Curacy Express: A Training Resource for New Clergy

The twenty-first-century church is increasingly placing recently trained seminary or locally trained clergy in smaller churches where they must stand alone without the training under a senior pastor. Since leadership in a church and academic preparation in seminary are two very different things the church historically developed a history of offering curacies or training assistantships to help blend the two disciplines and merge classroom knowledge into practical application. Today these formal assistantships are mostly a thing of the past. Curacy Express: A Training Resource for New Clergy reconfigures this training into a current model. New clergy serving in their own church and mentor clergy serving in another church work together over a course of thirty-three self-paced learning modules. In each module the newly ordained person gains valuable skills mentors observations and reflections new confidence and leadership formation. The result is clergy trained to be competent and confident in their roles as clergy-in-charge. Curacy Express has been a godsend especially as a tool for helping new priests and their supervisors engage in a mentoring relationship that attends to the wide array of issues challenging a newly ordained pastor. Here is a resource that covers it all provides a comprehensive framework for prayer and discussion and points to up-to-date resources when there is a need to learn more. Curacy Express has been a game-changer in our diocese! --J. Scott Barker Bishop Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska Using a covenantal process between curate supervisor and mentor Lewis provides a guide that uses theoretical perspective practical context and actual examples of the practice of ministry. Curacy Express provides a great tool for both the newly ordained and any judicatory concerned with the future of the Church and its leadership. --Kevin E. Martin author; teacher; congregational consultant; retired Dean of St. Matthews Cathedral Dallas Texas Dr. Lewis took to heart the plight of the newly ordained and devised a help. Manuals have served the church well in times past and Lewis has come up with a mentor in a book that will serve its reader very well. This is an express to a good destination--a grounded ministry. --Steven A. Peay Dean and President Professor of Homiletics and Church History Nashotah House Theological Seminary; Canon Theologian (honorary) for the Diocese of Eau Claire Wisconsin The Reverend Dr. Robert Michael Lewis currently serves in the Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska and has served as Priest-in-Charge of three Episcopal churches. He lives in Grand Island Nebraska.