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Church Leadership Academy

CLA 2027 — scroll-motion preview

What’s your plan for growth in 2027?

Leadership training designed for the real world of church leadership. Grow with clarity, courage and wisdom in the context you are actually leading.

Church leadership is complex and unique. Most leaders were well trained theologically, but many were never equipped for the organisational, relational and cultural realities of leading churches today.

Four modules. A year of focused growth.

Our 2027 programme focuses on growing people, leading with vision, strengthening your organisation and making wise decisions.

Module 201 Early March

Leading Volunteers

Be an enabling leader who grows and mobilises people.

What you’ll learn
  • Create systems and environments where volunteers and leaders flourish.
  • Foster trust and develop healthy volunteer teams.
  • Understand barriers to empowerment.
  • Practise delegation, coaching, and role-clarification.
  • Build volunteer capacity and leadership pipelines.
  • Explore biblical foundations for serving together on mission.
  • Identify leadership traits that prevent/promote teamwork.
  • Build a plan for your context to accelerate volunteering and impact.
Module 301 Early June

Leading Forward

Be a visionary and strategic leader who inspires people forward.

What you’ll learn
  • Think strategically by pausing to dream, plan, and see the big picture.
  • Lead teams through a collaborative visioning process.
  • Distinguish strong strategic plans from weak ones.
  • Create actionable, aligned, executable plans.
  • Communicate vision in a way that reduces resistance.
  • Examine strategic planning tools and choose best fit for your context.
  • Map the spiritual and practical stages of vision and strategy.
Module 203 Late August

Leading Organisationally

Be an effective leader, managing the modern church.

What you’ll learn
  • Lead the church as a healthy organisation with strong governance and clarity.
  • Strengthen staff leadership, team alignment, and people management.
  • Practise responsible stewardship and management of financial resources.
  • Deploy people, finances, and systems strategically to support mission.
  • Explore essential functions of management (staffing, finance, governance).
  • Uncover gaps and growth areas in your current organisation.
  • Establish an action plan for strengthening organisational effectiveness.
Module 303 Mid October

Leading Wisely

Be a discerning and decisive leader in complex times.

What you’ll learn
  • Develop the characteristics of wise decision-making.
  • Use frameworks (including Cynefin) to navigate complexity.
  • Integrate spiritual discernment into leadership decisions.
  • Adopt skills and mindsets that foster innovation.
  • Apply principles to real ministry challenges.
  • Explore biblical/practical processes of seeking wisdom.
  • Foster a culture of experimentation and innovation.
  • Workshop opportunities for innovation in your context.

Indicative 2027 timing.

Explore the full CLA curriculum

Our curriculum covers ten modules across three areas of church leadership: Foundation, Capacity and Forward. Explore the modules below to find the right development focus for you and your team.

Foundation

Strengthening foundations through self-leadership, emotional health, spiritual maturity and resilience.

Spiritual Leadership 101

Discovering and embracing the distinctiveness of spiritual leadership

Learning outcomes

  • Articulate a rich, biblically grounded theology of Christian leadership.
  • Explore the central role of character and Christlikeness in leadership.
  • Understand a healthy approach to the use of power.
  • Identify and challenge common misconceptions of leadership.
  • Explore the distinctive nature and implications of biblical leadership today.
  • Explode leadership myths and misconceptions.
  • Establish a set of core values and best practices for your leadership.
Empowering Leadership 102

Bringing out the best in yourself and those you lead

Learning outcomes

  • Identify your leadership style, strengths, and growth edges.
  • Understand the three core tasks of self-leadership.
  • Shift from task-driven leadership to purpose-driven leadership.
  • Recognise and understand your impact on others.
  • Learn how to intentionally bring your best self to leadership.
  • Understand the implications of your leadership style utilising a 360 diagnostic.
  • Explore the mindsets and practices to empower and elevate others.
  • Build a better plan to bring out the best in yourself and others.
Emotionally Intelligent Leadership 103

Growing a leader’s emotional intelligence skills to lead people well

Learning outcomes

  • Understand the nature and significance of emotional intelligence in leadership.
  • Learn key ideas from major EQ thinkers and practitioners.
  • Self-assess across major EQ categories.
  • Understand and apply the 10 RocheMartin EQ competencies.
  • Recognise how your team perceives your EQ and its implications.
  • Examine foundational biblical principles for emotional intelligence.
  • Evaluate your emotional awareness and identify blind spots.
  • Develop a plan with strategies and tools to lift the level of EQ in your leadership and team.
Long Haul Leadership 104

Staying healthy and effective in leadership for the long haul

Learning outcomes

  • Develop sustainable self-care rhythms that support long-term ministry health.
  • Set and maintain healthy personal and relational boundaries.
  • Adopt organisational habits and efficiencies that support sustainable sacrificial service.
  • Examine the unique challenges of church leadership and what makes it vulnerable to fatigue.
  • Explore principles and best practices to foster self-care and staff care.
  • Develop a customised resilience plan for you and your context.

