What is PLF?
A Snapshot
From the beginning, PLF has been a dynamic process of leader formation in the unique arts and sciences of mid council leadership designed by practitioners for practitioners.
By Practitioners for Practitioners
Those who provide 90-day companionship and teach during the annual residencies are all mid council leaders.
Through 90-day companionship we welcome people new to this unique vocation into their role. We listen with new mid council leaders for the opportunities and challenges they face in the critical first 90-days. Along the way, the 90-day companion may offer anticipative wisdom from their experience of taking a similar leap into mid council leadership.
Faculty for the 3-year residency process are active practitioners of mid council leadership. The faculty team is called with deep consideration toward assembling a complementary team in diversity, competencies, and contexts of service. The faculty team designs the content and flow of the 3-year annual residency. They also facilitate and/or teach the content.
Coaching Component
PLF participants are paired with an International Coaching Federation (ICF) credentialed coach who provides a monthly conversation to explore challenges, opportunities, and questions.
The mix of companionship, coaching, and residential learning together generates a synergistic cocktail of formation.
Formation
PLF is designed to be a wholistic process of spiritual leadership formation. PLF focuses
on whole person formation into becoming and embracing this unique call to servant leadership in Christ’s church. Knowing that all truth is God’s, we lean on insights from scriptural, ecclesial and many other domains of experience and knowledge for people, examples and sources.
In addition we have noticed that perhaps the highest value outcome of PLF is relationship formation. Many cohorts who walked through the first PLF in 2009-10 still maintain and grow those relationships. That’s true of connections made for every year. Some cohort relationships built through PLF meet together regularly and often through an in-person retreat that they self-organize. You may find that you will draw on each other for inspiration, resources, and encouragement for years to come.
A Little History
While the Association of Executive Presbyters (AEPS was a precursor to Association of
Mid Council Leaders or AMCL) had been training new presbytery leaders since the 1980s, this formational approach to mid council leadership held its first formation residency in May 2009 at Highlands Camp near Denver, CO.
Every year the faculty evaluates and evolves PLF based on always-helpful insight, recommendations, and evaluations of those who have experienced it. As part of the PLF community we welcome your gifts, competencies and insight to reforming our communal approach to PLF in each season! Here is one way we described “Who is a PLFer?" in 2018.
Welcome to this courageous, creative, and connected community that is PLF!
I appreciate the diversity of perspectives brought by the faculty. All are experienced presbytery
leaders with excellent abilities, but each brought a slightly different angle and personality/spirit
to the work. Individually and collectively, they are a first-rate team! Also, this felt like the right
length of time. It was long enough to truly be away from normal responsibilities and to silently
demonstrate its importance to our scheduled life, yet not so extended as to be unmanageable.
Anita Bernhardt, Presbytery of Lake Erie