Leadership Development
Our Vision
Through conversations with leaders in the Episcopal Church and fellow Anglicans in many parts of the world, we have consistently heard that the two critical challenges for the church are the formation of leaders with practical skills for engaging a changing world, and the financial capacity to sustain their ministries. Reflecting on this over a period of discernment, Trinity has identified leadership development as one of its five strategic priorities.
In response to the need to train, empower, and network future leaders for the Church and the world, Trinity launched its leadership development initiative. The initiative aims to develop a global collaborative network of educators and innovators working at the intersection of faith and leadership.
We expect the initiative, in collaboration with partners, to equip lay and ordained leaders in the Church—and leaders in values-aligned secular organizations—to respond to emerging challenges and work together in dynamic partnerships that honor and activate the ministry of all believers and those who share our values.
Trinity works with partners around the world to establish programs focused on specific areas of leadership development through three key approaches:
Identifying church leaders
i.e. emerging ordained leaders, lay leaders, and people of faith leading secular organizations
Training church leaders
to grow and empower spiritual communities to address the challenges of a changing world
Networking church leaders
into a global cohort of learning, mentorship, and growth opportunities
The work focuses on three audiences/projects, supported primarily through grantmaking from Trinity, and guided by a diverse advisory group of church leaders, seminary faculty, and educators from secular institutions.
Leadership Innovation in Theological Education
In 2019, Church Divinity School of the Pacific and Trinity Church Wall Street convened leaders of the Episcopal Church to discuss ways to identify and equip emerging leaders for the Church and the world. Through this and other convenings, Trinity works to promote and share innovations in practical, faith- and skills-based leadership development in theological education.
Leadership development for people of faith, lay and ordained
Trinity recently advanced its commitment to leadership development by awarding $1.8 million in grants to seminaries, dioceses and non-profits. Robert Garris, Managing Director for Leadership Development, said, “These grants advance our goal of developing faith leaders, both clergy and lay, whose leadership is embedded in the values of faith and empowered by practical leadership and management skills that bridge congregation and neighborhood.”
Prospective grant applicants should keep the following priorities under consideration:
- Applicants might be seminaries or divinity schools but might also be dioceses, Church organizations, or other institutions offering non-degree programs of theological education focused on leadership development.
- Proposals should advance innovation, taking new approaches to leadership development that develop practical skills, shaped by faith, for action in the world. Examples of these skills might be (but aren’t limited to) strategy, conflict resolution, team building, congregational development, financial decision making, communications, community engagement, and others, all shaped and exercised through faith and values.
- Proposals must link faith and theological education with mindsets or skills relevant to successful leadership of groups or institutions.
- Proposals should produce resources that can be shared with a broad collaborative community interested in faith and leadership formation, preferably shared digitally.
- Proposals should describe a project that has the potential for independent financial sustainability over time.