practice determining which features of a given problem are technical or adaptive.

Instructor: Rev. Dr. Cathie Kelsey,  ckelsey@iliff.edu or text 303-968-9812

Learning goals:

1. Students will find and follow the processes in the Book of Discipline that guide leaders through technical problems that occur in congregations.

2. Students will begin to develop their vision of a healthy organization.

3. Students will begin to be able to translate research on business organizations to religious organizations, particularly congregations.

4. Students will practice identifying which features of a presenting problem are technical and which require adaptation, mastering the definitions "technical problem" and "adaptive problem" in use of them.

5. Students will develop their use of adaptive leadership tools, particularly tools for analysis of a situation, articulation of the adaptive problem, and analysis of the self as leader in the situation.

6. Students will practice the complex art of thinking about their leadership roles in technical and adaptive frames simultaneously.

3 Required Texts:

The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church 2016. (United Methodist Publishing House, 2016). ISBN 978-1-501-83321-2. $12.99 Kindle or used

Heifetz, Ronald, Alexander Grashow, Marty Linsky. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World. (Harvard Business Press, 2009). ISBN 978-1-4221-0576-4  $22.99 cloth or $15.46 Kindle

Lencioni, Patrick. The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business. (Jossey-Bass, 2012). ISBN 978-0-470-94152-2. $13.99 cloth or $17.00 Kindle

RESOURCES we use  This wiki page is for sharing resources, particularly information sources for ministry in the UMC and sources of political analysis of the schism-in-progress.  Please be sure your favorite resources have been added to the page.