You may have seen the bookmarks given out at the fall conferences or posted on our FaceBook site. On the bookmark, we mentioned that the PWOC International Board and Joint Council (PWOCI Board along with the 8 regional presidents combined) have been considering some changes within PWOC. I also mentioned some “needed changes” on our PWOC International Executive Board 2010 Vision video, which is now located on our website. I would like to address this in more detail with you.
As you may remember in my January 2009 President’s Letter, I mentioned that we were introducing the new Women’s Ministry Manual; Official Leaders’ Policy and Guidelines of Protestant Women of the Chapel and the new name for Traveling Training: W.I.L.D. – Women Intent on Leadership Development. These two items were the beginning of some of these changes and were a result of the development of PWOC International.
As the 2008-2010 PWOC International Executive Board began meeting and discussing the future needs of the ministry, we began praying about what we were observing and then later responded with recommendations for development and/or change for the related areas of PWOC.
1. Leadership Development: we know that it is within PWOC’s “DNA” to raise up, train up and send out leaders. In understanding this, we looked really hard at some of the things that we needed to provide our leaders, which were being addressed in some places and not in others. In looking at our current leadership training offerings, we found that –
- Traveling Training did a wonderful job of going out to the masses and training on topics of spiritual development and team building.
- Most regions offered some level of leadership training at a central location for local board leadership, primarily that of president and vice president. They focused their training on leadership issues, regional updates and peer relationship building. There was an exception to this in a few of our regions, which trained additional board positions; however, overall we found leadership training gaps and inconsistencies in our training models across the regions.
- We needed more time to provide position specific training, which is vitally needed to help women fulfill their leadership roles on a practical level.
- Chaplains and regional presidents were voicing concerns over issues that were arising within local PWOC’s. Many of these concerns were based on misunderstandings and a lack of knowledge on practical positional roles, working together as a team and then how to work with their chaplains.
- Traveling Training could not effectively address individual position training or practical board operations within the training model offered.
- We needed to be able to cast a unified vision for the ministry, so that we would all be on the same page. Our annual PWOCI Executive Board DVD video tried to accomplish this; however, it didn’t always connect with the training content or the theme. We are learning that when all three are in sync with each other, there is a great synergistic effect, which helps our leadership join together in God’s plan for PWOC as a whole.
- There is synergy and excitement when bringing groups together around a common vision and goal. Ideas and support flow when we come together in a larger group. Peer relationship building helps foster growth in both positional roles and in the Lord.
Based upon our findings, the PWOCI Executive Board felt it was time to pull the local leadership teams into one training event. By working alongside our regional presidents and their boards, we can provide consistent leadership training across the ministry. We pulled from Europe Region’s ATC (Annual Training Conference) positional training and what we loved about training within Traveling Training, added a few more focus areas such as learning how to minister to those we serve as lay ministry leaders and addressing specific leadership challenge areas and then came up with the new W.I.L.D. Weekend events. Regional presidents still have the ability to encourage, mentor and update their local leadership through the W.I.L.D. Weekend event, as they are the official host for this training.
We know that this is just the beginning of the new W.I.L.D. training model, which will be fine-tuned and changed over the years as leadership needs arise.
To be continued…
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