Free tools, frameworks, and guides — developed in the trenches of real congregational life.
Everything on this page comes from real work with real pastors and congregations. The frameworks have been tested, revised, and refined through years of coaching relationships and consulting engagements. I offer them here freely because I believe leaders doing this work deserve more than inspiration — they deserve substantive tools.
Section One: Resources I’ve Created
These are tools and frameworks I’ve developed through my own work. Some require a brief email signup — I’ll follow up with a few short, useful emails. You can unsubscribe any time.
The Threefold Calling Leadership Framework
Find out where your leadership is thriving — and where it might be costing you.
At its core, The Threefold Calling is built on a simple but theologically grounded premise: effective pastoral leadership requires sustained, integrated attention to three fundamental dimensions in vertexes of a triangle: Vision, Action, and People.
The framework maps three biblical callings — Prophet, Priest, and Shepherd-Leader — onto the edges of the triangle, each holding two dimensions in productive tension.
It also connects each dimension to a spiritual posture — Pray, Do, and Be — that sustains it.
The goal is not equal mastery of all three dimensions. The goal is integration: knowing your default, understanding what it costs you, and leading from an increasingly whole self.
The “Called Forward” Spiritual Planning Guide
A planning tool built for congregations — not corporations.
Congregations are not businesses with a mission statement problem. They are living communities of faith — complex, adaptive, and shaped by decades of shared story. Planning for a congregation needs to attend to identity, relationships, and context, not just programs and budgets. Every congregation lives somewhere on a spectrum between clarity and confusion — about who they are, why they exist, and where God is calling them next.
Called Forward maps eight interconnected elements — Identity, Calling, Direction, Governance, People, Stewardship, Witness, and Partners that shape a congregation’s ability to fulfill its calling with integrity and faithfulness.
Called to Thrive Ministry Activity Assessment
Discovering Where Your Gifts and Joy Align in Ministry
Called to Thrive is built on a simple but clarifying premise: not all ministry activities affect you the same way. Two dimensions shape your experience of any given task —
Joy (how much it energizes you) and Strength (how gifted and effective you are at it).
Mapping those two dimensions creates four zones, each with its own meaning and its own invitation.
The framework is not a performance evaluation. It is a discernment tool — designed to help you see what is actually true about where you are, so you can lead from integrity rather than obligation.
Section Two: Resources From Others I Trust
I am not a one-stop shop, and I don’t pretend to be. The resources below are tools, frameworks, organizations, and books I return to regularly and recommend without hesitation. I have no financial relationship with any of them — I commend them simply because I’ve seen them do genuine good.
Assessments & Organizations
Heartstyles Indicator A scientifically validated behavioral assessment that maps character and leadership style — how you relate to others, how you lead under pressure, and where your less effective patterns tend to show up. I am a certified Heartstyles associate and use this instrument regularly with coaching clients. It’s one of the most illuminating self-awareness tools I’ve encountered for pastoral leaders.
Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory Ron Kraybill’s conflict style assessment is culturally sensitive, psychometrically sound, and designed with a level of cross-cultural flexibility I haven’t found elsewhere. I recommend it to any leader who wants to understand their default conflict patterns — and to any consultant or trainer working with diverse communities.
Center for Congregational Health CCH offers consulting, coaching, and assessment resources for congregations navigating health and transition challenges. I serve as a partner consultant with CCH and have watched their work help transform congregations across the country. If you’re unsure whether you need consulting and want a trusted first point of contact, CCH is an excellent place to start.
NVC Academy — Nonviolent Communication Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication framework is foundational to how I think about conflict, human needs, and the kind of honest, caring communication that makes real community possible. The NVC Academy offers courses and a deep library of free content.
Recommended Reading
Books I return to regularly and recommend without hesitation to the leaders I work with.
On Leadership & Self-Differentiation
- A Failure of Nerve — Edwin Friedman
- From Generation to Generation – Edwin Friedman
- The Practice of Adaptive Leadership — Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, Marty Linsky
- The Empathy Factor — Marie R. Miyashiro
On Conflict & Communication
- Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life — Marshall Rosenberg
- Anatomy of Peace — The Arbinger Institute
- Crucial Conversations — Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switzler
On Belonging & Community
- Community: The Structure of Belonging — Peter Block
- The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimaging Ourselves — Shawn A. Ginwright
On Spiritual Formation & Wholeness
- Falling Upward — Richard Rohr
- Awareness — Anthony de Mello
- The Miracle of Mindfulness — Thich Nhat Hanh
- Above the Line: Living and Leading with Heart — Stephen Klemich and Mara Klemich, PhD
On Cognition & Decision-Making
- Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
Want to Go Deeper?
The resources on this page are a starting point — and a genuine one. But the real work happens in relationship: in a coaching engagement where someone holds up a mirror and asks the right questions, or in a facilitated congregational process where the truth that’s been circling finally gets said out loud.
If something here has resonated — if a framework has named something you’ve been navigating — I’d love to have a conversation about what the next step might look like.
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