Monthly Leader Guide

1.     If possible, arrange chairs in a circle. If you have a small group, you may choose to seat them around one round table, ensuring there is room for everyone. Invite leaders to focus on the image or, if they are seated in a circle or at a table, to look around the circle as you begin.

2.     (Slide 2) Using content from the resource material, introduce the study by talking about how our call to leadership is rooted in our baptism and incarnated in our belonging to the body of Christ. Read I Corinthians 12:4–11, 27.

3.     (Slide 3) Letty Russell, a 20th century Presbyterian theologian, uses another image for the church. Her vision of the church is a round table; “a place where all people gather around as partners in ministry connecting to the world and each other in faith and for a life of reflection and action.”

4.     (Slide 4) What does a leader look like in this vision? “Leaders have authority of purpose rather than authority of position. Leaders with authority grounded in purpose humbly recognize that they are SERVANT LEADERS not leaders with servants” (Letty Russell, Church in the Round).

5.     (Slide 5) The call to servant leadership begins at our baptism. At baptism, we affirm that each person is a gift from God, chosen for salvation and for service, endowed by God with gifts to be used in obedience to Christ and for the building up of the Kingdom. God’s call begins before we are even aware and is nurtured by the covenant community as we grow. We grow to understand and experience God’s call through the life and worship in the community of faith.

6.     (Slide 6) How do we live out our call? Reformed theology talks about our call as our vocation. “Vocation comes from the Latin word, vocare, meaning to call or to summon, suggesting that “vocation is a calling from someone to someone for some purpose. [Vocation is about] emphasizing how we serve and give … rather than on what we receive for our labors” (Richard M. Webster, “Considering Your Call and Vocation: Study to Enrich Inquirers and Candidates”).

7.     If you are using the PowerPoint slides, use Slide 7. If you are not using the slides, print copies of the slide for each participant. What is my vocation? How can I discern my call? Our vocation or our call from God can be found by identifying our gifts, asking how our gifts have been nurtured and affirmed in the body of Christ, and exploring how our gifts have been or may be used for the common good. At the intersection of these three exercises, we find our vocation.

1.     What gifts have you identified in yourself? How have your gifts been nurtured and affirmed by this community? How are you using your gifts for the common good?

2.     What does it mean to you that you have been called as a ruling elder or deacon in the body of Christ, the Church?

If you are using the PowerPoint slides, use Slide 8. If you are not using the slides, print copies of the slide for each participant or write the content on a board or flipchart for all to see. Invite those gathered to say these words from the Book of Common Worship to reaffirm their baptism and their call to leadership.