This is the fourth and final piece in our series on the Compelling Preaching Cohorts of Mountain Sky Conference, and in particular, on what has created internal sustainability for the programs. We’ve talked about collaborative feedback, about finding the level of freedom (and boundaries) where people thrive, and finally, we’re talking about the thing behind the thing of it all: trust. 

I’ve started the last two blogs with tales of missteps I made that helped me learn how to lead this project better, this one starts instead, with the correct-steps of others (but don’t worry, it still involves a little self-deprecation).

When I was asked to write the Mountain Sky Conference’s grant proposal for the Lilly Endowment’s Compelling Preaching Initiative, I had won exactly zero grant dollars. I had written one large grant for another client, and didn’t get it. I felt a bit uneasy, I had loved writing the last grant I wrote, but it had been for a client that everyone agreed was a long-shot for being awarded, so the pressure didn’t feel particularly high. That wasn’t true for Mountain Sky, they were the type of organization that had a real shot at the grant, but weren’t a shoe-in by any means. It wasn’t exactly the type of scenario where the work of grant-writing really mattered. 

And Trey, now the president of Ministry Architects, including the Ministry Incubators division, asked me to do it. Ministry Incubators, at the time, had a very diffused leadership model, which is a fancy way of saying when you agreed to do something, you basically were on your own to figure out how to get it done (a system I always liked). 

I looked at the request for proposals, developed a timeline and a strategy, set meetings, and just… began. The clients were lovely; energetic, creative, curious, and provided clear feedback and collaborative input, but never once breathed down my throat or looked over my shoulder as I worked. Trey had trusted me to do this (with limited evidence), and because they trusted Trey, they trusted me. 

We got the grant (clearly), and when work began, the trust built on itself, I knew the team would hire a great program director, and they asked me to stay on a project manager. I started turning the wheels of the program, and when Rev. Sherry Ferriman was hired, I handed it all over, and became a second-in-command. In Sherry’s first months, she, naturally, felt the stress of trying to actually create the program that her boss and I had dreamed up, and expressed feelings that made me realize that she didn’t feel like the program was truly hers. 

By the end of the first summer, Sherry had run 5 different on-site events, sat in on dozens of cohort calls, and knew better than I did what this program actually could and would be, now that it had encountered the real world. I remember her first floating some edits, and me reminding her that it was her program, not mine, and that she got to decide. That Spring, I had on our timeline to begin setting up our “Level 2” programming, and, to my delight, Sherry totally ran with it. 

Sherry hired a series of independent facilitators, each one leading a single experiential opportunity focused on a topic of particular relevance. It was a total divergence from the original grant design, and absolutely a wise one. 

Sherry’s hours of on-the-ground connections had made her acutely aware of the articulated needs of our target audience, and her history in the conference gave her ideas of how to meet those needs. Sherry’s strategy for these Level 2 experiences: to find the right topics, find the right people, and then back off, has proven to be not just useful for current participants (the Level 2 experiences are by far are most popular program) but has created a self-sustaining engine of leadership, where participants are offering to lead programming in their specific areas of interest, leaders are being asked to return for deeper and wider expansions of their initial offerings, and more. 

Finally, watching Sherry and the other Mountain Sky leaders this past weekend made me acutely aware of how much of the Compelling Preaching Cohorts, particularly the foundational (or Level 1) retreats like the one I was at, were about teaching participants to trust themselves, the Holy Spirit, and their own story. Sherry shared that in every sinlge Level 1 cohort they have held (over a dozen), there has been someone who assures the group that they do not preach and they will never preach. They tell some alternative narrative for why they are at what is explictly a preaching retreat, saying things like, “my pastor dragged me along,” or “I want to feel more comfortable sharing my faith in conversation.” 

And, in Sherry’s telling, that person, always, eventually, preaches. They go through the whole retreat explaining why it doesnt apply to them, and Sherry always nods politely, and asks them to participate anyway, and what do you know – after two and half days of practicing sermon forms, sermon drafting, exegesis, storytelling, and more – those “nevers” have become “maybes.” So much of the work, which asks participants to answer quickly, earnestly, and assumes that participants already have all that they need within in, is about teaching participants to trust the little voice inside themselves that got them in the room in the first place. 

When I think about what gave this program its character, its internal DNA, and its internal engine, it becomes clear: its trust. Trust offered at every level, and made good on over and over again, in a virtuous reenforcing cycle, has allowed this program to take on a life of its own.

It’s also why, sad is it may be, I have no hesitation about saying good-bye. I said in the first blog that it was because the program was sustainable, which is true, but more deeply, its because I trust that team to take that program farther than I ever could have. Its because I would trust Sherry with my literal children, not just my brain-children, and I know the Holy Spirit is at work her team in powerful ways.

So – Sherry, Douglas, Sue, Dan, Tim, peer leaders, and all of my friends in Mountain Sky: good luck, God speed …. And here’s hoping we get the next one!