Hello, Southern California Conference family. For the last weeks, we have expanded our participation in this video communication with you, and we have included our five region directors who have talked about our five core values: integrity with transparency and engagement, stewardship, unity in diversity, and relationships and team.

Today, we begin with our last section, our strategic objectives — our goals. The first one is rigorous leadership and accountability process. Second, discipleship and leading others to Christ. Third, affordable education solutions. Fourth, community engagement. And fifth, develop extravagant givers.

Today, I will talk about the first one: rigorous leadership and accountability process. The Southern California Conference believes that excellent servant leadership of our employees, pastors, educators and administrators will elevate the effectiveness of our churches and schools to accomplish the mission of Jesus Christ in our territory. Leaders are the lid of any organization. Growing and learning churches and schools are led by growing and learning leaders, pastors and educators. George Martin says in his book Leaders on Leadership the following: "The American church is dying due to the lack of a strong leadership. In this time of unprecedented opportunity and plentiful resources, the church is actually losing influence. The primary reason is the lack of leadership." Ouch. Ouch. Part of the strategy of the Southern California Conference is to develop a rigorous leadership and accountability process for excellence in ministry.

Some components of this process includes the following. For instance, for pastors, continuing education units. For the educators, certifications and licenses. For administrators, mentoring and coaching skills. The Leadership Growth Plan is an action plan for helping the individuals develop as leaders. The plan is personally designed by the employee to lay out their personal and professional leadership growth goals, including timeframes and steps to achieve these goals. This could be updated and refined each year.

Sylvia Nadler, a professor emeritus on leadership studies at William Jewell College in Missouri, talks about the leadership growth plan and outlines some key points. First one, ask "Who am I?" Second, prepare a personal mission statement. Third, evaluate your vision for your life. Develop personal and professional leadership and growth goals. Create an action plan. Implement this action plan in your daily and professional life. And lastly, review and evaluate your mission statement and the progress of your action plan continuously. In development of this leadership of personal growth plan goals, we need motivational goals that can be such as: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound.

We desire in Southern California Conference that all our employees to know who they are so that they can grow healthier in their personal lives and professional leadership.

Jesus knew who He was. Jesus knew who He was not as well. Knowing oneself is the key to being a mature and successful, wholesome leader — whether in pastoral ministry, educational ministry or administrative ministry.

There are some tools that we are using to help us to fully understand who we are as leaders, including major strengths to build upon and areas of challenge to understand and develop compensatory strategies around. Me, as the main leader of this organization, I need to know who I am and who I am not, what my strengths are, and what are the areas that I have challenges. That's why in our multicultural and multi-generational, dominant urban, high secular environment requires a great deal of emotional and social intelligence to navigate. It is vital for our employees to be differentiated in terms of their personal identities as opposed to co-dependent, and able to navigate the dysfunctions of both society and sometimes, as well, in religion organizations, in such a way as to be able to serve.

We seek to motivate, to empower and to equip differentiated spiritual leaders with multiple intelligences to meet the overwhelmingly complex demand on the ministry environment. After all, we as a conference exist "to exalt Christ by serving its diverse communities through networked and creatively engaged churches and schools."

Thank you for watching, and we invite you to leave a comment with your thoughts and leave us like on this video. And may the Lord continue guiding us all. We'll see you in the next video.