RMCNews with Mickey Mallory – Denver, Colorado … Under the theme of “Growing to Your Potential,” the two-day training event brought 18 Rocky Mountain Conference pastors to Denver, September 20-21. Several of these pastors are new to ministry in the Conference, according to Mickey Mallory, RMC ministerial director, who convened the meeting.

The event, according to Mallory, “was designed to help pastors build a framework for personal and professional growth.”

“My hope is that every pastor who attended the training will have the tools needed to grow to their potential. A thought that kept coming up in our discussions was that if you are going to grow, you must be intentional about it,” he added.

One speaker, Mic Thurber, RMC president, shared a presentation on Family Systems, demonstrating how an understanding of the family process can aid pastors in negotiating congregational dynamics and functioning as an effective leaders.

Through presentations and discussion, pastors discovered that all church members are simultaneously involved in two distinct families whose emotional forces interlock—their biological family and their church family, brothers and sisters in Christ. The emotional process in all these systems is identical. Unresolved issues in any of them can produce symptoms in the other, and an increased understanding of each creates more effective functioning in both.

Comments from the participants testify to the value of this and similar meetings. “These two days have been very refreshing to each of us. It is good to be reminded occasionally you are not alone in the pastoral ministry. Meeting with our colleagues is encouraging and stimulating and should be done more often, ” said Daniele Fantoni from Alamosa, Colorado.

A similar comment came from J J Martinez, an associate pastor in Grand Junction. “We talked about choosing positivity and keeping our failures right next to our successes. Sometimes negativity and failure overpower the positive and all seems lost. But I was reminded that it is at that moment that we need to look at the success in our failures. Because when you see that good happens even in failure, positivity is easier to see,” he shared.

Mallory plans for the next New in Ministry Training to take place in March of 2023.

–RMCNews with Mickey Mallory. Photos by Mickey Mallory and Rajmund Dabrowski.