Capacity

Building capacity through staff, volunteers, systems and organisational health.

Leading Volunteers 201

Raising volunteer teams and leaders to fulfil the purpose of the church

Featured in the 2027 programme

Learning outcomes

  • Create systems and environments where volunteers and leaders flourish.
  • Foster trust and develop healthy volunteer teams.
  • Understand barriers to empowerment.
  • Practise delegation, coaching, and role-clarification.
  • Build volunteer capacity and leadership pipelines.
  • Explore biblical foundations for serving together on mission.
  • Identify leadership traits that prevent/promote teamwork.
  • Build a plan for your context to accelerate volunteering and impact.
Leading Disciple Making 202

Fostering a culture of maturity and discipleship multiplication

Learning outcomes

  • Define what a mature disciple looks like in your context.
  • Design a clear and intentional discipleship pathway.
  • Identify key resources, environments, and practices for growth.
  • Establish a biblical framework that helps people flourish.
  • Identify barriers and blind spots hindering disciple making culture.
  • Develop a discipleship strategy that works for your context.
Leading Organisationally 203

Where God's mission and great church management meet

Featured in the 2027 programme

Learning outcomes

  • Lead the church as a healthy organisation with strong governance and clarity.
  • Strengthen staff leadership, team alignment, and people management.
  • Practise responsible stewardship and management of financial resources.
  • Deploy people, finances, and systems strategically to support mission.
  • Explore essential functions of management (staffing, finance, governance).
  • Uncover gaps and growth areas in your current organisation.
  • Establish an action plan for strengthening organisational effectiveness.

Forward

Moving forward through vision, discernment, change and wise decision-making.

Leading Forward 301

Mobilising people with clear vision and plan to get there

Featured in the 2027 programme

Learning outcomes

  • Think strategically by pausing to dream, plan, and see the big picture.
  • Lead teams through a collaborative visioning process.
  • Distinguish strong strategic plans from weak ones.
  • Create actionable, aligned, executable plans.
  • Communicate vision in a way that reduces resistance.
  • Examine strategic planning tools and choose best fit for your context.
  • Map the spiritual and practical stages of vision and strategy.
Leading Change 302

…without blowing up the church

Learning outcomes

  • Lead change with wisdom, agility, and pastoral sensitivity.
  • Navigate generational shifts, digital transformation, and shifting roles.
  • Anticipate, manage, and reduce resistance to change.
  • Minimise friction and guide adaptive, spiritually grounded change.
  • Explore dynamics of change leadership in church (types, contexts, psychology).
  • Bring people on a change journey from start to finish.
  • Map out your next change process as a leader.
Leading Wisely 303

Holy Spirit led decision making and innovation in the mission of God

Featured in the 2027 programme

Learning outcomes

  • Develop the characteristics of wise decision-making.
  • Use frameworks (including Cynefin) to navigate complexity.
  • Integrate spiritual discernment into leadership decisions.
  • Adopt skills and mindsets that foster innovation.
  • Apply principles to real ministry challenges.
  • Explore biblical/practical processes of seeking wisdom.
  • Foster a culture of experimentation and innovation.
  • Workshop opportunities for innovation in your context.

Options & pricing

Choose an individual module or plan a longer development journey. For leaders of denominations, customised and co-branded programmes can be created at no extra charge.

One full-day in-person module

$275

per module

Save 50% on your first module as a new client.

Annual workshop bundle

$990

per participant · over 12 months

One ticket to each of the four scheduled CLA workshops across the year.

Save $110.

Entire curriculum

$2,310

per participant · over 2–3 years

Save $440.

All prices include GST. Terms & conditions apply .

Go further with a leadership package

Combine targeted development with diagnostic insight, coaching and support for your church. These packages are designed to be explored in conversation and adapted to your context.

Training + coaching + insight

Impact Package

Increase the impact of leadership training by pairing it with coaching.

$2,310

package price · including GST

Save $187.

  • 1 × Ticket to each of the four scheduled CLA workshops across the year
  • 4 × One-to-One Coaching / Pastoral Supervision Sessions
  • 1 × 360 Assessment and Debrief

Leadership + church health + team development

Advance Package

A twelve-month leadership and church-health programme.

$5,940

per church for the year · including GST

Impact Package · RRP $2,310
  • 1 × Ticket to each of the four scheduled CLA workshops across the year
  • 4 × One-to-One Coaching / Pastoral Supervision Sessions
  • 1 × 360 Assessment and Debrief
Church Health · RRP $2,640
  • 1 × Comprehensive Church Health Review
  • 1 × Half-Day Strategy Alignment Workshop
Team Development · RRP $1,650
  • Facilitation of a Team Development Day or a Team Spiritual Retreat Day

All prices include GST. Terms & conditions apply . Explore our leadership packages .

Need something tailored to your team?

We also offer workshops customised to your context—online, in person at your place, or in a retreat setting so you can go slower and grow deeper together.

Talk with us