LMPC offers a number of workshops that encourage congregational health and pastoral growth. Some of our more popular workshops are listed below:

• Conflict Transformation Skills for Churches
• Healthy Congregations
• Facilitating Healthy Pastor-Congregation Relations
• Leadership and Anxiety in the Church:  A Family Systems Perspective
• God's Own Peace: Systems Theory and Spirituality

See Schedule of Events page for dates and locations of LMPC-coordinated workshops.  Click here to learn more about how to host any of our workshops or seminars.

The workshops listed on this page are available to be presented in your church or organization. Click on the title of the workshop to see a sample outline for the workshop.  Persons interested in scheduling one of these workshops in their church or judicatory should contact LMPC.

We can also present other workshops for your church or organization. An example of such a program is Walking with the Prince of Peace. Contact LMPC if you are interested in this option.

Conflict Transformation Skills for Churches

The workshop includes:

• Introduction: The Nature and Role of Conflict
• Conflict in the New Testament: Finding Renewal in Conflict
• Self-Assessment Exercise: Understanding and Improving Your Own Style of Response to Conflict
• Interpersonal Peacemaking Skills: How to be Effective When People are Angry
• Congregational Conflict: Understanding Conflict in Groups and How to Manage It

Healthy Congregations

The workshop designed by Peter Steinke, and supplemented with material based on the training and experience of LMPC staff, includes:

• What is Systems Thinking?
• Video Case Study: The Anxious Congregation/The Responsible Congregation
• Healthy Congregations Invite Differentiation of Self
• Healthy Congregations Focus on Strength
• Healthy Congregations Manage Conflict
• In Healthy Congregations, Leaders Focus on Mission
• In Healthy Congregations, Leaders Promote Health Through Their Presence and Functioning
• Planning for a Healthier Congregation

Facilitating Healthy Pastor-Congregation Relations

The workshop includes:

• Introduction: The Crisis in the Pastorate System
  
• The Congregation as a Family System
  
• Managing Healthy Pastoral Transitions
  
• Strengthening Support Systems for Pastors
  
• Systems for Managing Conflict Constructively
  
• Promoting Healthy Church Systems
  

• The Road to Damascus:  The Church and Change in an Age of Anxiety
  
• "They Know Not What They Do":  The Scapegoat Mechanism and Church Conflict
  
• The Importance of Not Being Ernest: Reversals, Playfulness, and Paradox
  
• The Road to Damascus:  Lessons for Leadership in Anxious Times
  

• Integrate insights of family systems theory with theology.
  
• Experience a variety of approaches to meditative prayer.
  
• Understand effects of meditative prayer in reducing stress.
  
• Understand the long-term effects of meditative prayer in the way one experiences the world and responds to it.
  
• Develop spiritual resources for leadership in anxious congregational systems.