PRESBYTERIAN NERD ALERT: Boundary Training Update

Update on Training for Teaching and Ruling Elders

Greeting all and apologies to all of the non-Presbyterian folks on the list — and I would assume that is most of you, so, yes, this is terrible content targeting ;-)

Alas, a ways back I had let folks know that I would be doing Boundary Training for Ruling Elders (Lay leadership) and Teaching Elders (Pastors and Ministers of Word and Sacrament)

Welp, both trainings have been designed and run through one round with great success. Keep in mind that these trainings do NOT cover sexual misconduct or child sexual abuse protection as those are taken care of by other trainings. Below are two very breig videos explaining what each looked like.

For Ruling Elders. Considering that getting a good number of volunteer leaders together for in-person training would be difficult, we went with one hour over Zoom. We had about 150 people show up, which we felt was pretty good. I talked for about 40 minutes (while the chat was lively), and then we did Ask A Pastor Anything for the final 20 minutes. It seemed like a pretty good use of the time.

For Teaching Elders. While I had first considered discussing a Top 10 or 112 list of behaviors and boundaries, I ended up taking a more collaborative approach by soliciting input from the people in the room. The process that I used opened up participants to interact, share, and receive wisdom in the space. It was important for folks to be in person, which allowed for the building of collegial relationships.

Please let me know if you or your presbytery are interested in having me run one of the boundary trainings. San Jose Presbytery has given me permission to take the design and run with it.

The cost of in-person training depends on travel, but for the online boundary training for Teaching Elders, the cost is $500 per session.